Americans feel poor despite being orders of magnitude richer than most others because our gov. cannot provide cheaper public options to costly private goods. You don't need a big house if there's a vibrant public square, you don't need a car if there's a train every 5 minutes.
Stan Oklobdzijatwitter.comAmericans feel poor despite being orders of magnitude richer than most others because our gov. cannot provide cheaper public options to costly private goods. You don't need a big house if there's a vibrant public square, you don't need a car if there's a train every 5 minutes.
But we are failing to understand why we are failing. All of these problems have a single, little-noticed root cause: We have been living off low-hanging fruit for at least three hundred years. We have built social and economic institutions on the expectation of a lot of low-hanging fruit, but that fruit is mostly gone.
Tyler Cowen • The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better: A Penguin eSpecial from Dutton
Most Americans are not in good financial shape. We know this. We know that 40% of Americans can’t afford a $400 unexpected expense and that household debt is higher than ever.
% Derisible • Theses for 2020
Taxes are the number one expense of poor people. Think about it: you’re taxed when you earn your money; you’re taxed when you spend it; you’re taxed on what you own, now that you’ve bought it; you’re taxed when you sell it; and, if you die, then they’re really going to tax you.
Myron Golden • From The Trash Man To The Cash Man
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk tra
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