• Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 months ago

    “Relatively wealthy”

    It’s probably appropriate for Americans (and Amero-weebs aka “guys who think they’re on the team but absolutely are not” (looking at you Eastern Europeans who love America)) to stop this cope over PERSONAL WEALTH and consumption as a measure of a nationstate’s wealth overall.

    By every measurement I can think of and data exists for, China’s population is “wealthier” than America. Oh, except in the areas of, you know, the shitty things. Like concentrating wealth in a top 1% and top top 0.1% of families. Or endlessly consuming shit for no purpose other than to distract from your meaningless life. As far as what I’d call true measures of a nation’s wealth, things like (nutritious) caloric intake and availability, literacy rates, availability of healthcare (meaning the cost as well), child and adult educational opportunities and attainment, public works projects like building roads, energy grids and production ability, building rail and high tech trains… on and on. America has been declining for at least ~50 years in all of those areas. As in it just gets worse and worse. While China has been going up and up and skyrocketing in the recent decade or two.

    This kinda cuts into the roots of the “GDP discussion” or rather the insistence of capitalist-minded (or biased) economists and random people on using the irrelevant GDP figure to “show” that capitalism and the US/EU specifically are “superior” economically. Goes back to the USSR as well and now days it’s still moronically being clung to. A measurement of economic consumption means nothing about the “wealth” of nations. Unless your only measure of wealth is how many PlayStations can you buy…

    Of course all the discussions of economics between US/China also leaves out the obvious history of one nation being a settler colonial slave state turned into dominant imperial power post-world war 2. That only makes the current state of the US more pathetic. The biggest head start perhaps in history, built on immeasurable human suffering, only to throw it all away so that Elon can jump on stage and try to do an X with his body, while people are homeless on the streets and the state can only find endless funding to support genocide. I don’t think future civilizations (or whatever species might replace humans as the dominant intelligent life form if we blast ourselves from existence) will even believe what they are reading when they learn about the last few hundred years. It’s just beyond comprehension