The USA, land of multi-millionaires

Source: Too Much.

If you ambition is to be a millionaire or multi-millionaire, your chances are probably greater here in the United States than they are any place else.  The USA has more of them than any other country, and the number is growing.

The problem is that average and middle-class Americans aren’t doing so well.  According to the current neo-liberal philosophy, that is perfectly okay.  Winners should be rewarded, losers should suffer and rich people are (by definition) winners.

I hold to the older philosophy, which is that rewards should go to entrepreneurs and other successful people only because and only when they create things of value to the rest of us.

The justification for capitalism is that it is not a zero-sum game – that increasing the wealth of the rich does not necessarily make the rest of us poorer.  During the 1950s and 1960s, I thought this plausible – at least for Americans.  I don’t think this justification holds true for the USA today.

I wouldn’t make too much of the difference between the rest of the world and the USA.   Much of the rest of the world’s wealthy nations are following in our footsteps, and many of the world’s poorer nations are already in the place where we’re heading.

LINKS

The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground by Pew Research Center.

Demise of the US Middle Class Now Official by Yves Smith for naked capitalism.

Tags: Distribution of Income, Distribution of Wealth, Middle class, Millionaires