I spent a while thinking about your comment. While doing so, I remembered these two tables that I encountered in the book Social Class in America: The Evaluation of Status (1960). Here they are: http://imgur.com/xoKlu6l,LJ977Ns Keep in mind this was written in 1960, and I'm not sure how much it has changed. I imagine that it has stratified even more. Based on this classification, I most closely identify with Upper-Lower, but I'm sure I grew up somewhere in between LM and UL. But, having traveled and lived in various places in the "third world," the kind of jobs I get out there put me into a higher class. It is thus a tempting aspect of emigrating. Judging by your pairing me with people in fight-or-flight, impoverished mode, I'm going to guess you're UM.
The point I'm trying to make is that comparing the poor in United States with the poor in extremely impoverished countries is like comparing apples and oranges. In order to confirm or deny your guess of where I fall on that diagram I'd need to know more about the criteria. But it's probably a good guess. Look, I don't think the poor in the US have it good by my standards but by others standards they may be doing quite well. It's all perspective.