Darrell Issa: The Poor of the United States Are the Envy of the World
Darrell Issa is being mocked for saying that the poor in this country are the envy of the world:
California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa was challenged by CNN Money correspondent Cristina Alesci on Thursday after he seemingly downplayed income inequality issues in the US.
“America’s the richest country on Earth because we’ve been able to put capital together and we’ve been able to make our poor somewhat the envy of the world,” Issa told Alesci. “If you go to India or you go to any number of third-world countries, you have two problems: you have greater inequality of income and wealth. You also have less opportunity for people to rise from the have-not to the have.”
“I don’t think the comparison is one we want to make,” Alesci responded. “We don’t want to compare ourselves to India. We want to set the bar pretty high.”
“Why shouldn’t we?” Issa countered, before telling her, “I appreciate your comment, but you’re wrong. You do have to compare yourself to the rest of the world. We compete with the rest of the world.”
He’s absolutely right.
Economic freedom benefits poor people. The poor in this country have lives that kings and queens centuries ago could only dream of: indoor plumbing, refrigerators, microwaves, cell phones, medical care, and so forth. That did not occur because government took money from rich people and gave it to poor people. It happened because of technological innovation and investment in capital.
And Issa is right to note that countries (rich or poor) with more economic freedom have less income inequality. As Antony Davies and James Harrigan have noted:
Countries with more economic freedom have more gender equality and less income inequality. And this isn’t because rich countries tend to be both more free and more equal. Even among the poorest countries, those with more economic freedom enjoy more equality.
I don’t believe “income inequality” is a problem — indeed, it’s arguably a good thing, because (even with all the government interference we have) it’s still the case that the rich earn money by providing goods and services that help society. The rich earning more, then, is an indication of a happier society.
But if the left doesn’t like income inequality, there’s a solution: economic freedom.
But is it right to criticize India for not being economically free? Yes, it is. The Index of Economic Freedom assesses various factors such as rule of law, limited government intervention, regulatory efficiency, and open markets. The 2015 assessment shows that the U.S. is not at the top of the list — it is 12th.
But India . . . is No. 128.
The free market is nothing more than the aggregate of the individual decisions of individual people. It is the greatest engine for helping the poor in the history of the world. It’s a shame that the left can’t see this — but the blindness of the left doesn’t make the facts any less true.
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 5/9/2015 @ 1:06 pmindia don’t got no ebt cards
failmerica do
that’s why failmerica score way more higher in economic free stuff
happyfeet (831175) — 5/9/2015 @ 1:22 pmIndia is #128 largely because their government tries to help everyone. Their system of affirmative action and caste quotas is staggering.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 5/9/2015 @ 1:57 pmIssa is a rich man because he understands economics.
CNN newsreaders don’t understand economics. Issa did not inherit his money like most rich Democrats. Nor did he parley government into a fortune like Shrillery and Bill.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 5/9/2015 @ 2:52 pmBut if the left doesn’t like income inequality, there’s a solution: economic freedom.
There’s another option: They can move to Michigan’s Detroit or any number of urban American areas where blue-blue, true-blue, blue-run-amok politics reign supreme and the idea of liberalism ameliorating poverty or other socio-political ills is tested every day of the week.
Mark (607f93) — 5/9/2015 @ 3:09 pmIf you add up all the goodies that a poor family can get, it is staggering, they are lacking for nothing…except self reliance and pride, which the government can’t give them [but the supreme court is trying.]
Denver (857794) — 5/9/2015 @ 3:52 pmThe bolded part is crimespeech per the progressive left. The only thing we are allowed to compare ourselves to are their imaginary standards.
So high that they can never be met. Which means we’re a mean, evil, rotten country.
Also, the whole point of the ethnic and gender studies department is to make sure nobody actually learns anything about other countries. Just their leftist, anti-American ideology.
Apparently that’s the point of the economics department as well.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/12/another-tape-surfaces-obamacare-architect-calling-american-people-stupid/
Those other remarks:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/video-stupid-voters-would-have-killed-obamacare/
Keep in mind, this is a professor of economics at MIT speaking. If he were living up to his job definition the American people wouldn’t be stupid. But the stated goal is not his real goal as a professor. His real job is to dumb people down. Because otherwise he couldn’t make a fortune taking advantage of their ignorance.
I would like point out that he didn’t fool the American voter. They saw through this. That’s why electing Scott Brown was a national effort.
This is the view of America from inside the liberal bubble, though. And one reason he has it is when a student who was prevented from learning history by a professor of history passes who can’t write or speak proper English because they were prevented from learning English by their English professor, he can successfully keep them in the dark about economics.
Which explains the Occupy! movement. When they get out of school and can’t find jobs and have to move back home with their parents because the government screwed up the economy, he has convinced them it’s the free market that failed them. So they’ll demand more government. And that means, cha ching! His consultancy is going to make a fortune off of government.
Don’t be surprised when these same ignoramuses call Daryl Issa a racist for even daring to compare us to other countries and conclude we look better as a result. That’s what they learned from their gender and ethnic studies professors.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 3:53 pmEven the Bolsheviks figured that out, but they had to learn the hard way. During the 1920s they had a system of rigid income equality. It led to shortages of everything. The finally figured out they had to provide people with incentives to turn things around. Which meant paying some people more than others.
You’d have to know something about history and economics to be aware of that. Which is why the progressive left running the asylums that used to be institutions of higher learning make sure they don’t learn any of that.
They have to think capitalism produces income inequality. Which is only really a problem if you’re consumed with envy. But socialism is the creed of ignorance and envy.
The poor in America aren’t making broth out of grass and bark like most people in North Korea, while the elite drive around in Mercedes Benzes. We don’t have police checkpoints that stop buses and cars to search for contraband like they do in Cuba. And by contraband I mean seafood and beef, as those are luxuries reserved for the communist elite and tourists.
The poor are occasionally allowed some chicken. And by poor I mean the “99%.”
Gruber couldn’t fool the voters, yet. But as the products of their indoctrination increase in numbers among the electorate, they’ll vote for full-metal Venezuala.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 4:04 pmIt’s fitting this post comes along the day after the 116th anniversary of Friedrich Hayek’s birth.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/05/happy-birthday-freddie-hayek.php
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 4:24 pmAmerica needs border security to reach optimum economic growth.
mg (31009b) — 5/9/2015 @ 4:50 pmPeople from India don’t mind if we eat beef, do they?
Just the Hindu people.
Speaking of which, the Nepalese government is royally PO’d at Pakistan.
Pakistan sent relief supplies following the earthquake. Nice, no?
No!
The Pakistanis sent packages of beef masala to mostly Hindu Nepal. And there’s no way it wasn’t a deliberate insult.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:25 pmEvery time I smoke pork, I deliberately smile.
mg (31009b) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:35 pmif only india had had three generations of benevolent bushfilth to rule over them with the compassionate conservative failtherapy
happyfeet (831175) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:44 pmEvery time I smoke pork, I deliberately smile.
mg (31009b) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:35 pm
Hard to hold, light, and take a puff, is it not?
Yoda (7d462a) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:46 pm(lol) 😆
#dawalineverending
happyfeet (831175) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:46 pmmg @12, that reminds me.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/vermont-diner-takes-bacon-sign-offends-muslim-residents-article-1.1915158
I suppose when an angry Muslim shoots up the place because of bacon, the libtard elite will nod and say they brought it upon themselves for being deliberately provocative.
We wouldn’t want to provoke the people who send beef to victims of an earthquake knowing their religion holds that cows are sacred, or who call Jews the descendants of monkeys and pigs in their Friday sermons.
No, we must not offend these people.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:50 pmyou said libtard
happyfeet (831175) — 5/9/2015 @ 5:50 pmSaid the millionaire Congressman.
Some of the poor may be better off than those in the rest of the world but Mr. Issa
I’ve seen them. I know what their conditions are and many live worse than animals.
Plus I defy you to fit in my shoes. Someone who’s on a fixed income with no
other income being fleeced by people who give YOU and Others millions in donations
so as to have THEIR interests look after and for THEM to get the regulators to
let them have more from us poor people.
You words don’t impress me and they don’t do you any service either but then
I’ve watched your fake show “investigations” where no one gets the blame and
no one gets fined or goes to jail and nothing changes.
And that’s a very poor record for you Mr. Issa.
jakee308 (49ccc6) — 5/9/2015 @ 6:19 pmThanks for the link, Steve57. One complaint and you own Vermont.
mg (31009b) — 5/9/2015 @ 6:48 pmwhy not unfix your income?
steveg (fed1c9) — 5/9/2015 @ 6:48 pmI remember reading about various immigrants and how and why they snuck into the U.S. An older man from India came to America to finish his novel, his lifelong dream. He would live on probably on some kind of disability or aid. He knew he would be okay. He said, “I wanted to come to a country where the poor people are fat.”
Patricia (5fc097) — 5/9/2015 @ 7:09 pmThe reason the left wing is obsessed with “income inequality” is that it’s the last twitching of the corpse of orthodox Marxism.
Marx said that Socialism would eventually replace capitalism because the proletariat would become so miserable under capitalism that they would rise up and kill all the Capitalists. This is known as the “immiseration thesis” and it’s the foundation of orthodox Marxism. The entire theory is based on the assumption that in a capitalist system there will be an immense underclass who become so miserable that they have “nothing to lose by their chains.” Which meant that socialist revolution was inevitable.
Well, it didn’t work that way. Over 150 years, industrial capitalism has managed to give the underclass a standard of living that is envied around the world. A factory worker with a boat parked in his drive way, and a color TV and a refrigerator and indoor plumbing in his house, isn’t going to rise up. He’s got it good and he knows it. The “immiseration thesis” has turned out completely wrong.
The new approach to try to rehabilitate the immiseration thesis is called the “Relative Immiseration Thesis” and it’s a blatant appeal to envy. Yeah, you guys have it good with your boats and TVs and microwave ovens, but THE RICH HAVE IT A LOT BETTER THAN YOU DO. So rise up in Socialist revolution, you stupid proles!
It hasn’t worked any better than the original immiseration thesis, but the left keeps harping on it because it’s the only arrow they have left in their quiver.
Steven Den Beste (99cfa1) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:01 pmDarrell Issa is absolutely right.
MSL (5f601f) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:02 pmI was recently exposed to the poor people in the Country of Haiti. These people fight everyday just for the basics of life itself being water and protein.
Our poor here in America have those in abundance, we don’t see children here in America that have orange colored hair because they lack protein in there diet. No we see poor kids that are overweight because they have abundance and then some.
I still remember what a Punjabi merchant told me here in the Bay Area: He came to the USA because he wanted to live in a country where poor people were fat.
Peter B (93eaf4) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:09 pmSteven Den Beste, John Kerry of the New Zealand built (cuz he could get a better deal there than here) 70 foot yacht docked in Rhode Island to avoid Massachusetts taxes sez you and the bitter clinging bass boat owners in Texas and you houseboat owners on Lake Havasu are WRONG!
Rise up against your oppressors. The Koch brothers.
http://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2015/05/Koch-vs-Clinton-copy.jpg
Envy. It’s what for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nobody will be happy unless nobody can have anything more than an inner tube for a float down the river.
Except the party elite. The pigs who are more equal than other barnyard animals. They get yachts, as they’ve done so much for the nameless, faceless masses who don’t matter anyway that you owe them.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:15 pmOff on a tangent. Again.
This is why I understand Texans don’t want people from Kali moving here.
http://reason.com/archives/2015/05/09/will-austin-proposal-to-control-barbecue
Basically, it works like this. People come here from Kali because there are no jobs. Because they shut down businesses like Sriracha because of the smell.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/judge-decide-whether-shut-down-sriracha-hot-sauce-factory-over-odor-complaints/
And then they get here. And complain about the BBQ smell.
I’m almost ashamed to be me.
But Texas, I’m not with them. I love the sweet stink of freedom. Just like I could happily live under the approach of a Naval Air Base and enjoy the noise of freedom.
Maybe it needed to be said.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:29 pmLet’s all have a lib-annoying BBQ on Earth Day.
After the burn out competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=11&v=Cf5xinbZayg
And of course the bar stool race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=22&v=D5_UUDjWWyQ
And of course the machine gun shoot and morning dove hunt.
Then we can put the guns away and break out the beers, Texas, and enjoy the BBQ and the Blue Angels as they spew tons of carbon into the air during their beautiful airshow.
Happy in the knowledge we are angering all the right people.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:47 pmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWRckIMingk
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 10:52 pmI misspoke @27.
You can’t have an Earth Day dove hunt. Unless we move Earth Day to the Autumn.
Even if it were legal, as it currently stands the migration patterns of the doves wouldn’t coincide.
Let’s make it an Earth Day boar hunt. They’re always here, even if in hot weather you have to root them out of the ravines.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/9/2015 @ 11:12 pmBoar is something I have yet to smoke, Yoda.
mg (31009b) — 5/10/2015 @ 3:20 amHave had Boar smoked in a pit in Hawaii, very fruity as they eat fruit that falls from the trees. Like a true vegan!
i’d like to see the rolling papers for that.
Bill H (08df09) — 5/10/2015 @ 6:31 amStow it, Jake. I AM in your shoes. I’ve had little to no income for the past 5 years, relying on my dad and what i could sell of mine that had any worth to keep my head above water. And ya know what? I’m still in considerably better shape than damn near any “poor” person in pretty much any other country on this planet. Here’s a little test for you; have your own car? What about a TV, or air conditioning, or a cell phone (not an Obamaphone)? Have access to healthcare? I can see you have a computer and access to the internet, and chances are it ain’t 2400 baud dial-up. I’m willing to bet you don’t do it a lot, but you occasionally go out to eat or go see a movie.
The difference between my outlook and yours? Yah- by American standards, I am poor. Also by American standards, I’m trying to do something about it, rather than cry about how mean Mr Issa is to my ego.
Bill H (08df09) — 5/10/2015 @ 6:50 amYou mean, like all the dumbf**ks who complained about the noise that emanated from NAS (later MCAS) Miramar AFTER they moved into the new housing that surrounded the airbase?
Bill H (08df09) — 5/10/2015 @ 7:03 amYeah, that’s one of the examples I was thinking of. Neighborhoods were built around a preexisting Naval Air Station. People would buy houses in those new neighborhoods built closer and closer to the old NAS.
And they were stunned, STUNNED, to find we flew jets out of that old NAS.
I guess they thought it was only a movie set from Top Gun.
I’m glad I’m old and decrepit and retired. I didn’t join the Navy so I could live in Le Moore. The segue to Hanford. If I wanted to live in some miserable, middle-of-nowhere spot I’d have joined the Air Force.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 7:51 amGreetings:
One of my more entertaining insights into America’s decline comes from the “Judge Judy” TV programs. When one sees the number of cases of litigants with what used to be referred to as “no visible means of support” yet plenty of consumer goods, one must take pause and reconsider whether ownership of big screen TVs, laptop computers, and cell phones has now become, not an “entitlement” but a constitutional right.
And just the other day, I came across an article about “food stamps” leading to obesity which, of course, then leads to eligibility for disability payments. In India, this is not a problem of note.
11B40 (0f96be) — 5/10/2015 @ 9:26 amIssa has it right. Drive out of the Mumbai international airport through the largest slum in Asia and you will never think about poverty the same way. Hundreds of millions of people in India wonder every morning not just what they will eat, but whether they will eat. If they do eat, they won’t cook with a safe indoor cooking area under a roof that won’t leak and they won’t have access to clean water or indoor toilet facilities.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 11:58 amhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1047399/Barack-Obamas-half-brother-discovered-Kenya-living-dollar-month.html
As Mark Steyn pointed out, our Preezy could send his half brother a Birthday card with a $10 bill and nearly double his annual income. But, Democrats don’t do “personal generosity” like they criticized Mitt Romney for. It’s not their own personal wealth they plan on redistributing.
Meanwhile in the US:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fla-bill-ban-ebt-withdrawals-strip-clubs-liquor/story?id=18948339
There is actually a need to debate whether or not welfare recipients can use their EBT cards at liquor stores, strip clubs, and casinos. Seriously. Some legislators (guess that party) think it’s wrong to try and stop this.
America’s “poor.” Buying tequila and stuffing dollars into a stripper’s g string on the taxpayer’s dime.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 12:35 pmKatherine @36, if you’ve traveled to the right (and by right I mean wrong) garden spots around the world then you know. Our media functions like the mirror image of the NORK’s. NORK diplomats and other privileged people who can travel know the truth; the rest of the world is much better off. Their propaganda arms tell the NORK population that the rest of the world is starving and destitute while North Korea is the worker’s paradise.
Our propaganda arm is there to tell people who haven’t seen for themselves what real urban and rural poverty looks like in the Philippines, Panama, Namibia, Zimbabwe, etc., looks like that America is a h3llhole.
Child sex tourism isn’t flourishing in Cuba because those people are doing well. Right now in some Jordanian camp for Syrian refugees families are offering up their daughters to rich Saudis for Mutah. Islamic temporary marriage (there’s some controversy about whether or not it was abrogated, especially between the Sunni and Shia, but it still goes on). The rich guy offers a “bride price” and gets the girl for up to three days. Then they “divorce.” The family gets by.
They wouldn’t be doing that if they could go down to Pizza Hut and get a large everything but ham and put it on their EBT card.
I remember meeting a friend at a bar/restaurant in Oakland’s Jack London square. We’re sitting at the bar having a drink and a very loud, very militant black man is making his views about the racism of the system well known to the bartenders. And to someone on the other end of his cell phone conversation. How the racist system is killing people who are dying in the streets.
I’m pretty much in person just like I come across on the intertubes. So after listening to him mouth off I say something along the lines of “Show me this grinding poverty. I just drove through those neighborhoods. I saw satellite dishes, window air conditioners, and cars. Where are these starving people dying without shoes in the gutters?”
I’ve been to places, not Mumbai but other places, where without a Mother Theresa they would be dying in the streets. I told him he didn’t know what real poverty looked like.
My bud chimed in, as he was at the time an editor for a major local daily, saying he wanted to see, too. And he’d report on it. Take us.
The guy wouldn’t put up. He couldn’t. It was all a delusion on his part. The poor in America are more likely to die of complications from high cholesterol than starvation.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 1:25 pmif you stuff an ebt dollar into a florida stripper’s g-string…
what have you done?
a tax-free transaction!
failmerica needs more of this not less
happyfeet (831175) — 5/10/2015 @ 1:28 pmYa know, Mr. feets.
The taxpayer who provided that dollar for the g-string stuffing could have done that tax free transaction just as well.
If, uh, he or she hadn’t been taxed so somebody else could do it. And then there’s the managerial overhead to support the tax free stuffings of g-strings by people who don’t work but live off of people who do.
America needs less of that, not more.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 1:45 pmSteve57 @38, yep, I have personally seen poverty in India. I have seen Egypt as well, which isn’t as bad; however, there were reports of poor families in the villages selling their daughters in temporary marriage to Gulf Arabs, mostly older men, for cash.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 2:00 pmegypt is pretty effing bad
happyfeet (831175) — 5/10/2015 @ 2:16 pmMr. 57 you know what you are?
an over thinker
I was once just like you
then i stopped
happyfeet (831175) — 5/10/2015 @ 2:17 pmIt changes you, once you understand what’s going on around you.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 2:32 pmIt does change you. There was a road construction crew working near where we lived (Maharashtra). Families were living in low tents constructed of plastic sheeting hung over two stakes and a line in between. The women carry construction materials on their heads, and stop to nurse their babies when they cry from the hammocks hung between stakes. No clean water, no toilets. The families live this way and move from site to site.
Egypt was, in comparison, cleaner, which is not to say clean.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 2:48 pmIt sounds like you do good work, Katherine.
Me? I’m a Sailor. When it comes to disaster relief I start with how many latrines we’re going to need and no pun intended work backwards form there.
Garbage in, garbage out. Sanitation isn’t glamorous but somebody has to think about it.
If we can get a large deck amphib in close enough we can provide the water and the calories to sustain life. If we can get a nuclear carrier in, we can light up a city.
But you aren’t in disaster relief. You’re into the everyday.
Steve57 (e468ba) — 5/10/2015 @ 3:27 pmI was just living there, in support of my husband. We did what we could for the people we came into contact with, but the scope of the problem in India is so massive that small personal efforts make little difference, and that’s the most frustrating part. In both places, in my opinion, the religions make part of the problem. In both approaches there is a fatalism which makes systemic change harder. Somewhat to my surprise, my original idea that I’d have more in common with monotheistic Muslims than with polytheistic Hindus proved incorrect. We had friends in both places. but the cultural differences are vast.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 3:40 pmis that the main problem, or is it the remnants of the corporatist regime, from the Indian Congress and it’s Egyptian counterpart, what De Soto criticized in ‘the Other Path’
narciso (ee1f88) — 5/10/2015 @ 3:55 pmIt’s true that both countries, India and Egypt, began as socialist/oligarchical states. My own feeling is that India is more likely to become a freer economy and therefore a more healthy economy. There are complaints about religious repression from the BJP-led government, but it was the BJP which made economic improvement the last time it was in power. India is so vast and so diverse that its British heritage has left it with a parliamentary system which it needs to function and be a state. Egypt and most other Arab nations have, again in my opinion, a cultural and religious (since the two are the same) bias towards strong-man leadership. My Christian friends find the Sisi government greatly preferable to the Brotherhood government. However Egypt will likely remain an oligarchical and centrally controlled state.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 4:15 pmthat has to be part of it, what truly statist regimes, allow for real economic growth instead of redistribution, like the nordic countries, even with the UK, the Cameron regime settled for
narciso (ee1f88) — 5/10/2015 @ 4:26 pmhigh taxes on everything, and little growth incentives, which is why I see this week’s elections as a glass half full.
It will be interesting to see what Cameron does without having to compromise with the Lib Dems. We may find out how “conservative” he is.
Katherine (032708) — 5/10/2015 @ 4:48 pmleaving out the raw story link, because voldemort:
http://www.inquisitr.com/2077027/rep-darrell-issa-calls-american-poor-envy-of-the-world-somewhat/
narciso (ee1f88) — 5/10/2015 @ 4:54 pmOur esteemed host wrote:
Every economy is nothing more than the aggregate of the individual decisions of individual people; socialist nations may restrict those decisions more, but the notion that the socialist or even communist countries could control their economies has been proved wholly false by experience. The socialists think that they are smarter than the economy, but that has never been the case.
There was an old Soviet myth about the One Ton Nail. The factory manager had a quote of producing a ton of nails, but he didn’t have the capability to produce a ton of regular nails; what he could do was produce one nail that weighed a ton, so that’s what he did to meet his quota in he Five Year Plan. The central planners were happy, because he met his quota, and his wife was happy that he didn’t go to the Gulag, but his individual decisions, even in the command economy meant that the economy didn’t have a ton of usable nails.
The economist Dana (f6a568) — 5/11/2015 @ 4:57 amKatherine wrote:
Conservatives in the UK, and in all of democratic Europe, would be regarded, under American standards, as pretty far to the left. The dole will remain, the National Health Service will remain, and all of the left-wing social pap will remain in place.
The Anglophile Dana (f6a568) — 5/11/2015 @ 5:00 amIssa is correct:
The bottom 1% of the US, the lowest of the low, live in the 62% percentile in terms of standard of living globally.
Jeffrey (2eddb6) — 5/11/2015 @ 10:00 amSome animals, yes, I’m sure. There are some very pampered animals in America. You got a problem with thta? The fact remains that the poorest people in America live better than the Sun King did. Nobody starves in America because they can’t get food. Nobody freezes in America because they can’t get shelter. Nobody has to do without the basic necessities of life; some people choose to do so, but in much of the world it isn’t a choice.
Milhouse (bdebad) — 5/11/2015 @ 7:22 pmMe too.
Milhouse (bdebad) — 5/11/2015 @ 7:36 pmIn America we don’t have starvation, we have “food insecurity”. I know what food insecurity is, Jake. I’ve been there. And it beats starvation any day.
Milhouse (bdebad) — 5/11/2015 @ 7:37 pmSame story with any airport or highway.
Milhouse (bdebad) — 5/11/2015 @ 7:40 pmAs will the “hate speech” laws, the disarmament laws (and the resulting crime), and the petty interference with anything a person wants to do.
Milhouse (bdebad) — 5/11/2015 @ 7:54 pmWell then the socialist economy is a result of decisions made by individuals and the State, disproving your assertion that it is an aggregate of decisions by individuals.
Patterico (9c670f) — 5/11/2015 @ 9:24 pmRight on.
Bill H (08df09) — 5/11/2015 @ 9:33 pm