How Capitalism Made Americans Poor

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The min-wage has been increased to $15 in some states. Getting the rich to vote higher taxes on the rich into law is another matter entirely. A nation-wide referendum on tax law might provide a solution, but ordinary citizens earning five-figure incomes might not understand tax law enough to vote the "correct" way.

I see America as the land of rich people.

Looking at Zillow, you can scroll through tens of thousands of $500,000+ homes for sale.

There must be millions of $500,000+ homes.

Many "Baby Boomers" I know have multi-million dollar pensions from working low education/low skill jobs.

In a poorer local city near me, fire fighters were retiring in their 50s with $120,000/yr pensions.

My mom dropped out high school, got a bus driver job, and got a 2 million dollar pension.

Most "Baby Boomers" probably have $500,000+ just in home value from owning a homes(s) for 40+ years.

Looking at Zillow, in some areas, like Las Vegas or San Francisco, it's unbelievable that some dinky condo might be priced close to 1 million+ dollars.

Ever watch the realtor shows like, "Million dollar listing LA" ... they sell dinky condos for 6+ million .. HOW??

But only a certain number of high-wage earning positions are required by society. If every single citizen earned a PhD, the same proportion of them would still end up having to work low-wage jobs, and they wouldn't get higher wages just for being clever - the bar for what constituted a "good education" would simply be moved to compensate. That doesn't mean that social mobility is bad thing, nor does believing in it necessarily imply that one is content for there to be poverty in the world; but I don't think that individual social mobility in itself changes the structural distribution of wealth, whatever the political or economic system. The question of how impoverished we allow people at the bottom to become still remains, however they end up there, and/or however much one believes any them to merit being there.

This is accurate, but our society would be completely transformed if it somehow occurred. Maybe at that point because they were so many PhDs skilled manual jobs would pay very well because no one would have the skills to complete them. The point I was making is it is incorrect to put the U.S.' high average income at the feet of the Uber Rich Jeff Bezos' of the world. These people control an enormous amount of money yes, but considerably less than the roughly 30 million or so people making between 100,000 and 1,000,000 a year (this is an estimate based on out of date data).

Yes, I should have made clear that I agreed with the gist of what you said!

Most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck, and hardly save any money.

That, and give Americans universal healthcare so they don't have to spend their life savings or go bankrupt just to stay alive.

None of those are socialist.

Not socialists.....but there are strong socialist components in their economies.

Social Democracy is not Socialism. In fact, that's the whole point of it.

I'm using the word socialist to actually highlight how the whole "oooh- millennials are embracing socialism, Bernie and AOC are socialists!" is distorting the meaning of the word socialism.
If Bernie and AOC are socialists, then Northern European countries are good socialists.

I'm well aware that these countries, in which I happen to live, are not considered socialist, and do not refer to themselves as socialist, but social democratic. But not even that's the case anymore - we are neoliberal, but just not as far down the road into privatization as the US and the UK are, with remnants or social democracy and a thing called social market economy - a german post-war system of market economy that was designed to create a large and stable middle class, rather than allowing for a high gini-coefficient.
The Schroeder-government (the one before Merkel) in Germany started to privatize and dismantle the wellfare state, and it hasn't done Germany any good, really, except that we now have more millionaires billionaires with German citizenship who live in Switzerland to dodge taxes.
But for the poorer half of society and for social cohesion, it's been a disaster.

Well said.

Agree. There is an anti socialism thread on WP where the main contributor hasn't a clue the difference between socialism and social democracy. Always makes me when he posts up his angry pics and messages getting it all round the wrong way