Is USA really a rich or a poor society or perhaps both?

[Will be deleted]

Sure this may be an absurd question because like everyone know about USA being the worlds largest economy, but what is the actual reality of people in it? But economic strength is generally messured in GDP which is considered quite flawed and just because the bussiness and the rich are doing well don't mean that apply as much to the people.

If compared to other rich countries, USA seems like an outliner, much worse life expectency, much worse workers rights, much worse poverty and much worse inequality, stuff that is actually much more similar to poorer countries. Seems so lacking in so many ways and while other rich countries are not perfect they do tend to do better in most areas and even if weak in some way probably still doing better in that area than USA.

[Will be deleted]

The hard work thing feels like propaganda to make the poor work harder.

[Will be deleted]

Diposting pertama kali oleh De Hollandse Ezel:

Diposting pertama kali oleh videogames10:

Are you educated? Are you ambitious? Are you motivated? Are you a hard worker? Chances are you will succeed regardless of where you are from.

if your born in usa.. you most likely won't be well educated.. as education is crazy expensive.. and poor in quality on average.

hard work.. does not pay in the usa.. it has one of the LOWEST class mobility chances of any developed nation.. most wealthy people are BORN wealthy.. (kids born millionaires sometimes do become billionaires.. but non millionairs hardly ever become millionars)
-the wealth also concentrates ever more.. aka.. there are LESS wealthy people but what they collectively own grows...

say before you had 10 people each owning 3% of the nations wealth.. while the other 90 peope each owned 0.7%
now you have 1 person owning 70% of the nations wealth.. while the other 99 each own 0.3%
-> so basicly number of millionares drops.. but those that remain are now more likely to be multimilionaires or billionares.
->
never before has so large a percentage of the nations wealth been owned by so small a percentage of it's people.

if you want to build a life with education and hard work.. you better be born in europe.. while your still unlikely to own a house ever.. your chances for at least a median income are infinitely better.

Depend where you live and if you willing to move you can own a house in europe without too much issue, same probably with USA, avoid the big cities where house prices are crazy.

[HotB]

90% of the country is poor as ♥♥♥♥ thanks to the wealthy refusing to pay taxes and corrupt politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) enabling them

[steven1mac]

The richest live in the city. The middle class live in the suburbs. The poor are in 2 categories, inner cities and rural areas. One gets subsidies and have activities, the other get to see nature.

[De Hollandse Ezel]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Will be deleted:

Diposting pertama kali oleh De Hollandse Ezel:

if your born in usa.. you most likely won't be well educated.. as education is crazy expensive.. and poor in quality on average.

hard work.. does not pay in the usa.. it has one of the LOWEST class mobility chances of any developed nation.. most wealthy people are BORN wealthy.. (kids born millionaires sometimes do become billionaires.. but non millionairs hardly ever become millionars)
-the wealth also concentrates ever more.. aka.. there are LESS wealthy people but what they collectively own grows...

say before you had 10 people each owning 3% of the nations wealth.. while the other 90 peope each owned 0.7%
now you have 1 person owning 70% of the nations wealth.. while the other 99 each own 0.3%
-> so basicly number of millionares drops.. but those that remain are now more likely to be multimilionaires or billionares.
->
never before has so large a percentage of the nations wealth been owned by so small a percentage of it's people.

if you want to build a life with education and hard work.. you better be born in europe.. while your still unlikely to own a house ever.. your chances for at least a median income are infinitely better.

Depend where you live and if you willing to move you can own a house in europe without too much issue, same probably with USA, avoid the big cities where house prices are crazy.

in all the netherlands house prices are insane.. even in the provinces...
to have affordable houses.. you would need to like migrate to norway.. (or east or south europe.. but there aint no work there so moving there is no option)

the AVERAGE house sold in my nation is now 460k.. the median income is 44k
you cannot get a 460k morgage on 44k income.. not even on TWO 44k incomes combined (and the average household income is a lot lower than 88k.,. ad very few households have 2 high earners in them..as most have 1 fulltime 1 partime worker)
most houses are not bought by civilians.. but by investment funds.. who than rent them out to the same people who cannot afford a morgage on them..

(for sure you may pay 2000 a month on rent.. but won't qualify for a morgage of 1400 a month)

over 90% of those that do own houses in my country could NOT afford to buy their house they live in now at it's current price...

[Will be deleted]

Diposting pertama kali oleh De Hollandse Ezel:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Will be deleted:

Depend where you live and if you willing to move you can own a house in europe without too much issue, same probably with USA, avoid the big cities where house prices are crazy.

in all the netherlands house prices are insane.. even in the provinces...
to have affordable houses.. you would need to like migrate to norway.. (or east or south europe.. but there aint no work there so moving there is no option)

I'm from Sweden, so maybe different, but apparments in the expensive cities cost about as much as houses in cheaper locations. Also I don't know how much downpayment you need by country, but given how cheap loans are nowdays, the real prices that people need are like 15% (the minimum for downpayment) in Sweden.

[Will be deleted]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Hot B:

90% of the country is poor as ♥♥♥♥ thanks to the wealthy refusing to pay taxes and corrupt politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) enabling them

USA have had quite bad real wage growth from what I can find, depending on messurement either slow or stagnate, which is quite unlike Sweden who also had bad real wage growth in 80s and mid 90s due to low productivity growth similar to USA, but once productivity growth started again so did real wage growth in Sweden which seems much more inline with productivity growth compared to USA.

[De Hollandse Ezel]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Will be deleted:

Diposting pertama kali oleh De Hollandse Ezel:

in all the netherlands house prices are insane.. even in the provinces...
to have affordable houses.. you would need to like migrate to norway.. (or east or south europe.. but there aint no work there so moving there is no option)

I'm from Sweden, so maybe different, but apparments in the expensive cities cost about as much as houses in cheaper locations. Also I don't know how much downpayment you need by country, but given how cheap loans are nowdays, the real prices that people need are like 15% (the minimum for downpayment) in Sweden.

you just won't get a loan.. and prices.. even the most crappy apartment of the 50's energylabel F or G.. badly maintained.. in bad neighbourhood.. and just 30m2.. in a provincial undesired city.. easely goes 150k at least...

once were talking terranced houses or larger flats where you can raise families in... in a village in the highest unemployment part.. 600k.. in the bigger cities 2 million..

and it only gets worse from there..

the medial m2 price of houses in sweeden is 5000 euro per m2
in netherlands its closer to 11000 euro per m2.

when looking at houses that are affordable for the median household income.
in sweden it is 7000 euro per m2
in netherlands it's nearly 25000 per m2 (the smaller houses are by far the most costly ones.. per m2.. as most bidding happens on those)

a friend of mine moved to norway.
his wage was doubled vs what he earned here in netherlands
his house was only 150k for which would be a multi million villa here in netherlands.

norway :
wages doubled
house prices divided by 3
(and as for dutch rend/morgage eats up 70% to 90% of our incomes... NOT having to spend 2/3ds of that on housing needs.. is a MASSIVE boost to how much is left to spend on other things.

imagine... earning 30k after taxes.. and your rent being 21k of that per year.
than you move to norway... get a house thats two times bigger nicer house, get paid 60k after taxes.. and you now can OWN a house.. that only cost you 14k per year

thats the reality for dutch.
sure in norway groceries are also 1.5x times at expensive... well even than
you only HAD 9k a month left after paying your rent in netherlands to do groceries... that would cost in norway 13.5k to buy the same..
but you now have a whopping 46k to shop around with...

meaning vs being housingpoored in the netherlands living in norway feels like being a millionare.. so much expendable income.. more than you can ever all use..

[Will be deleted]

I did not know there was so large differences.

Sweden have a high household debt and so do a bunch of other countries, but USA debt seems a lot worse, like while people take student loans in Sweden, those have an interest rate of like 1% and have been 0% other years (so lower than inflation) and people in USA seems to have loans with 7% interest rate or something crazy like that, thuse all debt are not equal.

Pay gap also seems quite huge nowdays, like I did some caculations that adjusted for labour cost could mean median hourly labor cost would be like bottom 10% in countries like Sweden, which is probably one reason why americans work so much more than people in other countries with similar productivity, they are massively underpaid.

[GunsForBucks]

It used to be rich in general compared to other countries.

the main driving factors behind this were very high taxes for the highest earners forcing them to invest in themselves and their people to avoid too much profit.

Added to this was the lower gas prices than the rest of the world the people got to benefit from due to the military industrial complex putting us in debt for their oil profits and forcing the american dollar to be used for oil trade world wide.

Since corporations became people they changed the tax laws for "trickle down" meaning no investment in people or equipment. Push it till it breaks and only fix what it broke and keep pushing and make people ask for raises instead of just giving people raises.

the big squeeze being placed on the American economy under this madness has driven the economic divide between those with money and those struggling. Corporations are people so making change is more difficult and they make more and more laws to bring us down to the level of China laws.

Corporate driven road to slavery and to keep us from complaining they get us to blame each other for not having enough. Like poor people have enough money to change an economy when they are being driven by "inflation is good" but "don't give raises"
What else do you think would happen?

this is all a result of changing tax laws and making corporations people. 40 years of demolishing freedom and progress in favor of greed.

And now BRICs has formed, well the corporations moved to China in the late 80's and now they need to tank the USA and make it their cheap labor. The nations of BRIC represent the nations that did not want to trade oil for USD. This is all an attempt to destroy the US economy.

[Will be deleted]

Why do people think they need to earn like $200k for financial security, like 5% of americans earn that or more from the limited information I can find?

[talemore]

You know somewhere in usa people earn 200k so the companies just kept raising the costs.

Same mistake when funds to Mumbambu went missing.

[SvarogX]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Will be deleted:

Sure this may be an absurd question because like everyone know about USA being the worlds largest economy, but what is the actual reality of people in it? But economic strength is generally messured in GDP which is considered quite flawed and just because the bussiness and the rich are doing well don't mean that apply as much to the people.

If compared to other rich countries, USA seems like an outliner, much worse life expectency, much worse workers rights, much worse poverty and much worse inequality, stuff that is actually much more similar to poorer countries. Seems so lacking in so many ways and while other rich countries are not perfect they do tend to do better in most areas and even if weak in some way probably still doing better in that area than USA.

The thing is, being actually poor in the U.S is something completely different than being poor in lets say Ethiopia or Belarus.

[Grendalcat]

Median income stats say pretty well off compared to the rest of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[Tsubame ⭐]

Both. There are quite a lot of rich people.

But then you also have people that struggle to survive - i.e. homeless.

As for being an outlier, depends on what you are comparing to. With Europe, the US is definitely different in providing less social assistance to its people - i.e. in the name of "less government spending", even though it has enormous deficits year after year.

But East Asian developed countries tend to also be very stingy in this regards.