Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Forty Two]

It still remains disgraceful that such a wealthy and otherwise developed country as the US has such a disparity of wealth.

It seems so? It would be better if the poor were worse off but there was less of a disparity in wealth? Wealth disparity is only one measurement. It's not the total picture.

Words like "disgraceful" are loaded. Is it "disgraceful" that Italy falls so poorly on the Better Life Index. I mean, that's a modern, First World, European nation. They suck. Oh, man, that's "disgraceful." They better fix that problem, ay? They're disgraceful.

[Seth]

It still remains disgraceful that such a wealthy and otherwise developed country as the US has such a disparity of wealth.

No it doesn't. Americans have one of the highest standards of living on earth, even for the poorest among us, and the "disparity of wealth" indicates nothing about our compassion for those in need, it indicates that anyone who has the ability and drive to succeed can do so here. In the last 40 years the economic condition of our poor and working class has gone nothing but up. The canard "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is just much socialist bilge and is absolutely and categorically untrue, because as our rich get richer, so do our poor. Our nation provides so much by way of support and benefits to the poor that hundreds of thousands of poor people illegally flood over our borders every year, and for the most part we let them stay here and build better lives.

Our "disparity of wealth" is what drives the economic engine of the entire planet because that wealth serves everyone by being invested and recirculated to create more and more wealth, which raises the standard of living for everyone. Without that "disparity of wealth" there wouldn't be the sort of capital available that is required to take on enormous projects that benefit everyone. If you took every dime from the top 10 percent of earners in the US tomorrow it would not run the government for more than a few weeks. Economics requires that capital be circulated and recirculated with an input of fresh labor in order to increase wealth. Taking a billion dollars and redistributing it to a billion poor people give each one of them a dollar, which is a simple economic fact you socialist dunces can't seem to understand.

Taking a billion dollars and investing it in an industry or business that subsequently generates a TRILLION dollars over time is a much better use of that capital because it provides jobs and wages for the people who do the work and raises their, and everyone else's standard of living.

We have to build fences and walls to keep people OUT of our nation because of our opportunities for economic success, not to keep people IN like the Soviets did.

Our national charitable giving, both from our government and from private sources, is second to none in the gross amount we donate to the well-being of others, and for the most part those others aren't even Americans.

Nobody EVER starves to death in the US because they cannot find food. Ever. Very few people are involuntarily homeless for very long as our society finds places for them to live. Those who are chronically homeless are that way because that's how they choose to live, for many different reasons, and even they have plenty of options if they decide they don't want to sleep rough.

So fuck off and tend to your own knitting.

[JimC]

Oh sure, I forgot - American exceptionalism demands that the US should never, ever be criticised...

[Forty Two]

Oh sure, I forgot - American exceptionalism demands that the US should never, ever be criticised...

Criticize it all you want, but it's not the only country that deserves criticism.

As I have consistently said, the US has plenty of issues and problems. However, income disparity is only ONE metric. There are others, and on others, like the Better Life Index, the US scores exceedingly well. Taking the stats together, what we see is that the US does have a high income disparity by OECD Standards, but at the same time, the bottom 10% of the US does exceedingly well, better than all OECD countries except Canada, Sweden and Switzerland.

Maybe, the US just has a lot of rich people, but that is not in itself a detriment to the lower income people. That's different than, say, a country like Brazil, which has both staggering wealth inequality and a large number of poor people so poor that an American can't even imagine that people are allowed to live that way. There is no such thing as Brazil-poverty in the US. It does not exist.

[Forty Two]

And, when you criticize, let's keep it in context. Apparently, the selfish, uncivilized and mean Americans are the world's most charitable people. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ameri ... le/2580876

[pErvinalia]

As I have consistently said, the US has plenty of issues and problems. However, income disparity is only ONE metric. There are others, and on others, like the Better Life Index, the US scores exceedingly well. Taking the stats together, what we see is that the US does have a high income disparity by OECD Standards, but at the same time, the bottom 10% of the US does exceedingly well, better than all OECD countries except Canada, Sweden and Switzerland.

No it doesn't. I see you conveniently ignored my post pointing out the flaws in that article.

[pErvinalia]

And, when you criticize, let's keep it in context. Apparently, the selfish, uncivilized and mean Americans are the world's most charitable people. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ameri ... le/2580876

Another poorly described article. You have a knack for picking them. Is this charity mostly (or even totally) focussed at home? If so, then of course they are more (voluntarily) generous than other countries, as you don't have the social safety net of most of the other Western countries. They have to give more to keep the very fabric of society together. Ultimately it makes no difference to the level of generosity if it is given personally or in taxes. It is probably only being given personally because it isn't being given in taxes.

[JimC]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q ... 5171661831

[JimC]

From this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ped-world/

The United States ranks near the bottom of the pack of wealthy nations on a measure of child poverty, according to a new report from UNICEF. Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income in 2008 - about $31,000 annually.

In the richest nation in the world, one in three kids live in poverty. Let that sink in.

The UNICEF report pegs the poverty definition to the 2008 median to account for the decline in income since then - incomes fell after the great recession, so measuring this way is an attempt to assess current poverty relative to how things stood before the downturn.

With 32.2 percent of children living below this line, the U.S. ranks 36th out of the 41 wealthy countries included in the UNICEF report. By contrast, only 5.3 percent of Norwegian kids currently meet this definition of poverty.

[pErvinalia]

Marxist report.

[Hermit]

We have a sizable unemployment compensation system which compensates the unemployed for lengthy periods of time until they can find a job

Tattuchu will be so pleased to hear that, and I'm sure he is not the only one in the US.

[Hermit]

Criticize it all you want, but it's not the only country that deserves criticism.

When everything else fails, resort to the tu quoque and hope nobody notices that it is not a counter argument against any criticism.

[pErvinalia]

[JimC]

Criticize it all you want, but it's not the only country that deserves criticism.

When everything else fails, resort to the tu quoque and hope nobody notices that it is not a counter argument against any criticism.

It is only a counter argument if we were insisting that the US is the only country that can be criticised, all others are beyond reproach...

Which of course no one is saying...

[Hermit]

And, when you criticize, let's keep it in context. Apparently, the selfish, uncivilized and mean Americans are the world's most charitable people. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ameri ... le/2580876

USA USA USA... the world's most charitable people... Not very relevant to what we were discussing, is it? But now that you have started on yet another tangent, I'll comment. So, you want context, do you? I give you context:

1.) 99% of private philanthropy in the US stays in the US. That percentage is considerably lower among other nations. If you donate to something like Community Aid Abroad, Doctors without Borders etc, you are being charitable to the highest extent possible because your generosity is not limited to your own tribe.

2.) By donating 3.5 billion US$ or 2.1% of your GDP in one year the US is indeed the most generous nation on earth. It fucking well needs to be when a great proportion of Walmart's million employees, even full time workers, are paid so little that they qualify for government handouts. Despite what you say, US social welfare policies are just about the shittiest among OECD nations. That's why private donations make up 55% of all social welfare funding. In Germany, by comparison, private donations constitute 11%. Germany, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, as well as most of the rest of western Euroope are not in such dire need of charity as the wealthiest nation on earth.

3.) Almost a third of all donation goes to religion. Yes, 32% of the moneys. Sure, religious institutions do charitable work as well, but most of it goes towards the salaries of the clergy, that new coloured glass window above the cross or Minister Creflo Dollar's $60 million aeroplane he so urgently requires in order to fulfil his duty. No, he hasn't got there yet, but he will. And yes, his name really is Creflo Dollar.)

And that should place the USA's generosity in its proper context. No need to thank me. I'll be happy enough if you got off your high horse once in a while. Now, shall we get back on topic, or do you wish to continue with your usual ways of offering tu quoques interspersed with bemoaning the fact that the USA is not appreciated for the fact that it really is the greatest nation on earth?