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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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If the system isn't working for the majority, maybe it's the system that's flawed rather than individuals?
It is working for the majority is the thing. Most people have jobs, food on the table, and a roof over their head.
The people not well off are at a local maxima, sure, but way more than 50% of people have a comfortable life here in the west, so the system is working for most people.
It's a tough pill to swallow, as much as life sucjs here in the west, it's still a fuck tonne better than many other way way way shittier countries out there. US and Canada are still in the top 20% of places to live in the world.
If you look at the current state of society and think "things are working well for the majority of people" I'm not sure we'll be able to engage in any meaningful discussion.
It literally is working for the majority of people mate, however you feel about it, poverty is the very small minority.
I would love to make poverty even less of an issue in the west, dont get me wrong, but the average person is fed, has a roof over their head, has a job, and is getting by.
Homelessness, poverty, illness, etc is a minority and that literally means the average person is not in that group.
Literally by definition, the average person is not the minority. That's what the average means...
Poverty doesn't refer exclusively to homeless people.
I had to come back to this comment just to point out that this isn't the definition of "average" and the "average" person could very well be in the minority depending on what we're measuring (and which measure of central tendency we're referring to when we say "average").
As an example: The mean number of limbs for humans is lower than 4. However, the overwhelming majority of humans have four limbs.
Irrelevant - people who already own their homes, and people who already locked in mortgage rates in the past are not the topic of discussion here.
Rather, even people who are diligent are losing hope that a home will be within reach, due to all the factors under discussion. Also, diligent people who cannot afford a home NOW are having to shell out rent, rather than build up equity, which isn't helping their future situation.
A better argument might be "the housing market undergoes swings, and you just have to wait it out, the same as past generations had to do". However, there are several indicators that point to the fact that people in younger generations are not living life as high as was done previously - and there are many reasons for that, some intrinsic, some external such as globalization and automation - but regardless, the fact is that they have less hope than people in past generations.
And I am not certain that they should? Hope in what, based on what evidence - that the major Powers That Be, which secularly are what, the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court as part of government, and outside of that, Corporations? Will the dawn of AI fix everything?
Please check your privilege: life in the Western world is only better than many third world nations for those who have money. For those who do not, it is significantly worse.
Factually false mate.
The west has enormous infrastructure for people, welfare programs, shelters, upskilling programs, anti-poverty measures, etc.
Do you actually think someone without money in a third world country is better off than someone without money in the United States?
That's wild if you do. I can't imagine what a sheltered life a person has to lead to think that a homeless person in Mexico, or North Korea, or Russia, etc etc, is actually living a better life than a homeless person in the US...
Wild.
I do not expect you to believe me - this world would be a far better place if people were not so naive and actually looked at facts. Also, I doubt my ability to convey things well, or accurately, but to give you a start at least: take a look at the stats for, lets say, infant mortality. They are rather wild. Also visit an inner city: the lack of medical care in particular is shocking. I am not shitting you, but doctors organizations have literally started sending teams here to the USA, particularly in the southwestern areas near the border. One of the more interesting data points is the percentage of vaccinated people: some citizens of a third-world nation might literally kill for a vaccine, whereas here in the USA people snub their noses and refused to take it even when it was free.
Mate you understand that literally having a hospital at all already puts one in the top 50% out if the gate, right?
Quick litmus test:
If you take a shower in water you can drink, you are in the top 20% worldwide. If you can fill your water bottle up at a tap, you are in the top 20%.
I volunteer at a homeless shelter on weekends and literally just the incredulous reaction some folks had when they same me casually refill my water bottle from the tap really firmly reminded me where some people are at from other countries.
We wash our hands casually with water we can also drink.
That is incredible wealth on the global scale
Palestinians right now are drinking literal sewage to survive.
I shower and can open my mouth and gargle the water coming out of that shower head.
On the global scale, the very fact you are posting on this Lemmy instance means you are in the global 1%.
It could be better, bit by God it ca be a billion times worse too, so I try and always keep perspective on that when I see doom posting about how it sucks so bad that millenials don't all get to own individual mcmansions like boomers got to.
First, thank you SO MUCH for your personal service. This should never devolve into a mere academic issue, to win fake points in some impersonal debate with someone online that will never meet irl. But if it was that, then you are definitey winning in the boots-on-the-ground sense, and I for one think that's so freaking awesome!:-P
Yeah I do not know everything, I just know what I read, e.g. https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-has-highest-infant-maternal-mortality-rates-despite-the-most-health-care-spending. Ofc not every place world-wide is the same, and not every place in the USA is the same either, though I find it highly troubling that not just one but many places inside the USA has an infant mortality rate worst than SOME (though not all) nations that are considered "third-world" (e.g. https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2019/04/addressing-the-health-crisis-of-black-maternal-death-and-infant-mortality, and this was even from several years ago before the recent data - COVID? - pushed our ranking down from 32 to 51st).
Though details aside, yes it could always be worse, I cannot argue with you there:-). Mostly I think it means that we should not pat ourselves on the back saying "good job, America!" b/c there's so much that remains to be done. But also, I don't see how telling people who are grieving the loss of their futures that it can always get much worse is going to help? Then again, we are only dancing around semantics here - regardless of how it is phrased or handled, I do agree that we need to adjust our expectations moving forward, and opening our eyes to check our first-world privileges is a fantastic start to that:-).
This is a valid concern, and it's true you can measure QoL on a variety of different metrics.
I'd be really curious to know by what the infant mortality rate is so high in the US specifically, what's killing them by comparison?
Cuz I know their Healthcare statement isn't great but still, it's hard to imagine it's doing that bad, is another factor at play? Their poverty isn't bad enough to explain it, and I dunno if gun violence plays a huge role for infant deaths (child and teen deaths though, absolutely)
What's the cutoff for infant? Old enough for guns to start factoring in, cuz that's a serious issue on its own as well.
I truly don't know. But why would poverty be insufficient to account for it? If you lack access to medical care facilities, it's a whole different world. "Third-world" nations at least have a history of midwives and such, but in the USA if the "expectation" was to go to the hospital, but then you don't actually go, the facilities that are available can be lesser. There is also a segment of society where rich women choose to use midwives rather than go to care facilities, and I wonder how much that plays a role as well (in terms of infant deaths not due to poverty, but bc of misinformation).
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm - admittedly I am no expert at reading this, but it looks like poverty at first glance. Moreover, it looks like if not all the right-wing-controlled areas, at least the ones that are the most racist - looking at the race distribution table it is, how shall we say, not white people even in those areas. Almost like "those people" (non-white) are allowed to pay taxes, but when it comes time to apportion the spending priorities, the white people in charge choose to spend elsewhere, every time. Access to food, ability to get away from toxins, as well as pregnancy-specific concerns.
Interestingly (to me), the causes of infant deaths in America seem very different (again to my unpracticed eye) than those worldwide: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/infant-mortality/topicinfo/causes.
But I could be biased, after having watched this: https://youtu.be/-v0XiUQlRLw?si=3CruIh83bPWX6dKA. That's probably a good thing, since we should be biased towards facts:-). I hope that video helps explain my contention that there is not just one single "American experience", and rather there is kind of a second experience altogether depending on skin color and location. And the latter overlaps nontrivially with "third-world" nations, despite being amidst the land of plenty.
Part of what made America a beacon of hope for the world was how while it had its top people and the people mashed down at the bottom, same as everywhere, most of the people were somewhere in the middle. Whereas now, the bottom isn't so much getting any lower (if anything it should mainly rise as medical stuff becomes even cheaper over time?) but the average is dropping, fast, to get closer to joining it.:-| Though ofc it still has a long way to go, and things may always change in the meantime (even if that looks doubtful right now).