| Topic List | Page List: 1 |
|---|---|
| Topic | Think America is on the decline? Think again! |
| The_Sock 06/04/23 4:20:14 PM #1: | https://www.humanprogress.org/dear-americans-define-worse-off/ The United States is doing quite well. You wouldnt know it if you read the headlines, listened to the bombastic political disputes, or even asked Americans. In a March poll, a majority of Americans had low confidence that life would be better for their children. A CNN poll published in April showed that less than a third of respondents would call economic conditions good. A McKinsey survey released in December fully captured the negative sentiment, with pessimism cut across all income groups and demographics: Americans are feeling opportunity slipping away. In stark contrast, The Economist (https://tinyurl.com/mrp984p5) in April ran a cover story in a diametrically different flavor, pointing to all the good things happening in America. Yes, you read that right. In between the bank collapses, looming recession, runaway national debt, culture wars, political sandbox, Trump obsession in both political camps, shootings, opioid epidemic, runaway costs for food and health care, millions of men out of the labor force, fears of nuclear conflict, etc., there are fundamentally good things going on. The magazines editors and contributors arent trying to brush over the troublesin slanted whataboutism or the style of the everything is fine meme (a carefree dog in a room engulfed in flames). Rather, they are trying to balance the overharsh thrashing that American life, economy, and society have endured recently. One strategy used by those of us trained in history to trivialize the present is to look back far enough. Compared to the miserable toil and pain that was most of humanitys plight until recently, our present ills look quaint. Striving to get work-life balance right? Struggling to make ends meet? Energy bill unusually large this year? Try having three failed harvests in a row, starving to the point that you boil the leather off your shoes for evening soup; watch nature take most of your children; or huddle together for shared body heat since there is precious little fuel to stave off the winter cold. The list of ills troubling Americans in 2023 is astonishingly long and of a different kind altogether. But in strictly economic terms, its much harder to see what millions of Americans are so pessimistic about. U.S. unemployment is around record-low levels. Real earnings, while theyve come down from the recent years pandemic-infused turbulence, are on par with pre-pandemic levels, noticeably higher than ever before. Inflationa nominal rather than real metric that worries households much more than it does economistsis also coming down. The U.S. economy, as a share of the G7an international grouping of the United States and seven other rich economiesis larger than it was 30 years ago. Adjusted for purchasing power, only those in ber-rich petrostates and financial hubs enjoy a higher income per person, concludes The Economist. The poorest states in the United States are on par with the richest European countries. The stylized facts about U.S. and European economiesfound in economics textbooks or old social policy reportsused to be that Americans work harder and longer for higher income, but Europeans live better lives with better social safety nets. These days even that seems to be changing, as the U.S. welfare state is approaching European levels both in comprehensiveness and total spending. Richer Americans spend more of their resources, public and private, on social ills. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics, government social spending (as a share of gross domestic product) is above Australia, Iceland, and Norway, trailing socialist Sweden and Canada only by a few percentage points. (America is second only to France when adjusting for net social spending that includes private spending and tax breaks for social purposes.) --- Sit-up champion of the 27th century. #BlackLivesMatter #IStandWithUkraine ... Copied to Clipboard! |
| Topic List | Page List: 1 |