It's not about turning the US into a European country, it's about decreasing wealth inequality. The US is doing a lot worse than the countries you mention--Gini of 41 for the US, vs 27-32 for Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany. The poverty rate and poverty gaps are also a lot higher in the US. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm

Perceived wealth inequality. The US has less wealth inequality because most of it is already wealthy. The shrinking middle class is shrinking because most of them are moving to the upper middle class.

Do you have any data to back up this claim? Parent comment provided links. It seems fair to me that a rebuttal should as well.

It's fairly well documented -> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrink...

Your link shows that, since 2000, the lower class has been growing and the middle and upper classes have been shrinking.

Sure, but since 1967, upper class has risen. The Great Recession is a confounding variable.

In a causal system the Great Recession is not a confounding variable, it's an inflection point. As will be the recession triggered by covid.

It is definitely a confounding variable in the context of the question at hand (posed by the GP commenter): why inequality is a bad thing, and whether it is directly responsible for the "shrinking middle class" going to the "lower class" instead of the "upper class".

Historically, the middle class has been shrinking because the upper class has been rising. Insofar as that hasn't been the case since 2000, it's not because of the mere existence of billionaires, it's because of a specific type of financial instrument (in one case), and a one-in-a-century global pandemic (in another case). The mere existence of Bill Gates et al did not cause either the credit default swap crisis or COVID-19.

> Since 2000, the middle class has been shrinking for a decidedly more alarming reason: Incomes have fallen.

How does that support the hypothesis that the middle class is shrinking because incomes are rising?

We're talking about since 1967. The Great Recession is a confounding variable.

Cold comfort for anyone born after 1990

Sure, but the root cause of that is pretty well known to be the proliferation of credit default swaps that led to a housing bubble that burst in 2008, and not the mere existence of billionaires writ large.

Also, here's a more recent source (August 2020) that's actually an academic paper -> https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Squeezi...

> The analyses presented here confirm the broadly accepted picture of rising income inequality and slowing income growth for middle-class Americans. But a few additional points are worth drawing out. First, while the benefits of economic growth have not accrued equally, they have not gone solely to the top 1%. The upper middle class has grown. Second, the main reason for the shrinking of the middle class (defined in absolute terms) is the increase in the number of people with higher incomes.

This is laughably wrong. Social mobility in the USA is the lowest among developed nations. Indeed, most social mobility in america is downward, not upward.

i'm reading piketty right now and have to say, some overwhelmingly clear and rigorously collected data in this one book alone convincingly contradict this ill-informed statement

First of all, the observation that US's shrinking middle class is attributable to an increasing upper-middle class is objectively true, it's not that controversial [4].

Second of all, Piketty's argument is more that capital's share of growth will necessarily outpace labor's share of growth (r > g).

Third of all, Piketty isn't gospel. There have been a number of rebuttals published since his findings that make fairly strong refutations.

The IMF studied empirical evidence to see if it matches up with Piketty/Saez/Zucman's theoretical models, and was unable to validate their finding[1].

Further studies showed that r > g almost entirely goes away when you exclude land/housing appreciation, mostly attributable to restrictive zoning regulations [2].

Auten & Splinter found that Piketty failed to account for existing taxes and transfers. When you do that, the perceived growth in inequality goes away almost entirely[3][5].

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf

[2] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/35310497.pdf

[3] http://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequali...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrink...

[5] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546668

Your link [4] shows that, since 2000, the lower class has been growing and the middle and upper classes have been shrinking.

Sure, but look from 1967. The trend-line is still positive at a macro level. Since 2000 we had a huge recession, so it's not super conclusive.

If you offer compelling arguments for changing certain aspects of a country to be more similar to another country that handles things better (in your opinion), then I don't see the problem. Sure, some people will always be offended if you propose to change amything about their country, but many more people are open to suggestions for specific changes. Very few people, on the other hand, are actually proposing change just for the sake of "turning one country into another". If that were the case, then I would think it a very weird fascination too.

I believe it's because the people most affected in these situations are also the people who are unable to simply move to a country that benefits them more.

Maybe because the country that benefits them more doesn’t really want them, either?

I'm American and want America to be more like Germany. Is that offensive?

To most of the country, yes it’s a bit offensive. If people feel very strongly, they should move to the respective country they strongly believe about. My parents did it, twice.

You might like 8/10 things about a country, there is nothing wrong in asking changes on the remaining 2 things. Moving to Germany might not give the remaining 8 things easily.

Homosexuals were 'a bit offensive' less than a few decades ago.

Should they have moved somewhere else too?

Every place is going to have a combination of things you agree and disagree with. There isn't a utopia for each person to relocate to, I hope that's obvious.

Regarding what's offensive to 'most of the country' - feel free to link me to the polls you looked at to arrive at this conclusion.

You need to preface every criticism of the USA with "I love America and it's the greatest country in the world, but...".

Sure, but I guess it depends on how slippery the slope is, and how fast you want to test the slipperiness.

Is gender-reassignment surgery for kids offensive today? Is sexualizing kids using LGBTQ slant on media such as Netflix and Disney offensive today?

One door leads to the others, down and down we go.

move to Germany?