What advantages should wealth convey?

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My mother is 85, and would probably just croak if she stopped working.

Probably not retail or food service ?

She’s a psychoanalyst.

I know what you mean, really. I feel the same sort of sadness.

Ironically, though our old-age benefits suck, they suck less than the old-age benefits of other countries.

if i was still in the rat race, i'd be dead long ago.

I'll probably work until I drop.

I don't really care, however. My purpose here is to take care of my mother and my dog. After they're gone, I'm fine with getting hit by a bus.

They way society is set-up, I highly doubt I'll ever get a "good" job. Not that I blame society since it's no one's fault I was born the way I was.

Are we talking wealth... Or money? Both are very different.

Material wealth includes property, stocks and shares, commodities, etc.

"Wealth" per se can include even more.


As for money -come on, it's a collective illusion. And like all illusions, it comes through fakery and blagging or a legacy of those who did those things better than you. I'm talking big money, not the stuff most guys accept like crumbs swept to them by the elites.

Money isn't wealth. As far as what it "should" convey - any other social construct, which is also essentially an illusion.

Justice should not be bought by money but it is.

getting hit by a bus would hurt big-time. i'd rather expire in my sleep. anyways, average working joes living in scandinavia have more of the benefits of wealth [as experienced by wealthy americans] such as high-quality health and dental care, high quality child care, high quality infrastructure, widespread ultra-high-speed internet- even if they don't have the same high amuuurican richie rich incomes. so wealth in amuuurica only insures that the wealthy here have those things at the same level as ordinary scandinavian citizens.

In any Human Society, When Language for 'Welfare' Becomes a Pejorative it is a Direct Indicator
of How Sick a Social Animal Has become in its Ability to Peacefully and Harmoniously Cooperate
With Each Other in a Way That Gives and Shares More than Takes and Hoards and Pillages and Rapes
Like a Territorial Competitive Animal Over one that Cooperates And Gives and Shares more than Takes and Hoards.

In Short, Human Societies that See 'Welfare' as a Pejorative Way of Life are Sick and Very Sick in deed.

On the Other Hand, the 'Dunbar Number' of 150 Max Human Acquaintances; and Research that also suggests that
the Human Capacity for Close and Intimate Friends is not much more than 5 Individuals; and For Hundreds of
Thousands of Years we lived Close to Naked, if not Naked, in Very close Knit Groups of not much more than
40 Individuals as a Huddled Mass of Hugs Foraging together; where the Child was the Ultimate Prize of
A Village then for another Pair of Hands to make Foraging a Success; where even a Dance and Song
may come in Joy around a Moonlit Night of Peace and Harmony; and even Ascending And
Transcending Bliss in Beats of Drums and Dance and Song all together; not much
Different than what i do totally Sober and Drunk In Flow on Thursday Nights
with Hundreds of Intoxicated College Age Students who haven't quite
Figured out how to let go, ascend and transcend without 'Shots' all night
Spending a Hundred Bucks or so; as actually some folks have spent over A Thousand
Bucks in one night for intoxicated rounds for all their friends; sadly for a Species out of synch with Free Nature.

Change for Balance is the Law and Wealth of Nature;

Go Against that rule and face the eventual suffering and misery of the masses;

Square Root one Problem one: There are too many of us living together.

That's Against What we are evolved to do in Peace and Harmony
in Change for
Balance of
Nature.

Why?

The Virus of the Written Word that ends up as the 'Wealth of Nuclear Bombs' to Shoot ourselves in
the Foot over Dinosaur Parts that have become Tar and Oil rather than the Star Seeds and Flowers
we are evolved to be.

What does Wealth Convey:

Death the most...

'Ask' 1 out of 8 of all the Plants and Animals We have 'scheduled' for extinction in the coming decades.

Ask a Hurricane; Ask a Fire; Ask the Breath of Fiery Change and Balance coming Back to Haunt Taking
and Hoarding more than Giving and Sharing. Trick or Treat; Nature is Karma; Just wait and see what We do next to 'US';

By the way; Us is ALL.

We LiVE iN an Insanity too Big Now for most to see with Tiny Human Brains Overwhelmed by 'The Virus' of CuLTuRES.

The Rest off US; Yes, Nature; Yes, ALL; Yes God; Will Bring the Balance of Change Back; With or Without the Species that is Us; Could be a Fungus; A Virus; A Water Born Illness, a Bacteria Resistance to Drugs; Nature is Watching us Closely
Very Closely in the smallest and largest ways oF a Reality there is no escaping from; once again class: Change For Balance;
in other Words: Karma: Mother Nature's Fire; Mother Nature's Breath; Mother Nature's Life the Rest of Mother Nature Will Change for Balance.

Wealth Should Convey: Change For Balance; Without Balance Within, inside, outside, so above and below: THere is Poverty
All Around....

I'm going to have to disagree with the premise that money is a social illusion but material wealth is not. Without society respecting property and ownership rights, the only thing anyone would own is what they could possess by force.

In that sense a deed to a house, stocks, car registration etc. are no more or less an illusion than cash. Anyways this discussion is in my opinion a bit of a red herring. Money may be a social construct, but it is an ancient and entrenched one that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Money is an absolute requirement for at least 99% of the population of the world today.

Norway has a population of 5.2 million. Sweden has a population of 9.9 million. Denmark 5.7 million, and Finland 5.5 million.

Combined these countries have a population ~ 24 million which is 2/3rds that of Canada and less than 1/10th of the U.S. population.

The U.S. has a population of 330 milllion. Comparable countries include:

Indonesia: 264 million
Pakistan: 210 million
Brazil: 210 million
Nigeria: 209 million

Everyone else is either 4x the US population (China, India), or less than half (Bangladesh, 161 million).

Please inform me which country operating at a similar scale to the U.S. we should emulate?

it is only a fair and apt comparison, to be limited to us versus the rest of the west. size is a false concern here.

While size and geography and demographics all pose challenges to the US that aren't posed to other countries, I think you're simplifying this more than you usually do.

Compare the USA to the European Union, for example. The EU has ~515m, the EU-27 has ~450m. Of course there are extremely deprived areas in the EU, mostly in former communist countries as well as geographically isolated areas:

Sorry I'm meandering somewhat. But anyhow, despite areas of great deprivation, a population larger than the US but broadly within the same ballpark, several large and dense metropolises, and geographically isolated areas like Sicily, Cyprus, and Lapland, it's in pretty good shape.

And just as the EU is broken up into countries, the USA is broken up into states.

California's population is about the same as Canada's, but much denser. Texas's population is about the same as Australia. Michigan's population is about the same as Sweden. Wisconsin and Minnesota are comparable to Finland and Denmark.

One issue is that the USA has a much greater extent of wealth redistribution than the EU. The federal US budget is about $4.7trn, whereas the EU budget is only about $160bn. Someone from Minnesota spends much more of their money helping the poor in the deep south or rural Midwest than someone in Denmark spends on Hungary. So breaking the US down into states doesn't work as well as breaking the EU down into countries.

A few points for consideration that unfortunately I'm not going to be able to elaborate on as much as I'd like:

- US states tend to be richer than comparable EU countries
- US states tend to provide fewer services than comparable EU countries
- The USA has a shorter life expectancy than the EU, as do comparable states/countries
- The United States is much, much richer, both in raw and per capita terms, than Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, or Nigeria.

My background is in chemical engineering, the difference between chemistry and chemical engineering is scale. What works at a 1L lab-scale reaction, doesn't necessarilly work at a 100L pilot reactor, which in turn doesn't necessarilly work at a 40,000L industrial reactor. The why is a bit technical and complicated, so I won't try to explain it unless asked. Scientifically in the natural world scale matters. I have no reason to believe it doesn't in the human world.

A fair criticism, although in general people compare the US as a whole to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (or Canada, or Australia) and not to the EU as a whole.

I do want to address a few of your points:



The free market argument is that these two are not unrelated.



The assumption here is that government expenditure in healthcare results in life expectancy changes.

Italy spends $3,239 per capita on health and has a life expectancy of 82.5 years.

Spain spends $2,966 per capita on health and has a life expectancy of 82.9 years.

Denmark spends $4,782 per capita on health and has a life expectancy of 80.7 years.

Norway spends $6,347 per capita on health and has a life expectancy of 82.5 years.

The UK spends $3,347 per capita on health and has a life expectancy of 80.9 years.

Brits spend the same as Italians to live a year less. Norwegians spend twice as much to live the same. Italians spend more than Spaniards but live half a year less. Danes spend 25% more than Brits and significantly more than Spainiards and Italians to live less than all of the above.

In the U.S. life expectancy also varies widely by region. Minnesotans live 81 years on average while Alabamans live 75.4 years on average.

My conclusion from the European internal comparisons is that factors like geography, culture, etc. influence life expectancy greatly as opposed to straight expenditure. Thus any fair comparison of life expectancy would have to correct for these factors, which is a very difficult correction to do.

the point i made that was ignored, was that working class folk in general have it MUCH BETTER in places such as northern europe, the commonwealth nations, than they do here in amuuurica.