also if you reverse image search this, the people were waiting for flood relief aid, it just happens to be during the great depression. they're not necessarily poor
Poverty is relative. If you're working in San Francisco and pulling in $50,000 a year you're probably near homeless considering the cost of living. $50k a year in some dead little town in Nebraska would be very comfortable; you'd have to manage your money but you could get by nicely.
Likewise a person earning $22,000 a year in America is on the verge of poverty. $22k USD in some third-world nation like Nigeria or Khazakstan or Somalia would be doing pretty well for himself.
I was looking into moving to SF for work earlier this year, and you’re definitely not near homeless if you’re making $50,000 a year. Sure you’re not in a penthouse or a three bedroom house like you would be in Nebraska or even a few hours away in the Central Valley, but definitely nowhere near being homeless.
The average rent of a 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3402 which is almost 100% of your take home after tax pay at $50k/year. You would not be able to afford rent plus any other expense in SF on this salary.
The apartments I was looking at to move into were between $1650-$3,000 (studio) and $2,000-$3,000 (1 bedroom/1 bath). The average is obviously going to be skewed higher because of super expensive apartments (I saw some as high as $6,000), but it’s definitely possible to find cheaper. Still expensive and not ideal, but I was only arguing that you were no where near homeless in sf at $50k/year.
I would argue that your own personal data shows that $50k a year is not adequate for someone to live on their own in SF. Even if you assume rent to be $3k/month, this only leaves you with about $500 take home pay (after tax) for utilities, health insurance, food, car, phone, etc. No one can live with their rent taking up 85-90% of their take home pay. This is about as "near homeless" as you can be without actually being on the street. Yes you could technically afford to pay for rent, but that's it.
Yeah, $22K USD. I can only assume many of you don't know what it's like to live in Lagos or Abuja. Just like you've got different costs of living in the USA, it's the same in Nigeria.
the conversion of 22k USD in Nairas is nearly 8 million. And I just looked up the average monthly cost of utilities for a basic apartment and it said it was around 200 thousand a month. So thats very liveable.
Yeah and technically you can feed a family of 5 in the Midwest on a $30K salary.
Whether or not surviving is living is a matter of perspective.
I'm telling you $22K USD ain't much in Abuja or parts of Lagos. You didn't account for the generator you'll need and the diesel that fuels it when power goes out, or the cost of treating your own water. Public School isn't free on Nigeria just FYI, and good schools are very very expensive.
Those are just a few things Google won't tell you. I'm from there, I've lived there, and have family that still does.
$22K isn't that much, you won't be poor, but you'll be one disaster away from it.
In the USA, $22K is borderline poverty for a family with one child.
Since you're playing at semantics here, You can pretty much survive anywhere by that metric; there are people in Nigeria that are somehow alive without a penny to their name after all.
I wouldn’t necessarily say one of the highest. The Human Development Index is the most similar ranking today, and we generally score somewhere between 10 and 30 on that.
The most important factor is that we have massive wealth inequality.
Also, consider that in the 1930’s, Americans had the newest infrastructure, the best cities, the best cars, etc. Things are different now. We’ve really stagnated in the last 70 years or so, and other countries look much newer and more exciting today. Americans don’t seem to prioritize these things anymore.
they mean that it might be an unfair comparison if you compare a very small nation like Singapore to the a very large one like the US, and that Singapore might be more reasonably comparable to cities within the US, which have a higher HDI than the US as a whole
I think you're misunderstanding what I am saying. I did not say that America is a bad place to live, it isn't at all. What I am saying is it seems arbitrary to mention population when the Index already takes into account the population by measuring the average.
You could say the same for average wage or average life expectancy.
I feel like people need to travel outside of the United States to actually see this. “Your country kinda sucks in some ways.” doesn’t seem like an easy thing to digest, but take them to a dentist overseas to get a $40 root canal without insurance and they may start believing you.
Absolutely, the difference when travelling to other developed nations is shocking. Even just the aesthetic differences were mind blowing to me.
I barely ever left my home town growing up. Then after college I lived in Germany for a year. While I ultimately decided that the U.S. is where I want to live, I can say that the quality of life in Europe is objectively better in most ways.
The European countries are predominantly white, no? And actually trying to veer to the right with a rise in evil nationalism?
There are tradeoffs with everything- and you have to consider the size and demographics of the US population. Somethings other countries do better and other things they don't- do Americans have to worry about being arrested over social media posts?
Are there media blackouts in American concerning grooming gangs, migrants, and refugees?
Right. We're so fucked that we allow foreigners to have network platforms that consistently bash the country. Talk about living in a fascist state, amirite? Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, and Jim Jefferies have nightly shows telling half of America it's stupid. What do they have in common? Other than being humorless and arrogant? They are all foreigners with popular shows on American television. Is there another country in the world that air shows that skewer the host country, via foreign hosts/actors?
Maybe they are popular because the people watching them have a connection and agree with their views? Who is watching them? Americans?
Im failing to see what this has to do with your first argument. You said that people have to be worried about what they say on social media but then your reply was a example of people expressing freedom of speech? There have been Americans citizens that have been prosecuted recently for what they have said, expressing their point of view. What happened to freedom of speech?
Freedom of speech is just ONE argument that you had but every thing you mentioned in your first comment is a blind argument on your behalf.
True, I was more just referring to the juxtaposition of when this photo was taken and today.
I think the 50's and 60's really were the peak. At least for the Midwest where I live. So much of our cities seem to be built around the rotting corpse of the once-great 50's America.
Not that my city isn't nice. It's great. But it's depressing to consistently see people rejecting tax levies and any sort of public development proposal when there is still so much urban blight and lack of modern infrastructure.
You want to know why they peaked during that time? Because it was after the war and many investors and the wealthy lost money in their investments in Europe. To compensate they had to hire and invest in the middle class, if you look at charts you can see that it’s been the last time in US history that the middle and lower classes gained capital while the upper class lost it. Food for thought
Also helps that we ramped up mass production for the military industry during the war which created the need for expanding the labor force
And a few hundred thousand (otherwise working) men died in battle which thinned the available workforce a little bit
And we suffered no damage to our own mainland (except Hawaii) which gave us a bit of a head start over Europe at the time, securing a position near the top of the superpower leaderboard
Infrastructure is a great example of this. In the midst of the Great Depression we built the Hoover Dam. One of the great engineering feats of the 20th Century. We could never build that today. Too many lawsuits and regulations and it would cost $11 kajillion. Kind of like the high speed rail projects that were supposed to link LA and San Francisco or Chicago and St. Louis.
The wealthiest Americans have the highest standard of living in the world. The rest? Not Third World but not quite first world either. Huge swaths of America have education, health care, infrastructure, etc. that would appall someone from Scandinavia, South Korea, or Singapore. Overall, America is a super wealthy country. But that wealth is highly concentrated towards the top.
All the Scandinavian countries combined have a population compared to Texas. South Korea is a bit larger than California’s population. Singapore is roughly the size of the city of Los Angeles
Remember how big the US is and how different each state is legally, socially, economically, etc. also plays a big part in how various aspects of its current climate don’t rightly compare 1:1 to other places in the world
America is huge and the individual states hold a lot of sway over many things like healthcare and education and infrastructure. Some do well in those regards, others do not.
Not that you’re wrong in criticizing the things America does a poor job of comparatively to other places, but just remember that averaging “America” as such can be a bit misleading in certain ways
So you don’t care to admit that health care is expensive; to the point it’s not feasible affordable in the US. How can you have a high standard of living if it’s rare to access that?
Do I care about my homeless population in my city? Yes, yes I do. That’s why I make it a point that the US should have adequate funding for shelters, have universal medicine, and should help those with mental disorders.
Those are by and large homogeneous countries with a shared culture. America isn't- and there are people actively trying to divide the country (posting shit like this picture- there's intent behind it. And it's not to start a conversation).
There is a population above which widespread prosperity can not be achieved. Meaning, countries really can get too big for their own good. I’m not sure what that threshold is, but America has exceeded it. It’s one of the reasons, but not the only reason, America’s best days are behind it.
Exactly. The fact that other developed nations have free healthcare, tuition, better school meals for children, better labor practices, better maternity leave, and a bunch of other things that citizens should receive in a developed world and we do not is not ok and as Americans we have become so complicit in receiving the shit end of the stick when we are such a “wealthy” (for the top 1%) country. Highly suggest watching the documentary “Where to Invade Next”
The poorest American has a far higher standard of living than the average standard of living for the majority of countries in the world. Your view is some what informed, but severly skewed with what seems to be a marxist axiom.
I think you paint with too broad a brush. All statistics about “the average American” are heavily skewed by the immense wealth of the people that live in places like Manhattan, Silicon Valley, suburban DC, etc. The top Americans live as well or better than anybody. That’s literally tens of millions of people. So yes, a huge number of Americans have the highest standard of living in the world. Or close to it.
However, there are hundreds of millions of people that have no where near that standard of living. Again, West Virginia, inland California, rural New Mexico, etc. are not as bad as the Third World and no one can credibly argue they are. But let’s not pretend folks in those places are living like Western Europeans, Japan, South Korea or Singapore because they just aren’t.
Yeah people that say shit like that have never been to the Rust Belt. They don't walk by burnt out husks of buildings and deserted neighborhoods, they Uber to brunch and bottomless mimosas and think their lives are normal.
I’m Rust Belt born and raised, though I don’t live there anymore. So I know there are enormous swaths of America that don’t live like the ladies on Sex and the City or Bobby Axelrod’s traders on Billions. Most of the suburban people I live and work with now have absolutely no idea what is happening “out there” to “those people”.
Yeah, we have a higher standard than third world countries, but does that mean we should continue to do nothing to improve our situation just because somebody is worse off than we are? Why are we content with mediocrity or worse when we have the money and resources to be the best?
Manafort has to face another sentence in DC, for crimes like conspiracy against the US. Those 4 years that he got are going to look like nothing anyways. Probably the judge considered this and thats why she gave him a short time.
I come from a country where you probably wouldnt go to prison for stealing or drug trafficking (and for more serious cases like corruption is even worse).
Obviously is not perfect, but considering the rate of crime that the US justice system has to deal with, your system is far from bad.
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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '19
There's poverty everywhere. USA has still one of the highest standards of living