| Rath said: @Happysquirrel. What I meant wasn't that the level of wealth couldn't change but in a society at any moment in time there is only so much wealth. If this wealth is all concentrated at the top then clearly the wealth is not at the bottom. Also there is a choice, it isn't black and white. You can grow the pie while redistributing some of it. To not redistribute any of it is awful, it means that unemployed people would have no home, no healthcare and no way out - America already redistributes some of this wealth through social security and medical programs.
@MrStickBall. There is a difference between the poverty line and the standard of living for people well below that poverty line. You were at one but (I'm assuming) not the other. Certainly Americas poorest do not have a great standard of living and one that is well below most others in the Western world. |
You'd be surprised.
The US isn't the best... but it's above New Zealand for example on the Human Poverty Index which was specifically designed to judge such things. (And Germany and England.)
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/97.html
And a lot of what brings the US down is procedural issues. For example our "Probability of not suriving until 60" rank is lower then a lot of countries paritally because we define birth differently then the rest of the western world. (Also why our infant deaths are so high.)
To other countries if a baby is born, then died, but isn't big enough, it doesn't count.
Why this is, is because Long Term unemployment is extremely low in the US. (Edit: Nope, found the 2010 report. Still in the same place.)
In the US, the unemployed are always changing, the average homeless person is homless for like a month.... etc.
Statistically even when focusing just on the poor, it's really hard to pick out the US from other western europeon countries despite the more comprhensive saftey nets. Well... outside the unemployment being much more long term outside of the scandanavian countries. Who benefit from well... being very specialized.
