Today I write this post to say how sorry I feel for my American brothers and sisters. Societies all over the world are feeling the negative effects of late stage capitalism and hyper-neoliberalism, but when we take into account the developed countries only, American citizens have it worse than most.
source: PxHere
America is the richest country in the history of the world. Never before has an empire, and yes, America is an empire, garnered so much wealth, yet 90% of its population isn't rich at all. There are 18.5 million millionaires in America, of which more than 600 are billionaires. There's approximately 100 trillion dollars accumulated across all American households, but more than 30% of that is owned by the top 1%. Here's a snippet from an October 2020 Forbes article:
According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth).
source: Forbes
The bottom 50% of America's population holds less than 2% of all available wealth; this is why, after a full year of the pandemic with all its negative economical consequences, so many Americans have it so difficult. If only "socialism" wasn't such a feared ideology, then maybe Americans would understand that this state of affairs is simply wrong. I'm going to contradict JFK here for a moment and say that you all should ask what your government can do for you, and stop asking for a moment what you can do for your government. Since the late 1970s your government hasn't done anything for you, dear Americans. Neo-liberal governments aren't in the business of serving their people, they're in the business of serving markets, and that's with both major political parties. Sure, one's slightly worse than the other, but both the Republican and the Democrat parties are employed by, and work for their donors, not the voters.
To reassure my American friends a little bit, I'll repeat what I said in a 2019 post of mine with the same title:
Don't feel like you're standing alone in this weird twilight zone of multiple parties wearing different masks, hiding identical faces; in almost all "modern western democracies" the same thing has been happening. All western governments have fallen for their corporate masters. The simple fact that wages haven't kept pace with economic growth, not even close, literally everywhere, should be all you need to know. Or ask yourself this: when was the last time any party has come into power on a program of increasing taxes for businesses or the rich? In which western democracy have the people not been told that what's best for the rich is what's best for the economy, and therefore is what's best for the people?
Americans have the worst deal because America is the most developed country in the neoliberal world, but we'll all get there sooner or later if nothing changes. And that's just the developed world; the rest of the world is continuously being sucked dry or bombarded in name of the same 1% in America and other developed countries. The criminal unequal divide in America can be extrapolated to the globe; one third is relatively rich and the rest lives in abject poverty. Hey, it's a global economy, modeled after and by America after all... What it amounts to, is that America is the world's most capitalistic nation in the world, which is why it sucks at almost everything if you're not part of the 1%. Please watch the video, also if you're not an American, because if things don't change we're all going to follow America's example, just as we've done so many times before...
David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything
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