[Simeon_Strangelight]

As with everything else - the devil lies in the detail. I posted it somewhere else, but this fits:

Quote:

The gruesome situation in the United States:
40% of the people there make less than $20,000 per year.
Keep in mind that most of that money goes to the landlord, the utilities, health care (if they have any), debt service and other monthly payments they can't avoid.
They'll only have a few hundred bucks per month to spend, which comes down to 5 to 10 dollars a day.
This is how poverty is hidden and the mirage of 'affluence' is maintained under Capitalism: nominally some or even a fair bit of money for wages, but then sucking it all up with Usury, rents, taxation, and high prices of their Transnational Cartels, leaving no real purchasing power with the common man.
51% of the working populace is making less than $30,000 per year.
And this in an age that male participation in the labor market has never been lower in US history. Even the Great Depression saw a better job market for men than today.
Already, wages in real terms are 10% lower than in 1973. And that is according to the official numbers.
80% of Americans are living pay check to pay check and have no or almost no assets at all.
It is clear that the stunning demise of American hegemony is reflected in the destruction of its once thriving middle and even working class.
And still people desperately cling to the notion of 'normality'.
And still, matters will get even much, much worse in the years ahead.
Only the end of Wall Street can turn things around, but the truth is that for the time being people are not at all ready to call a spade a spade and admit that they have been conned so badly.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/40-percen...overished/



http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/g...-year.html

Goodbye Middle Class, welcome Dickensian economy. What people forget in capitalism is that it has to exist in a balance between workers forming unions and agitating for better living wages, closed borders, tariffs etc. and the capital owners who have the urge to live as emperors over shoeless factory workers. The US 1940s to 60s wasn't as successful as that "because Europe and Asia were destroyed". No - it was successful due to limited immigration, high tax structure on high income, high corporate taxes, high tariffs on imports, strong unions and high wages even for menial workers.

While I can personally think of even better systems without usury and almost zero income taxes the reason for the US success were those factors - aside from the endemic ones of high work ethic, motivation etc - that mentality hasn't changed that much. The system just sucks out everyone dry on their way to a Dickensian economy.



Those comparisons you see of median income, even of purchasing power means little. I have lived in many of those places and can tell you the difference in detail:

When making less money, then you live way better in socialist Europe. Yes - there are stupid hot-spots like immigrant-swarmed hellholes and overpriced real estate in the UK or Sweden. But most other places are fine. Someone making 12.000$ in Poland has a better lifestyle than someone making 45.000$ in the US (unless you live like a monk or Manosphere blogger who saves most cash - heh). If you combine it with potential healthcare costs in the future, then it becomes even more gruesome.

The US has still some major advantages over Europe. IF you are successful, have a good business or rise in the corporate world, or have even a competitive job like a good pharma rep, then you will make 4-20 times as much money than in the EU. So essentially the US is still a place where being in the top 5% of the income spectrum lets you live much better than their equivalent in Europe.

However for the bottom 80% the experience is getting worse by the day, mostly due to a rip-off health care system, rising prices and massively falling incomes. The EU is beset with the same problems, but there are many mitigating circumstances like cheaper real estate (in many parts of the country - not everywhere and not where immigration is booming), cheap or free high quality education, free or cheap university studies (best STEM colleges are yours if you can pass the tests), free basic healthcare (depending on country with varying quality, but even private offers are much cheaper, because the single-payer system squeezes their prices - something like that would work in the US too, but they got an even worse system now with Obamacare).

Both systems - US and EU ones are faulty, median income and purchasing power as given here are not guidelines of the living standards. Something as stupid as cheap rents in some European countries already destroys the arguments.

A better number is to find out the social mobility in each country:



And even those statistics don't tell the full picture.