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30 years ago people would have said yes perhaps (American dream), but now it has become apparent the US is a very broken country for ~90% of its population. It'

30 years ago people would have said yes perhaps (American dream), but now it has become apparent the US is a very broken country for ~90% of its population. It's actually shocking how bad it is when you think about fundamentals (health, food, security, education). We have many problems in France, they look like micro problems when looking at how painful it is for most to survive in the US.

unixhero 4y ago
The American dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin
Ma8ee 4y ago
Exactly! The US is great for the top few percent, but for the rest of the population they’d have a much better life in any Western European country.
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  Just raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour, problem solved.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    Seems like inflation would then jump a fair bunch to match?
    - danw1979 4y ago
      Let’s try it and find out
    - Ma8ee 4y ago
      Some jobs would just disappear. No one is going to pay a greeter at Walmart $50 an hour.
      - graftak 4y ago
        Good because that is very creepy.
        Ma8ee 4y ago
        I agree. Jobs that isn’t possible to pay a living salary for don’t need to be done.
        a-user-you-like 4y ago
        People still need meaning on their life and plenty of money to support their family. Plenty of public works projects we could start and pay people $50/hr.
    - crooked-v 4y ago
      Jeff Bezos' daily income is about $175 million. Tax him at a marginal rate of 90% and that's about 1500 $50/hour workers compensated for right there.
      - jon_adler 4y ago
        Some people still believe in the fantasy of trickle down economics and the Laffer curve, so they push for lower corporate and marginal tax rates that help the wealthiest. The vast majority of people do not benefit as the money flows upwards and concentrates with the wealthiest over time. Some redistribution is needed to promote equality and fairness. Instead, what we have at the moment is a system where the wealthiest are able to avoid taxes and end up paying a lower marginal rate than the middle classes.
        imtringued 4y ago
        Capital dividends and interest payments are proportional to how many assets you own. Profit pays interest and dividends. People pay for profits in the form of higher prices. Consumers who spend a majority of their income on food, energy and housing are paying more in than they get back because the income they receive from assets is smaller than their living expenses aka the income share of labor is less than 100%. Imagine being so rich that you can live off dividends, there is no reason for your wealth accumulation to ever stop. The amount you pay into the economy is much lower than the income you derive from your assets. This is the reason why there is a constant flow of money toward the top. When you think about how a market economy worksy the above is completely illogical. The entire point of markets is to trade which means those who have too much give to those who have too little in exchange for monetary compensation. Why doesn't the same happen with money? Why isn't money flowing from those who have too much to those who have too little in exchange for their labor? Instead, those who have too much get more and those who have too little get less, this is highly inefficient.
      - IMTDb 4y ago
        You are mixing his income with the increase in his net worth. Those are not the same thing. The $175 millions are the increase of the value of his stocks. Until he sells those stocks, he earns a total of $0. You can't really tax "increase in net worth", because net worth can - and does fluctuate both positively and negatively, As opposed to income which just accumulate more or less linearly. Imagine Jeff Bezos stock has a perfect seasonal effect: on odds years, he gains $1 billion and on even years, he loses that amount. We can all agree here that Jeff sin't getting any richer, on average and thus should not be taxed since he is not getting any stable income. Yet you would want to tax him, every odd year, on the $1 billion - which is unfair, unless you also give him back that tax money every even year. This means firing those workers and asking them to give back their undue wage - which you can't do of course. The way we solve this is by not taxing the increase in net worth, until he does actually sell the stock and converts this increase in stock value into what is called realized gains. At that point, his net worth won't fluctuate anymore since he sold the stock for cold hard cash. And we tax him on that cash amount. You might argue that we should tax him more on those realized gains - which is fair discussion point. But trying to impose a tax on virtual net worth increase is a quite risky path because you would also need to pay billionaires when their stock portfolio decreases. And although everyone wants to tax billionaire when you hear about them having a fantastic month on the stock market (even tho these gains haven't been realized yet), but no one want to send them money when a headline says "$25 billion wiped out in a single day" (and rightfully so).
    - imtringued 4y ago
      That is actually the primary reason why a minimum wage hike wouldn't be as harmful as many people think. People at the bottom consume their wages which generates more jobs than someone who just dumps more money on their portfolio.
      - Chris2048 4y ago
        This falls foul of the glassmakers fallacy - money invested in a portfolio will still be used for something, so it is generating economic activity.
      - makomk 4y ago
        This doesn't work when the economy is already close to full employment, full consumption of available energy, and full capacity on critical parts like ICs which it's hard to expand the production of. Without any excess slack to increase production in order to fill that increase in consumption, it just has to come out of other people's consumption through inflation reducing the value of their wages. It's also not at all obvious that this is better than someone just investing a bunch of money. After all, the way investments ultimately make money is by supplying people with what they want at low prices, which means that investment money floating around can lead to innovation which supplies people with more stuff using less resources, increasing the amount available for everyone can buy with their wages.
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    As has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, most of the problems can be solved better by treating people with respect rather than raising minimum wage through the roof. By that I mean universal healthcare, guaranteed sick leave and childbirth leave as well as minimum 3-4 weeks vacation a year and a good unemployment system.
    - lnxg33k1 4y ago
      I agree with you, but let’s not rule out the wage issue, like it’s crazy that people need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, but also finding dependable workers that take pride, that’s I think about respect, I am sorry but how I’m supposed to take pride if I do a job well done, then at the first issue the company is just going to lay me off to maximise bonus or dividends?
      - Swenrekcah 4y ago
        For sure, there is also one other thing I forgot to mention which is access to affordable (and not unhealthy) housing. With all those in place people wouldn’t be so dependent on their employer. I see a lot of FI/RE stories focusing on the importance of having fuck-you money in order to be able to stand up to your boss. Well if you live in a decent welfare society you can do that without $4M. This would in effect force employers to pay better.
      - mathw 4y ago
        I understand many places in the USA you can be legally fired for no reason and with no notice. That is surely harmful to the development of a sense of trust and loyalty towards one's employer.
    - ithkuil 4y ago
      All those things are absolutely necessary to raise to an objectively higher standard like that of western Europe. However, due to the hedonic treadmill, after people get accustomed to it and take things for granted, people will find reasons to be unhappy and frustrated and claim that they live in the worst possible times etc. EDIT: just to be clear: I'm not saying that since people will complain there is no point in improving, nor I'm saying that you don't have to listen people's complaints since they just don't know how lucky they are. It's important to keep improving more and more, since there is still room for improvement. What I'm saying is that it's hard to compare the quality of life in different places just by measuring how many people are complaining here or there.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    People will work for little money or even free if living expenses are low and they enjoy their job.
  - a-user-you-like 4y ago
    Why downvoted? Do people not care for the poorest?
spaceman_2020 4y ago
As an outsider, what boggles my mind the most about America right now isn’t healthcare or inequality. Its gun violence. Unreal that schools have active shooter training and no one seems to even care. The fact that there is a non-zero chance your kid might be shot at school is completely absurd.
- UberFly 4y ago
  Yea but nobody wants to work anymore.
  - polypodiopsi 4y ago
    Hahahaha
- cm2187 4y ago
  For school shootings, it’s rationally absurd to worry about those rare events. It’s like worrying about dying from a terrorist attack or a plane crash in France. The probability is mathematically non zero, and the country makes a big deal when that happens, but it is statistically a non problem. Being confronted with an armed robber in a home invasion is more of a problem in the US (but France has its own fair share of violent crime). Outside of that I think the bulk of gun violence is suicides and gang on gang violence.
  - scambier 4y ago
    "School shootings are mathematically irrelevant", what a take.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
      Talk about normalisation of deviance! I've read that more children have died of gunshot wounds this year than police officers have died in the line of duty.[1] Granted, there are probably more school children at school than there are police at work on any given day, so ... of course children are more likely to be shot at a school? But then again, here in Australia we have reasonable gun control after that mass schooling in Tasmania all those years ago ... and the country still turned to shit ... so? While were here, anyone else got any arguments no one would intentionally make? 1. https://en.as.com/latest_news/more-children-have-died-in-school-shootings-in-2022-than-police-officers-in-the-line-of-duty-fact-check-n/ https://en.as.com/latest_news/more-children-have-died-in-sch...
School-Cotton 4y ago
The US is better than the median country in the world on all the metrics you list. Yes, it’s worse than France, which is part of Western Europe, the most developed and best-run part of the entire world.
- pavlov 4y ago
  The world has a lot of poor countries, so settling for “better than the median” is a very low bar. On the list of GDP per capita, the median countries are South Africa and Peru. If the US ever gets near the median on these global lists, it would be the result of a collapse worse than the Soviet Union’s.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    All of this is true. What’s your point?
  - imtringued 4y ago
    You're forgetting Ukraine.
- doteka 4y ago
  I guess being better than a random third-world country (yes, that’s what median means here) is seen as a great accomplishment? Not sure why you would choose to comment this, it’s like a grown adult bragging about being able to beat up a toddler.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    Why is your prior that the US should be doing better than third-world countries? Where did I claim it should be seen as a great accomplishment?
- polypodiopsi 4y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2020/apr/06/coronavirus-american-reaction-economy-covid-19 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/databl... The facts are as exhaustive as they are exhausting. There’s one simple conclusion from all of this. We’ve been tricked. We’ve been told that America, like most other majority-white countries, deserves the title “developed economy”. It does not. A bit polemic but an interesting perspective. Maybe it's just the case that the us IS a "third world' aka >developing county<
guggle 4y ago
> 30 years ago people would have said yes perhaps (American dream) I can relate to that... in the 80s USA was the dream for us kids. But now... I'm so glad I don't live there. France is indeed extremely generous. I wish more french people would realize this.
jollybean 4y ago
This is hyperbole. For most people, especially any French person who'd move to the US, all of those indicators are fine, and, income is considerably higher than in France, if not 'free time' and guaranteed access to healthcare. Yes, the food in many ways is not good, but it's fine. There is no 'security' problem - Manhattan is generally safer than Paris, and US has great educational institutions unless you live in a ghetto. It hasn't changed that much over 20 years other than what you see on TV. Attitudes towards work have changed, our material standard of living is considerably higher than it was 2 generations ago, and people are considerably less willing to do manual labour for example. Ironically, wages in semi skilled and skilled labour are actually not that bad. What we have now is a 'new white collar working class' - large swaths of people who went to college and have expectations they wouldn't be managing restaurants.
mushbino 4y ago
This is what happens in a country overtaken by corporations, unlimited campaign contributions, and profit above all else.

unixhero 4y ago

The American dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Ma8ee 4y ago

Exactly! The US is great for the top few percent, but for the rest of the population they’d have a much better life in any Western European country.

a-user-you-like 4y ago
Just raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour, problem solved.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Seems like inflation would then jump a fair bunch to match?
  - danw1979 4y ago
    Let’s try it and find out
  - Ma8ee 4y ago
    Some jobs would just disappear. No one is going to pay a greeter at Walmart $50 an hour.
    - graftak 4y ago
      Good because that is very creepy.
      - Ma8ee 4y ago
        I agree. Jobs that isn’t possible to pay a living salary for don’t need to be done.
        a-user-you-like 4y ago
        People still need meaning on their life and plenty of money to support their family. Plenty of public works projects we could start and pay people $50/hr.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    Jeff Bezos' daily income is about $175 million. Tax him at a marginal rate of 90% and that's about 1500 $50/hour workers compensated for right there.
    - jon_adler 4y ago
      Some people still believe in the fantasy of trickle down economics and the Laffer curve, so they push for lower corporate and marginal tax rates that help the wealthiest. The vast majority of people do not benefit as the money flows upwards and concentrates with the wealthiest over time. Some redistribution is needed to promote equality and fairness. Instead, what we have at the moment is a system where the wealthiest are able to avoid taxes and end up paying a lower marginal rate than the middle classes.
      - imtringued 4y ago
        Capital dividends and interest payments are proportional to how many assets you own. Profit pays interest and dividends. People pay for profits in the form of higher prices. Consumers who spend a majority of their income on food, energy and housing are paying more in than they get back because the income they receive from assets is smaller than their living expenses aka the income share of labor is less than 100%. Imagine being so rich that you can live off dividends, there is no reason for your wealth accumulation to ever stop. The amount you pay into the economy is much lower than the income you derive from your assets. This is the reason why there is a constant flow of money toward the top. When you think about how a market economy worksy the above is completely illogical. The entire point of markets is to trade which means those who have too much give to those who have too little in exchange for monetary compensation. Why doesn't the same happen with money? Why isn't money flowing from those who have too much to those who have too little in exchange for their labor? Instead, those who have too much get more and those who have too little get less, this is highly inefficient.
    - IMTDb 4y ago
      You are mixing his income with the increase in his net worth. Those are not the same thing. The $175 millions are the increase of the value of his stocks. Until he sells those stocks, he earns a total of $0. You can't really tax "increase in net worth", because net worth can - and does fluctuate both positively and negatively, As opposed to income which just accumulate more or less linearly. Imagine Jeff Bezos stock has a perfect seasonal effect: on odds years, he gains $1 billion and on even years, he loses that amount. We can all agree here that Jeff sin't getting any richer, on average and thus should not be taxed since he is not getting any stable income. Yet you would want to tax him, every odd year, on the $1 billion - which is unfair, unless you also give him back that tax money every even year. This means firing those workers and asking them to give back their undue wage - which you can't do of course. The way we solve this is by not taxing the increase in net worth, until he does actually sell the stock and converts this increase in stock value into what is called realized gains. At that point, his net worth won't fluctuate anymore since he sold the stock for cold hard cash. And we tax him on that cash amount. You might argue that we should tax him more on those realized gains - which is fair discussion point. But trying to impose a tax on virtual net worth increase is a quite risky path because you would also need to pay billionaires when their stock portfolio decreases. And although everyone wants to tax billionaire when you hear about them having a fantastic month on the stock market (even tho these gains haven't been realized yet), but no one want to send them money when a headline says "$25 billion wiped out in a single day" (and rightfully so).
  - imtringued 4y ago
    That is actually the primary reason why a minimum wage hike wouldn't be as harmful as many people think. People at the bottom consume their wages which generates more jobs than someone who just dumps more money on their portfolio.
    - Chris2048 4y ago
      This falls foul of the glassmakers fallacy - money invested in a portfolio will still be used for something, so it is generating economic activity.
    - makomk 4y ago
      This doesn't work when the economy is already close to full employment, full consumption of available energy, and full capacity on critical parts like ICs which it's hard to expand the production of. Without any excess slack to increase production in order to fill that increase in consumption, it just has to come out of other people's consumption through inflation reducing the value of their wages. It's also not at all obvious that this is better than someone just investing a bunch of money. After all, the way investments ultimately make money is by supplying people with what they want at low prices, which means that investment money floating around can lead to innovation which supplies people with more stuff using less resources, increasing the amount available for everyone can buy with their wages.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  As has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, most of the problems can be solved better by treating people with respect rather than raising minimum wage through the roof. By that I mean universal healthcare, guaranteed sick leave and childbirth leave as well as minimum 3-4 weeks vacation a year and a good unemployment system.
  - lnxg33k1 4y ago
    I agree with you, but let’s not rule out the wage issue, like it’s crazy that people need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, but also finding dependable workers that take pride, that’s I think about respect, I am sorry but how I’m supposed to take pride if I do a job well done, then at the first issue the company is just going to lay me off to maximise bonus or dividends?
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      For sure, there is also one other thing I forgot to mention which is access to affordable (and not unhealthy) housing. With all those in place people wouldn’t be so dependent on their employer. I see a lot of FI/RE stories focusing on the importance of having fuck-you money in order to be able to stand up to your boss. Well if you live in a decent welfare society you can do that without $4M. This would in effect force employers to pay better.
    - mathw 4y ago
      I understand many places in the USA you can be legally fired for no reason and with no notice. That is surely harmful to the development of a sense of trust and loyalty towards one's employer.
  - ithkuil 4y ago
    All those things are absolutely necessary to raise to an objectively higher standard like that of western Europe. However, due to the hedonic treadmill, after people get accustomed to it and take things for granted, people will find reasons to be unhappy and frustrated and claim that they live in the worst possible times etc. EDIT: just to be clear: I'm not saying that since people will complain there is no point in improving, nor I'm saying that you don't have to listen people's complaints since they just don't know how lucky they are. It's important to keep improving more and more, since there is still room for improvement. What I'm saying is that it's hard to compare the quality of life in different places just by measuring how many people are complaining here or there.
- imtringued 4y ago
  People will work for little money or even free if living expenses are low and they enjoy their job.
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  Why downvoted? Do people not care for the poorest?

spaceman_2020 4y ago

As an outsider, what boggles my mind the most about America right now isn’t healthcare or inequality. Its gun violence. Unreal that schools have active shooter training and no one seems to even care. The fact that there is a non-zero chance your kid might be shot at school is completely absurd.

UberFly 4y ago
Yea but nobody wants to work anymore.
- polypodiopsi 4y ago
  Hahahaha
cm2187 4y ago
For school shootings, it’s rationally absurd to worry about those rare events. It’s like worrying about dying from a terrorist attack or a plane crash in France. The probability is mathematically non zero, and the country makes a big deal when that happens, but it is statistically a non problem. Being confronted with an armed robber in a home invasion is more of a problem in the US (but France has its own fair share of violent crime). Outside of that I think the bulk of gun violence is suicides and gang on gang violence.
- scambier 4y ago
  "School shootings are mathematically irrelevant", what a take.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Talk about normalisation of deviance! I've read that more children have died of gunshot wounds this year than police officers have died in the line of duty.[1] Granted, there are probably more school children at school than there are police at work on any given day, so ... of course children are more likely to be shot at a school? But then again, here in Australia we have reasonable gun control after that mass schooling in Tasmania all those years ago ... and the country still turned to shit ... so? While were here, anyone else got any arguments no one would intentionally make? 1. https://en.as.com/latest_news/more-children-have-died-in-school-shootings-in-2022-than-police-officers-in-the-line-of-duty-fact-check-n/ https://en.as.com/latest_news/more-children-have-died-in-sch...

School-Cotton 4y ago

The US is better than the median country in the world on all the metrics you list. Yes, it’s worse than France, which is part of Western Europe, the most developed and best-run part of the entire world.

pavlov 4y ago
The world has a lot of poor countries, so settling for “better than the median” is a very low bar. On the list of GDP per capita, the median countries are South Africa and Peru. If the US ever gets near the median on these global lists, it would be the result of a collapse worse than the Soviet Union’s.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  All of this is true. What’s your point?
- imtringued 4y ago
  You're forgetting Ukraine.
doteka 4y ago
I guess being better than a random third-world country (yes, that’s what median means here) is seen as a great accomplishment? Not sure why you would choose to comment this, it’s like a grown adult bragging about being able to beat up a toddler.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  Why is your prior that the US should be doing better than third-world countries? Where did I claim it should be seen as a great accomplishment?
polypodiopsi 4y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2020/apr/06/coronavirus-american-reaction-economy-covid-19 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/news/databl... The facts are as exhaustive as they are exhausting. There’s one simple conclusion from all of this. We’ve been tricked. We’ve been told that America, like most other majority-white countries, deserves the title “developed economy”. It does not. A bit polemic but an interesting perspective. Maybe it's just the case that the us IS a "third world' aka >developing county<

guggle 4y ago

> 30 years ago people would have said yes perhaps (American dream) I can relate to that... in the 80s USA was the dream for us kids. But now... I'm so glad I don't live there. France is indeed extremely generous. I wish more french people would realize this.

jollybean 4y ago

This is hyperbole. For most people, especially any French person who'd move to the US, all of those indicators are fine, and, income is considerably higher than in France, if not 'free time' and guaranteed access to healthcare. Yes, the food in many ways is not good, but it's fine. There is no 'security' problem - Manhattan is generally safer than Paris, and US has great educational institutions unless you live in a ghetto. It hasn't changed that much over 20 years other than what you see on TV. Attitudes towards work have changed, our material standard of living is considerably higher than it was 2 generations ago, and people are considerably less willing to do manual labour for example. Ironically, wages in semi skilled and skilled labour are actually not that bad. What we have now is a 'new white collar working class' - large swaths of people who went to college and have expectations they wouldn't be managing restaurants.

mushbino 4y ago

This is what happens in a country overtaken by corporations, unlimited campaign contributions, and profit above all else.