• Knusper@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Hmm, by what metric are the USA the richest country? Wealth of all citizens combined?

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Wealthiest country, not healthy country. The US is not a developed nation anymore. Developed nation is a moving target, both because the bar raises as other nations move forward, and as tech/health advanced happen. A nation must keep investing in itself to stay in the developed nation category. The US stopped investing in itself seriously in the early 1980’s and we’ve been coasting on May fronts since then.

      We have immense wealth in the hands of corporations and the handul of individuals who really own them. The concentration of wealth is worse than during the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons that ended with the Great Depression and union wars.

      The wealth has pushed up the cost of living while driving down the income of people not in higher positions already, creating a gulf of destitution anyone now joining the community must face. Some make it over, but more and more are not making the leap, and many who used to be past the hump of establishing a household and having a middle class lifestyle are backsliding into the gulf of destitution (that’s me).

      Corporate profits are at all time record highs while effective incomes are lower than they’ve been in many decades. The nation as a whole has lots of money, but the average person is being crushed by greed and no protection by our government. We’re a rich, but failed nation now.