Subsistence farmers weren't cramped in filthy disease ridden workhouses, getting paid in company scrip, getting mangled by machines (OK they were but probably not as often) or being locked into burning buildings because preventing theft of stock was more important to owners than the lives of employees. And subsistence farmers owned what they produced and the means by which it was produced, whereas industrial workers owned nothing but the pennies in their pocket, and likely owed more than that to the company.
It took years of often violent protest for workers to return to even the basic level of dignity and rights once afforded to craftsmen and farmers. Not that the lives of subsistence farmers and craftsmen were good, but they were better than what the dehumanization of mass production and automation created.
But then comparing farmers and workers in this context is a bit specious. It would be more fair to compare, say, textile workers before the automated loom and textile workers after. Obviously the former had it much better off, which was precisely the problem automation was intended to solve.
The dream then was to go to America and become a farmer and OWN your own farm. No one dreamt to immigrate to America to work in the industrial factories.
Why was that the American dream at the time if farming was the worse option?
You are absolutely wrong. Do you even work in Manhattan? If you stand outside Fulton St. or Wall St. stations at 8:30am you’ll see that the vast majority of “Wall St. Bros” take the subway to work.
I’ve worked in the World Trade Center for 5 years now and I don’t recall any coworkers who drive to work.
Oh vey! YOU don't know what you are talking about. You are average investment Bankie who claims to make dollars.
Your response is emotional and not practical. Tell me how Congestion Pricing is not a tax on poor and does not take away their hard earned money for no reason? Does it not comfort for rich people who make money on stocks mostly?
It does now, perhaps, for complete rewrites. I've not looked recently.
But its suggestion system, where it spots wordy patterns and suggests clearer alternatives, was available long before LLMs were the new hotness, and is considerably more nuanced (and educational).
Grammarly would take apart the nonsense in that screenshot and suggest something much less "dark and stormy night".
Thrive is one of the 10 most respected firms in venture capital. They work super hard and have a track record to prove it. Nobody who knows what they’re talking about would consider them dumb money.
You are correct that most of Western Europe is ahead at the first decile, but you are incorrect to imply that it’s at the top 1% that the advantage goes away. In fact, the US meets the richest EU countries at the 50th percentile (meaning the median person is equally better off) and at the 90th percentile, you are much much better off in the US - it’s not comparable. The fact is, for everyone middle class (not by a local definition of middle class - literally middle) or above, the US will have you significantly better off. https://www.ft.com/content/ef265420-45e8-497b-b308-c951baa68...
And it's hard to get this data for Europe but looking at the "Median" column for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_distribution_in_Europe it looks like the US middle class would slot into fourth place, just below Denmark which is at 165k, and far ahead of say, Germany, which is at 65k.
Through the argument here is more about living standards then how "well of" someone is from a materialistic POV.
Like one thing I realized is that it seems that you need to earn way more in the US to have a similar level of living quality/standard compared to the EU. As far as I can tell I probably would need to earn ~50% more to have the same quality of live level in the US compared to where I live now. Through it probably depends a lot on where you are in the US/EU.
Isn't the USA middle class shrinking though? We're quickly bifurcating into a "really better off" group and a "really worse off" group, with little in the middle.
