"America has the richest poor in the world!"

[pbrower2a]

What utter, meaningless rot.  American poor are much worse off than poor in dozens of other countries, and anyway it is poverty in context and relatively speaking that matters..

Indeed. We in America can do far more for the poor in America than we can do for the poor in India -- and of course more than people in India can do on behalf of their own poor. But our economic elite have become brutally adept in doing nasty stuff to everyone else, and their political stooges tell us that it is all for the best.

We see the consequences of crony capitalism and the development of a rapacious  nomenklatura in Big Business that enriches a few yet denies opportunity to so many. The glass ceilings of the recent past have become lower, more rigid, and harder.

If Americans are poor yet have such 'luxuries' as TV sets and VCRs, then many of those are from 'good' times before the 2008 meltdown.  But the 19" CRT set and the VCR, let alone the VCR tapes of recorded movies aren't worth much anymore. If we had the same sorts of Pangloss-like figures in the media in the 1930s they would be deriding former members of the middle class for still having silverware (of real silver) and bone china, and maybe objects of Art Deco design that they had in the 1920s. Never mind that one couldn't then get much by selling the silverware, bone china, or Art Deco objects.

Poor people in America know or at least think that they know how elites live -- and the many of the elites make clear that they have no charity toward any but themselves. So what will it take for our economic elites to get a clue?

Capitalism survived what Karl Marx predicted as its imminent demise by making a market out of the proletariat. Capitalism, wherever it exists, survives to the extent that it offers something to people not themselves capitalists.  Our tycoons, executives, and big landowners seem to have forgotten that fact.

      

[pbrower2a]

Does anyone else remember a right-wing meme some years ago where "studies" found that the per capita GDP of Sweden was equivalent to that of Mississippi, or something? That well-off countries in Europe were equivalent to our poorest states?

But the poorest people in America are far worse off than the poorest in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium... Economic inequality in the USA is severe. 

[pbrower2a]

When I see the homeless man by the freeway on-ramp or a mother paying for formula with WIC coupons, I think, "man, these Americans have it on easy street. How rich these poor are!"

Well homelessness is a whole other can of worms IMO. A lot of that has to do with drug abuse, mental health etc.

Now as for the mom, yeah she definitely isn't as well off as her German or Swedish counterpart, but when compared to the whole world's poor she's doing ok. Her kids won't starve, and they have a decent chance of becoming obese

The line in the title is dumb and incorrect, but it contains a kernel of truth. After all, there are lots of people who want to become American poors.

We should be comparing ourselves to countries like Germany and Sweden -- not Egypt, India, Colombia, or Vietnam.

Americans not already poor do not want to become poor.

[pbrower2a]

Capitalism survived what Karl Marx predicted as its imminent demise by making a market out of the proletariat. Capitalism, wherever it exists, survives to the extent that it offers something to people not themselves capitalists.  Our tycoons, executives, and big landowners seem to have forgotten that fact. 

Wouldn't this tie into the 'assurational' vs. penal model of social control?  Of course the owning class prefer penal control of its slaves, but perhaps the other works better.

Power can be one of two things: the ability to do good for people and get appreciated for it -- or the ability to make people suffer should they fail to comply. Doing good for people and winning allies or customers requires more cleverness and self-reflection. Otherwise power comes from brutality.

The feudal lord had control over serfs that one can hardly imagine today -- he could murder at will. I don't know how prevalent the jus primae noctis was, but if the husband resisted the rape of his new wife by the feudal lord he would die a violent death. Maybe that is the heritage of the tradition that newlyweds get away as fast as possible from the place of the marriage for its consummation.

On more banal matters -- if one failed to turn out as much agricultural production as necessary, one did not eat. If one fled a brutal master one was a literal felon as a fugitive, and one's life was be forfeit. The Church? Its hierarchy aped that of the economic order, with those from 'low' backgrounds becoming toiling monks or at most parish priests assigned to the rural area where the feudal lord was still all-powerful. Priests of aristocratic origin rapidly advanced in the Church hierarchy, and not surprisingly they maintained their political and economic loyalties. Such priests of course blessed the wheel that broke the fugitive or the kindling upon ignition that consigned the heretic or rebel to death by burning.  It's hardly surprising that Christendom developed a powerful imagery of Heaven and Hell -- because Heaven was evident for the Elect of the social order and Hell was never far from the reality for the working poor.

Control by cruelty can be very effective. It's far easier to get people to work to exhaustion on starvation rations if one can threaten people with agonizing death for non-compliance (like threatening to cast anyone who doesn't produce enough shells in a concentration-camp factory into a crematorium without having first been gassed, hanged, or shot). It is far easier to get people to do suicide charges on the battlefield if there are people trained to bayonet any soldier who fails to go forward. 

Control by cruelty is terribly inflexible -- and what it can produce in an order that degrades humanity into machines is rarely valuable. A command society may be good at churning out cheap commodities, but real innovation requires that there be freedom. The horrible age of terror of medieval Europe was a singularly-impoverished time, one that could have made the hunter-gatherer era look good by contrast. It well fits leaders low on a scale of moral development.