Americans’ median income is $60,000 – but the average American couldn’t
stump up $500 to bail themselves out of an emergency, and a third of
Americans can’t afford food, shelter and healthcare.
It’s a paradox: Americans have a relatively high level of income, and
consumer goods are cheaper in the USA than they are almost anywhere else
in the world, but Americans are poorer and more indebted than people in
any other wealthy country.
It’s because the US has deregulated the basics for human survival:
housing, education, transport, finance, and health-care, and turned them
over to unfettered rent-seeking and profit-taking by the private
sector, allowing them to grow to consume all the money Americans take
home and more, leaving them indebted and precarious.
People in wealthy countries with comparable median incomes have higher
standards of living than their American counterparts, with higher levels
of savings and lower levels of debt – despite paying more for consumer
goods.
America has invented a new kind of poverty: wealthy poverty, where high
earnings and low prices still leave you indebted and precarious.
