Why Didn’t America Become Part of the Modern World?

Though poverty does cause ruin, the cause of poverty is often a lack of education and I'm not talking academic, I'm talking about the education your parents give you. Europe has been through a lot more bad experiences and doesn't want to do that again whilst America is yet to learn.

This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a while. America practically created the modern world, in ways good (transportation, electronics, medicine) and bad (modern warfare). But sure, the fact that you dont like the president negates all of that. Still the wealthiest country in human history, and it's not close. Please just look, for one second, at how the poorest Americans compare to the rest of the world. Its a positive story. Always more to be done, but take a step back once in a while and appreciate how amazing the world we live in is.

> They'll get easily surpassed in raw income by India, China and few developing countries in one generation.

Ain't gonna happen. Do the math of GDP per capita please.

It corresponds, but its interesting to note how they portray rather opposite judgmental tones on the people in question -- TFA betrays the now-popoular left-leaning view of "seeking comfort in irrational things", a.k.a conservatism as a pathology of stupid people. It's not respectful and it's not a good way to really gain an understanding of people; simply writing them off as incapable out-group members.

On the other hand, the motherjones paragraph quoted by parent portrays the people in question as basically being forced to pit their desire to help people against their desire to see proportional rewards for proportional work, the classic "personal responsibility mantra" (ignoring of course the situations those 'line-cutters' were in before they got helped. Two different kinds of "fairness" being pitted against one-another).

The jump that TFA makes between "America has a lot of poverty" and "Therefore, that's the only reason people could choose Trump (a.k.a nazi germany)" doesn't really make any sense. The author just says "people sought comfort in myths". That's pretty weak.

Not really sure what the point of this article was, was it group signaling? Was it trying to convince people of something? Does the author care to hear from people who don't view conservatism as a pathology?

I don't think poor whites think purely with their wallet in Homo-Economicus terms. I think they just have a different set of values, one of which might be worded as "getting what you deserve/earn", which ironically, the author does touch on, but he writes this as a broad-swaths American thing: "You see, in America, poverty was seen — and still is — as a kind of just dessert. A form of deserved punishment, for being lazy, for being foolish, for being slow. For being, above all, weak — because only the strong should survive." He writes it as if brutal social-darwinists designed our economy, but really I think it's less malevolent than that. Self-reliance is a strong tenet of american culture, but it has some predictable outcomes when pushed as the solution to everything.

Hard to predict things over few decades into the future.

Also predictions are accurate only if nothing unpredictable happens. I don't think anyone made 30 year accurate prediction of British economy in 1920.