Faceman, looking at the poverty levels of the USA yes, they are higher percentage wise, and as shown on the another thread the poorest of other countries enjoy a high percent of buying/purchasing power then the poor of the USA as compaired to the rich of each country. To that I say if you are willing to spread the misery(sp?) out amoung the popluation of your countries I'll not stand in your way.
We choose not to do that. So I would ask that we are given the same courtisey(sp?) of choosing how we wish to do things as I am giving. Here is why I believe we do what we do based on years of living here and opperating under this system. 1) the greater the reward the greater the risk.2) the greater the reward the greater number of people that will asume the risk.3) the greater the number that assume the risk the greater the number that will succede or fail. History is full of examples of these truths, look at the 200+ years of US history we rose from a backward lowman on the totempole country to the most powerful country ever to exist. Which direction have all the other countries gone? using more recent times the last 50-75 years the gap has widened even more. The best way I believe to track the movement of people through the economic levels is checking out what the medium income is of a country. As more people move upward the medium income rises, since it is the income level in which 1/2 of the population makes more then and 1/2 of the poulationmakes less the.
Now lets look at where the rubber meets the road, the reality of the poor in the USA. I'll bet you'll find the poor in the USA have a greater home ownership percent, car ownership percentage, Ownership of anytype of item that can be considered a luixury(sp?), A/C, computer, etc.
The majority of those considered the poor are people just starting out, nearly everybody starts out at the bottom, if they didn't there would be no where to go. There is no way a person just starting out should expect to have achieved the level of sucess that I have in 25+ years of working, I got my first job at age 14 cleaning up a restaurant and cutting their grass for $4.00 an hr. in every other job I started I allways started at the bottom and worked my way up. Now that I have the experiance in my choosen field if somebody wants to hire me I can demand more pay because of my experiance 19 years in the field of screenprinting and have won several national and international awards from the industry. I've paid my dues.