Quote Originally Posted by jabarto View Post
Oh, come on. A rising tide doesn't lift the people who don't have any boats to begin with, now does it?
On a macro level it does. Since the 1820s, the USA has been steadily improving in per capita GDP at a rate better than most of the rest of the world. Nor was it WW2 that "sealed the deal," since we'd passed the UK prior to WW1. By no means have we eradicated poverty, nor will we, but the "rising tide" has established a higher standard for virtually all US residents.

You'd make a better argument if you decried Reaganomics for enhancing the disparity between the top 15 and bottom 15 percent of the population, pointing to the potential for socio-cultural destabilization.

Quote Originally Posted by jabarto
Um, no. As long as you can be left in the street to die of easily treatable diseases here, I can think of entire continents that have it better than us. Social mobility is dead in the water and hard work had nothing to do with the US rise to prominence (such as it is). We're at the top of the heap because our competitors were eroded to dust by WW2. That's it.
As noted above, the USA had passed by the rest of the world economically by the very early 20th -- even given the economic strength of the Empire upon which "the sun never set." Yes, we took a big bounce upward in the 1950s for the reasons you note, but the trend predates this event.

Social mobility was never as easy as the Horatio Alger stories made it out to be. The very existence of the Knights of Columbus and other "immigrant" organizations underscores this. Yet the USA was never and is not now as calcified as many societies have been in the past. My wife is one of two children of Italian immigrants. Neither of her parents had an 8th grade education and Dad was a cobbler/corviser while Mom raised the children. Their son is a neurosurgeon (formerly at Johns Hopkins) and MBA and their daughter is a Corporate Director with two Masters and a soon to be Ph.D. Either of them makes more in one year than their parents ever earned in any 3 years. Easy? Of course not -- but such stories are not rare, maybe not even uncommon.

And the disease thing is just hyperbole. Any person can walk into an emergency room and be treated. If you set your standard at 100% coverage of all persons at all times, then ALL societies are failures. The health care debate is too long to go into here, but I will remind you that the number of persons receiving no care is small and a portion of those not receiving care are choosing not to avail themselves of services which are -- however cumbersomely administered at times -- available.

Quote Originally Posted by jabarto
Well, this is what I was getting at earlier. Your position, if this is true, is a highly unusual one, because most people who claim that the poor in America have it better off do so to try and distract people from actually improving their lot. If you're just saying it for it's own sake, well...you're not exactly wrong, but it really raises some red flags about your intentions. I'll grant that I may have misjudged you, however.
I don't think my position is unusual at all. People in the USA are among the most charitable - by amount and by percentage of wealth donated -- around. Nor do I think most of us -- at least outside of government -- ever try to put obstacles in somebody else's way. Most of us are just trying to improve things for ourselves and for our families, and helping out a bit with those in need when we can. There are selfish folk who do little to help others, there are people who are so busy/distracted that they don't notice those in need -- which is sad. All-in-all, however, I think most folks aren't trying to harm those around them at all -- my success does not have to come at someone else's expense.