4 ms·
It annoys the heck out of much of the rest of the world but the truth is that Americans are staggeringly wealthy compared to nearly every other place on the pla
by cmiles8 1mo ago
It annoys the heck out of much of the rest of the world but the truth is that Americans are staggeringly wealthy compared to nearly every other place on the planet. The US GDP per capita figures do translate into significant wealth for a large portion of the population.
Most don’t live like it and frankly the ones that show off typically are nowhere are wealthy as they’d like you to believe. Meanwhile the person driving an older model car and mowing their own grass has millions in the bank and doesn’t think twice about it.
Many are simply very wealthy but not materialistic.
- schmidtleonard 1mo agoIt annoys the heck out of many Americans as well. Once you realize that 10% of households are getting $200k+/yr of unearned income and 1% of households are getting 1.3M+/yr of unearned income by virtue of owning lots of assets in an economic system geared to pump assets at the expense of literally everything else, it becomes very clear why the social contract experienced by the rest is undergoing rapid deterioration yet still has legions of influential staunch defenders that come out of the woodwork any time someone proposes even modestly pushing back on the worst of it. Oops, did I say "unearned income"? Forgive me, I meant unrealized gains -- I didn't mean to imply that any taxes were due on those massive passive flows of money. Perish the thought!
- grebc 1mo agoAll you’ve said is people with assets certainly couldn’t have earned those assets by earning income prior. Shock horror that people follow basic financial principles and decades later they have some wealth.
- schmidtleonard 1mo agoQuite the opposite. Whatever they did to earn the income with which they originally bought those assets was 100 times more honest than the relentlessly self-serving politics through which they pumped those assets by creating a living hell for their compatriots.
- grebc 1mo agoBecause you’re adjudicator on what’s honest and what’s not right?
- schmidtleonard 1mo agoNo, the people with assets are the adjudicators. They investigate themselves and find nothing wrong. An honest process with an honest conclusion, if ever I saw one.
- grebc 1mo agoBad bot.
- schmidtleonard 1mo agoNo, LLMs would be overkill for arguing with you.
- rcpt 1mo agoAnd based on this comment section we get seriously offended when you point it out.