Too much of the US population is still in favor of this sort of thing. After all, it's happening to an immigrant.
People that only care about themselves or their racial group are a curse upon society.
It constantly astonishes me how blatantly racist some of the people in the U.S. are. How do they not get punched in the face?
Guns and pre-segregating their social circle.
Be careful about assuming that we are all tolerating and enabling their behavior. That's not true as a blanket statement.
This US slip into authoritarianism should cause us all to reconsider history too. This is the wealthiest country in the world, so economic trouble is clearly not required, and it gives lie to the notion that the US had some kind of unique structural defense against authoritarianism - maybe there is no defense, and this is inevitable.
See: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ See: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
One of the primary reasons Trump won the election is that the Democrats were hailing the high-level economic numbers as a big success, but the average person wasn't really feeling it. Being told that things are going great when they're suffering put many people off voting and caused others to vote against the incumbent party in hopes of a change.
Unfortunately for the masses, the Republican party has largely been responsible for the current wealth inequality through repeated tax cuts disproportionately affecting the wealthy and attacks on worker representation over the last half century. Though, to be fair, despite their rhetoric, the Democratic party has generally been complicit, as they are also owned and operated by moneyed interests. Citizens United was probably the final nail in the coffin containing any hope to turn things around.
That they (and you) don't believe this to be the case is important and interesting. But it's not true.
[1] Maybe not for that ←long once the Q2/Q3 results show up with the tariff impact and the layoff start
[2] Anyone with a broad enough sampling I guess. There are always tiny states with skewed statistics.
And I guess it does represent such a truth, but it's a great truth about universal delusion at the end of an empire, or something else. It's not about wealth. It's not.
Totally agree with you, don't know why so many downvotes. But important point is wealth is never absolute, but comparative. And that's where inequality comes into play. Almost all revolutions happen because of inequality.
I've met Silicon Valley multi-millionaires why cried they are poor and how those damn billionaires gentrifying them from their lovely neighborhoods.
I'm against forced equalization of incomes, but on the long run that's what keeps the system stable. Unless you are Norway, of course, where people strongly believe equalization is good, and post everyone's compensation on public (well, taxes, but it's easy to get comp from taxes).
UPDATE: so the metric we should look at is Gini index, not GDP or PPP.
I mean, think about it: there have always been phenomenally wealthy people. If every billionaire in the US had their net worth cut by 50%, instantly, that would fix the "Gini index" you think we should be looking at.
But would their lifestyles change? Would anyone but the billionaires even notice? If you stop a person on the street and ask "Is it fair that Bill Gates is worth $50B dollars?", they're going to say "no", right? That's way too much money. Except, of course, that Gates is worth twice that and the number is something that you argue should be "fair".
No, it's not numbers. It's irrational delusion fed by fear and anger and click-chasing from everywhere across the media landscape. But. It's. Wrong. And someone needs to start telling people that.
Because at this point our shared delusion is causing a trade war that is going to make all of us (literally, all of humanity) poorer.
When it comes to luxury goods, sure - things like TVs and computers are cheaper than they ever have been, both relative to wealth and even in absolute terms.
However, when you look at necessities like housing, healthcare, and I dare say education, you'll notice that all have far outpaced inflation and even wage growth.
See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
See: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/
See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/631987/percent-of-income...
See: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/18/cost-of-coll...
See: https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-costs-over-tim...
See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/pric...
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As a personal anecdote - my father did much the same job I do, and yet while he was taking care of a full family of four, I can't say that I feel any better off despite being single and not regularly vacationing like I did growing up.
As far as I can tell - I'm not alone. If anything, I'm uniquely blessed relative to my peers due to my tech background. We have an entire generation putting off family building because stagnant wages coupled with high student loan debt and housing prices cause many to perceive they are hardly getting by. Nearly half of all adults live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Sure, the headlines try to imply it. Which is why you believe something wrong. But it's still wrong, and the data don't say what you think they say.
> As a personal anecdote - my father did much the same job I do, and yet while he was taking care of a full family of four
This part is actually true. White Men have fallen off the pace relative to what they expected to earn generations ago. But that's not society getting poorer, it's the disadvantaged finally being allowed to catch up.