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> then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living I wish we could make the "inequality" point without resorting to hyperbole like this. The median

> then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living I wish we could make the "inequality" point without resorting to hyperbole like this. The median American lives a life that is the envy of 99.9% percent of people who have ever walked this earth including most monarchs and emperors, and certainly >90% of people alive today. I do agree that something needs to be done to keep inequality in check; I just happen to think that hyperbole and dishonesty create more problems than they solve.

giantg2 5y ago
"create more problems than they solve." Like what? Or was this ironic use of your own hyperbole?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Like causing people to lose trust in the "anti-inequality" message. If we need to lie or exaggerate to persuade then we may rightly lose credibility. Pro-inequality folks can even deflect the conversation to our own exaggeration. I didn't mean to imply that hyperbole is comparable to inequality in scale or severity, but rather that any gains afforded by hyperbole tend to be short-sighted.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I don't feel it was a lie or exaggeration. Many people do not feel like their life is worth living when they work a job they hate just to pay the bills, get no time to enjoy life, etc. It shouldn't be a surprise when the general trend is for highly industrialized countries to experience higher suicide rates.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Whether or not we are happy, the fact remains that the median American lifestyle is positively luxurious by world standards and “America is a third world country” rhetoric is hyperbole. Most everyone today or throughout history has had to work far harder than our median American to secure much less. That we are unhappy only indicates that wealth isn’t the major factor in happiness. Personally, for causes of declining happiness, I would look at rampant social media and technology addiction, falling-sky media narratives, rapidly increasing political division (itself a product of the traditional and social media), decreasing religious participation, weaker family/community ties, and good ole fashioned keeping up with the Jones’s.
luffapi 5y ago
I really don’t think 99.9% of people want to pay 1K /month for health insurance or be a missed paycheck away from living on the street. Americans make a lot of money but the cost of living is through the roof and there is practically no safety net. That’s not even touching on our complete lack of social and family support structures.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Again with the wild hyperbole. The American safety net may not be the absolute best in the world but it is still far better than what is available to the overwhelming majority of people. Indeed, a huge swath of the world is far below the American poverty line. Why do you suppose so many millions of people risk their lives to get into America in the first place? Come on. We can advocate for better healthcare and social services without going full “AmErIcA iS a ThIrD wOrLd CoUnTrY”.
  - luffapi 5y ago
    It’s not hyperbole it’s reality. The US has the largest prison population in the world. It has massive problems with homelessness and violent crime. It has extreme wealth inequality. We have the most expensive healthcare and education in the world. The reality is that the US is a harsh place to live. Yes there are upsides but the hyperbole is that there aren’t significant downsides.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > Yes there are upsides but the hyperbole is that there aren’t significant downsides. The original claim was that the median American’s lifestyle is enviable to the overwhelming majority of people on Earth today or at any other point. In other words, the downsides are few and far less significant than the upsides for most people today or at any time in the past. It’s so exhausting to transparently argue that relative to the world, the US is a very nice place and suffer responses like “but there is lots of violent crime!” Of course there is always some referand for which the US has “lots of violent crime” but by world standards it does not. The US homicide rate for example is something like 30% below the global homicide rate. The poverty rate in the US is pretty comparable to European countries (bit worse than western Europe, bit better than eastern Europe) and far, far better than Asia, Africa, or South America. Even our wealth inequality is not “extreme” by global standards. There is no truth whatsoever to claims that the US is a harsh place to live. According to the quality of life index which does not cherry pick metrics, the US is 15th globally (lower is better). https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j...

giantg2 5y ago

"create more problems than they solve." Like what? Or was this ironic use of your own hyperbole?

throwaway894345 5y ago
Like causing people to lose trust in the "anti-inequality" message. If we need to lie or exaggerate to persuade then we may rightly lose credibility. Pro-inequality folks can even deflect the conversation to our own exaggeration. I didn't mean to imply that hyperbole is comparable to inequality in scale or severity, but rather that any gains afforded by hyperbole tend to be short-sighted.
- giantg2 5y ago
  I don't feel it was a lie or exaggeration. Many people do not feel like their life is worth living when they work a job they hate just to pay the bills, get no time to enjoy life, etc. It shouldn't be a surprise when the general trend is for highly industrialized countries to experience higher suicide rates.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Whether or not we are happy, the fact remains that the median American lifestyle is positively luxurious by world standards and “America is a third world country” rhetoric is hyperbole. Most everyone today or throughout history has had to work far harder than our median American to secure much less. That we are unhappy only indicates that wealth isn’t the major factor in happiness. Personally, for causes of declining happiness, I would look at rampant social media and technology addiction, falling-sky media narratives, rapidly increasing political division (itself a product of the traditional and social media), decreasing religious participation, weaker family/community ties, and good ole fashioned keeping up with the Jones’s.

luffapi 5y ago

I really don’t think 99.9% of people want to pay 1K /month for health insurance or be a missed paycheck away from living on the street. Americans make a lot of money but the cost of living is through the roof and there is practically no safety net. That’s not even touching on our complete lack of social and family support structures.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Again with the wild hyperbole. The American safety net may not be the absolute best in the world but it is still far better than what is available to the overwhelming majority of people. Indeed, a huge swath of the world is far below the American poverty line. Why do you suppose so many millions of people risk their lives to get into America in the first place? Come on. We can advocate for better healthcare and social services without going full “AmErIcA iS a ThIrD wOrLd CoUnTrY”.
- luffapi 5y ago
  It’s not hyperbole it’s reality. The US has the largest prison population in the world. It has massive problems with homelessness and violent crime. It has extreme wealth inequality. We have the most expensive healthcare and education in the world. The reality is that the US is a harsh place to live. Yes there are upsides but the hyperbole is that there aren’t significant downsides.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > Yes there are upsides but the hyperbole is that there aren’t significant downsides. The original claim was that the median American’s lifestyle is enviable to the overwhelming majority of people on Earth today or at any other point. In other words, the downsides are few and far less significant than the upsides for most people today or at any time in the past. It’s so exhausting to transparently argue that relative to the world, the US is a very nice place and suffer responses like “but there is lots of violent crime!” Of course there is always some referand for which the US has “lots of violent crime” but by world standards it does not. The US homicide rate for example is something like 30% below the global homicide rate. The poverty rate in the US is pretty comparable to European countries (bit worse than western Europe, bit better than eastern Europe) and far, far better than Asia, Africa, or South America. Even our wealth inequality is not “extreme” by global standards. There is no truth whatsoever to claims that the US is a harsh place to live. According to the quality of life index which does not cherry pick metrics, the US is 15th globally (lower is better). https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j...