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One Sign America Is Not in Decline

October 27, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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You should definitely check out my colleague Rick Newman's 9 Signs of America in Decline. He combines together some different thought-provoking data that make up for a very worrisome whole. But I do have one comment to make on one of his signs that might make the overall picture not look as bad.

Poverty. The U.S. poverty rate, about 17 percent, is third worst among the advanced nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In that sample, only Turkey and Mexico are worse.

That's completely true. But there's "poverty" and then there's what we normally think of when we think about being poor and its impact on quality of life. The fact that there are more people living "in poverty" in the United States than in most advanced nations does not mean that the U.S. has more poor people than most of those countries.

Poverty is a relative concept. Specifically, the OECD defines it as less than one half of the nation's median household income. Because that income is so high in the U.S., people who would be rich if they lived in Turkey or Mexico could be considered impoverished in America.

When we look at standard of living on an absolute basis, the U.S. fares much better.

The OECD's data on national income per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity) places the U.S. at third-highest in the world, behind only Luxembourg and Norway, and ahead of Switzerland. The U.S. has consistently maintained this ranking over several years.

But the OECD's numbers come from 2007. The recession, of course, is going to make the U.S. poorer in an absolute sense. But will it lose that high ranking compared to the rest of the world?

It seems unlikely. The IMF's projection of GDP per capita PPP in 2010 has the U.S. as the fifth-highest in the world, after only Qatar, Luxembourg, Norway and Brunei, and ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland.

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As for the comment that "democracies" tend to be peaceful traders, I would point to some questions about which country's are "democracies." The U.S. has had a good deal more war than peace during its two hundred years plus history, and is now and for some time prosecuting two wars that I and many others believe are wars of aggression.
A lot of us do indeed live in a bubble of seeming prosperity. I say seeming because it is precarious and easily lost "prosperity," and the loss is likely not going to be something that's due to anything you have or haven't done. With lives over-loaded with the crap of consumerism and an idiot belief in their getting a fair-shake, the people of the United States are only beginning to wake up to their actual plight. Most of the wealth generated by the work of the last decades hasn't been shared out to most of those producing it, it has instead been carefully vacuumed up by the topmost tier. In hard times some of those living high within that one to five percent top income/property owning class are most responsible for generating without shame demand that the federal government save their asses at the cost of FURTHER pauperizing "ordinary" citizens. Capital, as too the jobs it might have generated here, has been freely fleeing the country for quite some time. Few here do anything to change this.
The media continue to present a "prosperity is just around the corner for you too" lie which only the most foolish of us accept as reality. That same media apparently had no idea that the huge, worldwide crash that has arrived, was coming. Right up until it did, they were hard-line supporters of what has shown itself to be a high-theft, fully disastrous economy.
We've seen these same fools vote against their own economic interests again and again over the years, so there might be some satisfaction in seeing so many of them suffer the fate they've had at least some part in bringing to so many of the rest of us. Both parties, distinguishable but barely so, have helped sell us out. And they are currently proving once again that they are without conscience willing to feed further amidst the economic carnage for their own selfish reasons, none of those viable in the long run. It's also clear that they aren't much interested in the "long run."
In the shorter run, those running and those manipulating both parties have plenty now and plan to have gathered up a lot more before they are through.
The stupidity of believing that the "system" is self correcting in favor of working people or even the middle class extends broadly, a marker for the fact that we don't teach much about politics in our schools.

Terry Baker of OK 12:24PM February 10, 2010

Remember that as more nations become democratic, they tend to trade peacefully, rather than go to war.
Global violence, despite the Iraq and Afghanistan battles, as well as tensions in various other regions, seems to be generally on a downward trajectory.
At least the world is working together to keep those values of freedom, peace, and prosperity alive, as more nations become democratic.
The more similar "friends" throughout the word, the less the US has to rigidly attempt to remain a superpower to survive. We could end up similar to many "peer" nations, in which case we won't need to feel so much need to maintain dominance, because there are simply fewer threats out there.
A more peaceful world with democratic values.
Not a bad scenario, is it?
Nope.

Looking On the Bright Side of IL 1:44AM October 29, 2009

Thanks for pointing this out. We (Americans) tend to forget that our wealth is the exception not the rule in comparison to other countries. Most of us have no concept of what "poor" is in other countries. A lot of us live in a bubble with luxuries that we think are necessities. I am not trying to say that loss is not painful, but if we looked out side of our padded shell once in a while we may not complain so much.

Tina of TN 11:24PM October 28, 2009

One Sign America Is Not in Decline

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