Lol this has been a good rule of thumb for a while. There's not a richer nation on earth that feels poorer than the US.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
751 points (99.3% liked)
Political Memes
8156 readers
2653 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Who woulda thought the most capitalist developed nation on earth would also have the most inequality?
It's almost like thats a features of unfettered capitalism, not a bug.
... but we're far from the most unequal nation on earth?
Inequality is a feature of capitalism, but it's not as simple as a linear relationship between the development of capitalism and inequality.
Among developed countries. The situation is low and middle income countries is very different and not comporable.
Goverment regulation to protect the working class and promote unions is the remedy for this which the US is sorely lacking.
Goverbmenr regulation to protect the working class ans promote unions is the remedy for this which the US is sorely lacking.
Definite agree here.
Wait 12-18 months.
More recent data from Our World in Data.
The only countries with a higher Gini coefficient after taxes (higher=more inequality) are Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile.
https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality-before-and-after-taxes
Is this adjusted for GDP per capita? Because apparently US workers are the most productive in the world so they really should be all doing well
It really is. I've lost count of how many times I've visited the US and the massive class divide and disparity, plus the general state of despair, hits me every time
For the average person.
If you are rich, there is no better country in the world than the USA.
But if you work for a living you'll be getting ground into powder.
Sadly 50% of the population think they are rich, so they don't even realize how awful they have it. Being afraid of getting sick and going bankrupt is insane in 2025 for a civilized country.
Yet here we are....
I'd disagree, a stable and well functioning society is better for the rich - but they'd rather have instability and a penny more, than seeing the poor prosper in any fashion.
You only got one thing wrong The rich look at a poor person with a penny and think "that penny could be mine". They don't even see the poor person, just the penny.
No man, I mean for the rich too.
It is depressing to travel around the US and see crumbling infrastructure, poverty, crime etc. and that makes you feel much less safe overall.
And the craziest part is that unless you're homeless in the US, you're in the top 10% wealthiest in the world.
Love it. I use the same logic in the US.
Man I hope our politicians have realised this, I feel everyone i know understands how fucked up the USA is but yet our politicians copy everything they do a few years later
The libs are fighting over it right now.
They're electing a new leader on Tuesday.
Taylor is going to double down on Trumpism. There's a faction that somehow believes they lost the election because they didn't do nutty right wing culture wars hard enough.
Ley is going to be more centrist.
Ley? A WOMAN leading the Liberal Party? There's no way.
After their abysmal showing, and given their uncertain future, giving the poison chalice to a woman would be very on brand for the Libs. If it wins some votes they'll take it, if it doesn't then they have a license to continue being male, pale, and stale for another decade.
They're probably right. There simply are not enough empathetic, moral and not entirely mentally challenged Americans to win through elections. If you want power in America, you have to lean into Third Reich and show the average American you're just like them (hateful, amoral, hellbound and immature).
No fucking shit lol.
That’s true for pretty much everything.
Took the world long enough to figure it out.
(OK actually we did do one thing well, we made it really easy for adults to get gender affirming care by adopting the informed consent model)
It's funny we finally got here. For the longest time it was the exact opposite. There is hope, maybe we can still turn this ship around (before it falls off the edge).
Finally? Private health rebates have been around quite some time. There's been a two-tiered system for non-emergency hospital healthcare for literal decades now, and we don't have a fully public system anyway. So much of our doctors are subsidised private businesses.
Let's be clear, this whack-a-mole of bulk-billing is never gonna end until we vastly expand directly employed healthcare workers, at competitive rates, and kill the profit motive in our healthcare system.
Death to private health insurance. All of it. It's a scam.
Not saying this is you, but I grow tired of Australians being proud of the state of Medicare. Chiming in to dunk on the Americans is super cringe because the bar is so, so low.