> Your link says charity given by individuals decreased while scraps thrown by rich people increases, thanks for defeating your own argument. What? My link sho

> Your link says charity given by individuals decreased while scraps thrown by rich people increases, thanks for defeating your own argument. What? My link shows that charity is more than just "scraps from the rich". It doesn't defeat the argument at all. It means that it's a reliable source of transfers for the poor, and therefore an amount you need to account for when computing standard of living and consumption. The NBER does this in a systematic way. > Which says wages are rising partly because the states are increasing their minimum wage. So you can thank the law not the employers for that. Sure, nobody ever claimed that the increase in standard of living is SOLELY due to economic growth, just that economic growth is a necessary but not solely sufficient condition for it. The central question at hand is how prosperous the poorest in the US are, given its institutions and welfare systems — BOTH public and private. It's why OECD metrics account for taxes and transfers, because as you rightly point out, you can't ignore them. > Yes you claim that but when I asked you the reason, you dont know the answer and yet if the these hypothetical reasons are fixed it will magically fix the life expectancy. Do you see a flaw in your logic? No, what I claim is that the variance in life expectancy is measurably attributable to lifestyle and cultural factors. Therefore changing the culture and lifestyle can provably close the gap. What I don't know the answer to is why the culture is the way it is, or how best to change it. Why does the average American cook cheeseburgers and casserole and drink Coca-Cola? Why does the average Japanese eat vegetable rice, healthy omega-3 fish dishes, and drink tea? Why do first-generation immigrants eat healthier than middle-class white Americans? These are cultural questions that are harder to answer. > Is it nothing or close to nothing, it its close, what is it? Poor people and even middle class people atleast in Australia dont have to jump though all these hoops, the cost is nothing. It's "close to nothing" because there are still co-pays for visits, just like in Australia. It can even be "literally nothing" depending on the circumstances because, in addition to Medicaid, the poor qualify for other transfer programs that can be used to cover even the cost of co-pays. You don't "jump through hoops" to qualify for Medicaid, you just have to show that your income is below a certain level. I myself have qualified for Medicaid when I started a company after college and had no income. If your argument is that we ought to make it easier for poor people to get welfare, I don't disagree, but it's a serious mischaracterization of the status quo to suggest that we're not already generously funding welfare for the poor. > Why would a nation whose poorest 20% are richer than average OECD people have the highest maternal mortality rate? Because the flaw in your statement is assuming that the mortality rate is concentrated among the poorest 20%. In fact the poorest 20% have some of the best healthcare in the US. The fundamental problem in America is that if you happen to not be one of: {below poverty, employed, old}, you slip through the cracks and have inadequate healthcare. THAT is the problem. Per my linked source, 30% of Americans have poor quality insurance (gaps), and 10% are uninsured — but importantly, the bottom 20% do not intersect with that set because they qualify for Medicaid. But this isn't a "the poor in the US are worse off" problem, this is a "the healthcare system in the US is a byzantine mess" problem, and there are various ways to specifically fix that (and not just the one proposal you keep hearing about).