I am astonished at the silliness here. We've been trickle down for the entirety of our nation's history and created the most powerful and international economy in the history of the world. Stop with the silliness about poor people. Countries with gov't graft from the wealthy for gov't purposes are far poorer than we are and the poor live in the weeds.
I'm not sure how you look at the US economic system and not see a massive success story. Life expectancies, house sizes, leisure time, everything has goen through the roof. Ask the people who were around in the 30's how much this place has changed. Heck, ask the people from the 50's and 60's.
I'm not sure how one ignores Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, etc.
They're all mostly homogeneous societies that has also been the beneficiaries of the United States driving the train on technology and medical advancements that they didn't have to finance. The Norwegian area benefits from a lot of natural recourse and Germany and England built a lot of their wealth during their empire glory days.
People have complained about their pay since work started. We have created a society of entitled shitheads that think they "deserve" what their neighbors and parents have right this second. People have forgotten that you still have to bust your ass and work to earn anything.
But we need change because sociology and English majors can't find jobs and McDonald's employees want 15 bucks an hour
I agree. England went from the richest country in the world with the highest standard of living with the fastest growing economy in the world to an also ran exactly when the labor party took over. Germany is by far the most America like European country and is the best economy and standard of living m, though still not close to America. Norway, Sweden, etc all have costs of living 40 percent higher than the United States. Glad you are finally coming around to reality.
There is not a country with a population bigger than NYC's with a higher stantard of living than ours. Switzerland is the biggest with a population of 8 million (96th biggest in the world). The UK and Germany are both lower in terms of prosperity. If you compare our housing with theirs, the disparity is laughable. You can't compare a geography and population the size and US's to tiny well educated or oil rich pockets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita.
Our population is 1/3 what theirs are and our land area is similar. You are talking about places with population about 1/50th or smaller than the US's. And we kill China and India in terms of living conditions whereas conditions in a place like Switzerland or Norway compared to the US really aren't that much different. I am completely ok with comparing the US to the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and South Korea. But the places wealthier than us all have pops. less than the Dominican Republic.
But they've done a great job of reducing poverty. they'll always have a large number in poverty due to their crazy population. But as their wealth increases they'll have fewer children and utliize natural resources better.
They're gonna have to get rid of corruption and govt. micro-managed industry if they're gonna play on a first world stage. Poverty is still rampant outside the east coast. Influx of technology and FDI is what has lifted them so far.
That's my point. Spatially they are similar or smaller and thus likely have less resources, and population wise they are each more than 3 times our size. So don't compare! You can't say the US is better! You can't have it both ways.
