I think you are missing on many counts. Everyone else isn't struggling. Some are but no one in the US need starve.
Poverty is measured in a relative sense, how are you doing compared to everyone else. This means that poverty levels can be higher in countries where the poor are better off.
Income disparity will always grow in proportion to population size. This is just a statistical artifact. Thus as population increases you get larger apparent disparities and higher perceived poverty. But larger populations also have network effects and economies of scale allowing to absolute quality of life to be higher for everyone.
I would argue that material quality of life in the US is significantly better in the US for the average citizen, but because of greater size and freedoms, we have a naturally higher disparity of wealth leading to a perception of poverty based solely on envy.
Europe on the other hand actively punishes success. This leads to a lower absolute standard of living for everyone, but at least there is more perceived equallity.
It isn't that the US has too many rich people. It is that Europe has too few. At least fewer than statistics would predict if the market was free.
Daniel Wigton
npub1w4…q30zp
2026-04-19 23:24:05 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…jhzk
Author Public Key
npub1w4jkwspqn9svwnlrw0nfg0u2yx4cj6yfmp53ya4xp7r24k7gly4qaq30zpPublished at
2026-04-19 23:24:05 UTCEvent JSON
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