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Comment by chrismeller | Hacker News Reader

Simple: most Americans simply have it too good. They’re not living with 5 roommates just to be able to afford a roof. They’re not eating rice or potatoes for every meal. They’re not sitting in the sweltering heat or the freezing cold. Their tap water is not killing them.

Americans complain a lot. There are absolutely failures in the system and people who fall through the cracks, but the reality is that the middle class is fat and happy for a reason.

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In related news:

The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most European Nations

https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric....

As an American who has lived in one of the poorest countries in the EU for over two years now, this doesn’t surprise me at all, but it’s awesome to have stats to back that up.

All of the things I listed are, I kid you not, things that are constantly happening here, even to relatively middle class people. Sure your healthcare is covered (assuming you can ever get in to see a doctor), but beyond that you’ll work your ass off 12 hours a day and still live in what Americans would call poverty.

>Sure your healthcare is covered (assuming you can ever get in to see a doctor)

Wealthier countries, too. An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana... . In Atlantic Canada the shortage is astounding https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we... . The problem affects rural areas more than cities, but I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.

I would really like to know which country was that...

Link is broken.

Should be https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...

I think this is accurate except for health care. If health care isn’t fixed soon people are going to be really angry.

Wouldn't have thought sick people make the best revolutionaries.

I live in an EU country and the bartender has been hacking up a lung for over two months because her GP doesn’t have any appointments. Unless you speak the local language (or get hit by a bus and end up at the ER), you’ll never get any of the care you pay into every month either.

Until you actually experience healthcare outside of the US you really can’t talk about how horrible it is.

Even if you speak the local language it can be difficult to get proper care. You essentially have to know what you need yourself.

That's partially true. However, the middle class will continue to shrink, because the 1% have made it very difficult for anyone to join it and even harder to stay in it.

We're on a timer to the bulk of the population being economically suppressed far enough that revolution becomes a potential option.

Yeah right.

People talking about revolution in America have no idea whatsoever of what the life of the people that actually revolt is like.

You're forgetting that many people in America have lived through revolutions. We're the great melting pot of people who had to come here because our military destroyed their home countries.

The vast majority of immigrants in this country come from countries impacted by their own governments. People have been immigrating into this country well before it was a global, military superpower.

The life of the University students in Hong Kong doesn't look half bad. And yet they're tossing Molotov cocktails at armored police vehicles. Not too long ago here in the US we had thousands of people occupying big chunks of downtown NYC and clashing with police, albeit in a slightly less violent way.

It is not about "how it looks".

It is very likely that their lives are much worse (or about to turn much worse). They are revolting because their lives are turning from being more like the US into being more like China.

PS. A thousand people protesting in NYC does not in any way count as a "revolt".

The precursor to any revolt is (even mild) civil unrest. The article is pointing out that we don't even have any signs of that. As you've pointed out, even the idea that things are about to turn much worse (rather than actual conditions today) can motivate civil unrest, but we still don't have it here in the US.

While I agree the US is not close to violent revolution, I would be wary of making that statement flippantly.

Hong Kong appears to be at the beginnings of a violent revolution with close to the highest GDP per capita (higher than Japan/Aus/New Zealand, less than Singapore) and quality of life (arguably lower than Japan but the highest in China and most of the AP) in the Asia-Pacific.

EDIT: Oops didn't mean to pile on, the other HK related comment was posted while I was typing this up.

Revolutions generally begin with the upper-middle class rather than the poor. The poor are too busy being poor to revolt. The fomenters of the French and American revolutions were quite wealthy, and the Russian revolution began with upper-class intellectuals who had a notably hard time getting the peasant class to go along with them.

You'd expect revolutions to start from the grindingly poor, and you usually have to get those people on your side -- eventually. But they're often the last to join the revolutionary movement, after the groundwork has been laid from the top.

That last one is technically false.

Like the author I feel like you have fallen into the trap of thinking that places like Flint are “the US”.

And even Flint (at its worst) had water that would have been acceptable 50 years ago. (As of 2016, > 90% of samples were below 15ppb of lead again)

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