Americans feel poor despite being orders of magnitude richer than most others because our gov. cannot provide cheaper public options to costly private goods. You don't need a big house if there's a vibrant public square, you don't need a car if there's a train every 5 minutes.
Americans feel poor despite being orders of magnitude richer than most others because our gov. cannot provide cheaper public options to costly private goods. You don't need a big house if there's a vibrant public square, you don't need a car if there's a train every 5 minutes.
And in America, no matter how much you’ve got, someone next to you has more. This is what Chris Hayes once described to me as “fractal inequality.” America’s top 10 percent are far, far better off than the other 90 percent, but the top 1 percent is far, far better off than the 10 percent, and the 0.01 percent is far, far better off than the 1 perce... See more
David Roberts • The medium chill
Americans tend to use new productivity and technology to buy a better life rather than to enjoy more downtime in inferior conditions. And when material concerns are mostly met, Americans fixate on their status and class, and that of their children, and work tirelessly to preserve and grow it.
Derek Thompson • Three Theories for Why You Have No Time
Alex Wittenberg added
This was important. People measure their well being against their peers. And for most of the 1945-1980 period, people had a lot of what looked like peers to compare themselves to. Many people – most people – lived lives that were either equal or at least fathomable to those around them.
Morgan Housel • How This All Happened
sari added
The stock market is at record highs and life expectancy in the U.S. is decreasing. In the richest nation in the richest time in human history, 43% of Americans can’t pay their bills. Many of our most significant societal problems are also, not coincidentally, extremely profitable industries (fossil fuels, junk food, prescription drugs, and for-prof... See more
Yancey Strickler • Page Not Found – Collab Fund
sari and added
Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that.
Matthew Desmond • Poverty, by America
josh added
You can have a modest sum of money, but live high up on the Freedom phase. A good example would be someone that makes $30K a year, but earns it doing work she loves. On top of that, she lives a lifestyle where she reliably spends just $20K a year. She has freedom-in-work, and power-over-the-self. She is a rich person.
Conversely, you can have a larg... See more
Conversely, you can have a larg... See more
Lawrence Yeo • Money Is the Megaphone of Identity
Erikc Perez-Perez added
Inequality so mimics poverty in our minds that the United States of America, the richest and most unequal of countries, has a lot of features that better resemble a developing nation than a superpower.