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American Wealth, Sliced Up

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Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#51

Post by enoint »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #16
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #2

I'd love the idea of a more equal share of wealth in America. Unfortunately most of the proposed solutions tend to be of the "make everyone equally miserable" sort, and usually come from the sorts of people that imagine themselves as the commissars and cadres of the new regime in such a situation. Europe has tried to limit to wealth of the wealthiest, and in the process seems to have utterly kneecapped their own econ…

I wish we’d focus more on living standards than wealth as I think that’s what really matters. “How can we lift up the people with low living standards in the US?” should be the question rather than “How can we keep people from becoming ultra rich?” which I think is what happened in Europe. The only reason wealth should be checked is because of undue influence on politics/power. Otherwise I don’t care if there are 1,0…

I wonder how many people think about the options we can offer to our children. Will my future grandchildren have access to gene therapy? Or has generational wealth already closed the door for the upper-middle class? Maybe that’s jealousy or envy.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#52

Post by enoint »

Epa095 wrote: post #49
MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we’d focus more on living standards than wealth as I think that’s what really matters. “How can we lift up the people with low living standards in the US?” should be the question rather than “How can we keep people from becoming ultra rich?” which I think is what happened in Europe. The only reason wealth should be checked is because of undue influence on politics/power. Otherwise I don’t care if there are 1,0…

Regarding your last sentence about the jealousy, I have been thinking about this quite a bit for myself, if it is actually jealousy. And I have come to the following realisation: I would like 20$ million. It would let me live the life I want (with extra), and take care of the people I love. I would be able to spend my time doing only things I like. I am envious of people having this kind of wealth. I don't really wan…

Maybe envy, as a sin, was easy to see in premodern times; as the number of children, rather than tax bracket.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#53

Post by JCTheDenthog »

tossandthrow wrote: post #46
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is about wealth, not life expectancy.

If you move health care out of the US economy (as it largely is in the EU), you are at quite similar gdp.

Nope, even adjusting for health care costs the average American is still roughly 20-40% richer than the average European. This may come as a shock to you, but roughly 20% of Americans are on Medicaid, our state-sponsored healthcare insurance. America does actually provide healthcare for its poorest citizens.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#54

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Meanwhile The Economist is inviting Arthur Laffer (the guy famous for the Laffer curve, which was the basis for Reaganomics) to publish pieces praising Reaganomics / trickle down. https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/06/02/reaganomi...

Just wild how much the media has become a system for self-congratulations for the global elite barbarian class.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#55

Post by JCTheDenthog »

hnav wrote: post #42
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is about wealth, not life expectancy.

The standard of life you get is one you can afford. GDP PPI does a better job of capturing this than GDP, but better yet look at how long people live. The best raw GDP is gotten when you drive your working class until they collapse and die and thus is a shitty metric for measuring quality of life unless that means the ability to acquire globally manufactured trinkets to you.

Americans have homes roughly twice as big as European homes, and a far higher percentage of Americans are homeowners than Europeans. Home ownership rates are within a few percent of each other too.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#56

Post by JCTheDenthog »

Epa095 wrote: post #43
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is about wealth, not life expectancy.

I guess this is the difference between people existing for the betterment of the economy vs the economy existing for the betterment of people.

And which do you think is which? Whatever the "intent" of either the US or EU economies, the US has produced far greater wealth and material prosperity for its citizens than Europe has for its citizens.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#57

Post by JCTheDenthog »

echelon wrote: post #45
hnav wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at GDP when comparing Missouri to European nations. Bulgaria has higher life expectancy than half this country.

It's unfair to compare the US, which is incredibly and wildly diverse in race and culture, against monocultural Europe. I grew up in the South. You'll have to kill these people to take away their sweet tea and fried chicken. And that's just one dimension.

In fact, America's wealth (and our fairly generous welfare programs, despite what Europeans might think) actually enables the massive obesity rates we have, which is one of the main reasons we have lower life expectancies. If Europeans were richer they'd likely be eating themselves to death more like we do (though cultural and other factors play a role too).

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#58

Post by hnav »

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #55
hnav wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard of life you get is one you can afford. GDP PPI does a better job of capturing this than GDP, but better yet look at how long people live. The best raw GDP is gotten when you drive your working class until they collapse and die and thus is a shitty metric for measuring quality of life unless that means the ability to acquire globally manufactured trinkets to you.

Americans have homes roughly twice as big as European homes, and a far higher percentage of Americans are homeowners than Europeans. Home ownership rates are within a few percent of each other too.

Part of the reason we're fat as fuck is that giant parcels of land make driving everywhere mandatory.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#59

Post by NietzscheanNull »

elevation wrote: post #28

If you liquidate Elon or Bezos' wealth and distribute it to every US citizen, you're looking at a one time payment of $1-2K per US citizen, and that's only if the value of the assents holds as you attempt to liquidate everything. If you sell it off slowly, you'll get more, but a few years of payments of $50/mo from the Bezos estate is hardly a UBI utopia. I can do far better for myself than that if I'm simply allowed…

This misses the point entirely; wealth redistributive policies aren't intended to significantly boost the wealth of low wealth citizens directly, they're intended to dissipate the incredible concentration of political power that corrodes our democratic basis of governance. When individuals control more wealth and capital than a significant number of nation-states, barriers to regulatory capture and overwhelming information/narrative control (via media/platform ownership consolidation) effectively dissolve. We're seeing the consequences of that playing out in the US in realtime.

Adopting redistributive policy is the only way in which the US can return to an even remotely representative "democracy." We'll only see progress if we can disarm the campaign finance firehose currently wielded by private interests. Only then, with a subsequent government consisting of politicians more beholden to constituents than financiers, will we be able to return to enacting policies to close tax loopholes, tax more progressively, and improve consumer/labor protections; those would do the majority of the heavy lifting in terms of improving QoL of the lower income classes. This isn't a new idea, it was well understood by trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt.

Re: American Wealth, Sliced Up

#60

Post by JCTheDenthog »

Epa095 wrote: post #38
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mississippians average $43,000 of disposable income. Net federal money to Mississippi is roughly $9,000 per capita. Even if we assume that 100% of that $9,000 is welfare payments to the poorest, that still puts Mississippi roughly equal to Germany in terms of disposable income.

And still Mississipi has a child mortality rate og 9.65 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to Germanys 3.4. Life expectancy is 72.6 vs 81.7 (!!) Looking at income per person really misses some important factors of a societies real riches.

Mississippi has a very high obesity rate (enabled by our wealth and our fairly generous welfare programs, actually). Mississippi also has a far higher percentage of black residents than the median US state, and blacks generally have higher rates of obesity and lower life expectancy due to lifestyle choices, higher rates of participation in gang violence (which leads to a higher murder rate), and various other cultural and environmental factors.

A Mississippian is free to eat themselves to death (enabled by Americans' wealth) in a way that Europeans simply can't.

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