Why do I say this? Because the “official” US poverty rate is over 11.5% and the official US (long term average) unemployment rate (U3) has been averaging 5.7%, and we both know the official rates (far) undercut the reality since:

• in big cities and wealthy states, you couldn’t afford rent and food if all you made was $1 above the poverty line; and the US leads all nations with the highest overall child poverty rate of 20.9% (Source: Confronting Poverty)
• the official unemployment rate (U3) excludes part time workers seeking full time, people who have not been able to secure a job in more than a year, went back to school (even part time) in an effort to level up, etc. and this (U6) rate is usually 50% to 60% higher (putting the long-term average U6 rate at 10.1%)

None of these statistics should exist in a first world country!

According the World Bank, of the 162 countries they track with a poverty line, 18 have a lower percentage of people living in poverty, including pre-war Ukraine, Belarus, Vietname, Kazakhstan, and Algeria. Something is VERY wrong here!

According to Trading Economics, 68 countries have less unemployment than the United States, with Uganda, Liberia, Vietnam, and Mexico included in the countries under 3%! Something is VERY wrong here!

According to UNICEF, there are 34 countries with a lower child poverty rate than the USA. THIRTY FOUR! Something is TOTALLY FUCKED UP here. You are (way) better off having a child in Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, or Croatia than the good Ol’ US of A.

Moreover, if you’re a blue collar worker or a low-tier white collar worker, you’re also screwed since you’ll never be able to pay off your student loans as almost everything you make will go on rent and food. And even if you’re true white collar middle class, good luck buying a house or sending your kids to college.

While all the economists and politicians want to tell you how great things are because the averages keep going up and up, this is all a facade to prevent you from finding out the truth that things have actually getting worse for you since the eighties (when “trickle on”^*, which the Republicans like to call “trickle down”, economics were introduced) because the median is not getting better. (In good years, it’s barely holding steady.) The problem with averages is that they include everyone, which includes billionaires that are collectively worth more than 6 Trillion dollars. (If Bezos moved to a small town with under 1,000 people where the average income was 35,000, the average income per person would suddenly be over ONE Million dollars, while the median would stay the same. It’s all lies, damn lies, and statistics.)

The problem is that our buying power has decreased considerably since the 70s (which was the last time things were really good for the average American) as our median family income has not kept up with rising costs (which should not be a surprise as the federal minimum wage in the US has not increased in 15 years). The relative cost of a house has almost doubled, and the cost of sending our children to a community college or trade school has almost tripled.

Here’s a simple table to break it down for you.

Year	Median Income	Median House Price	X times Median Income
1975	13720	39300	< 3X
2020	76600	391900	> 5X

And yet another simple table:

Year	Median Income	Average Tuition	% Median Income	Harvard Tuition	% Median Income
1975	13720	542	4%	5350	39%
2020	76600	9488	13%	47730	62%

When you break it all down, relatively speaking, the cost of almost everything has increased significantly since the 1970s. The only budget item that has stayed relatively flat (in the 10% to 15% of median household income) is food for a family of 4, but that’s only looking at the numbers. Today, most Americans can only afford cheap (ultra) processed foods, and even Fox News is now warning us about those! (If you were to compare spending on healthy food baskets, the buying power does not remain constant.)

In other words a significant number of you are poor (and much worse off than the majority of OECD Countries [Confronting Poverty]), unemployed, or both, and the way things are, this number that has been rising for decades is going to keep rising unbounded unless something is done. And until that something is done and these numbers start decreasing and level off at acceptable levels (5% max for poverty and 3% max for U6 unemployment), as far as I’m concerned, the US (and Canada, which switched from following the UK’s lead to America’s lead a few decades ago), is a third world country!

So what can you do about it? Some would say ban billionaires (because no one needs that much money and it should be shared more equitably) while others would say fix government (and ban SuperPACS and lobby groups that have too much influence over governments and divert them from your welfare to theirs) and others still fix economics (and what it actually measures), but neither is a solution on its own. It’s not about fixing the wealth imbalance (it’s always been there, it always will be), or ending lobbying (although we probably should end SuperPACs and limit funding levels from any individual or corporation), or changing the definition of economics (because, thanks to lies, damn lies, and statistics, there will always be ways to corrupt the measures and mislead the public), but about increasing the prosperity of the average blue collar and white collar worker, getting them back to 1970 levels, and putting them back on the path to increase prosperity (compared to the majority of the world and making the USA a true first class country again).

How? That’s going to be hard, especially since you’re one of the last “democracies” (well, not really, you’re a republic) still on a two-party system (which is easily corrupted and has been for decades and that’s why you’re not a first world country anymore), but if a party would come along and focus on the right things, it wouldn’t be too hard to right the course … especially since productivity of the average worker has increased almost fourfold since the 1970s due to American ingenuity and grit.

But first, let’s babble about those Billionaires and why they simultaneously are and aren’t the problem. Stay tuned.

 

^* Republicans have been telling us that “trickle-down” economics are good for us, when history has shown time and time again that they are not. In reality, those Billionaire tax cuts are “trickle on” economics, because that’s what the Republicans and their Billionaire buddies are doing to you, and if you don’t understand what that means, then type “golden shower” porn site into Google and it should bring up links to at least 30 sites that should have very graphic visual descriptions that demonstrate precisely what “trickle on” economics really is! (I asked Google how many golden shower porn sites and it said top 30, so I am assuming it will deliver at least 30 links to you.)

^# Statistics Canada is always years behind compared to other countries, with no good data beyond 2021, but the projection for Canada this year was a 10.1% poverty rate!