True, but look at the rental markets for the majority of Americans that don't live in the rich coastal areas. And talk about unprofessional business - you have unprofessional legal professionals in parts of the US.

Where America is great, it is great. But for the rest of it, it can be a very differently life for most of the inhabitants.

Compare "poor" America with poor (insert geographic area here).

There's no comparison. It's hugely, vastly better in the States. The only other places that have large backwater areas that can compete are maybe Canada and Australia. This is due to investment by rich people in rental real estate and businesses such as Walmart, Costco, Amazon, etc.

When a family like the Waltons have a net worth in the 100's of $Bn's, this money isn't kept in gold bars in a safe. It's actively deployed in a variety of businesses. So the poor don't get a cut of the 100's of $Bn's, but they do benefit from the investment. And in very equal countries, the opposite is true. Everybody's OK, but there aren't really any systems that stand out as being amazing.

It's an empire. Empires are good at concentrating wealth by extracting it from their surroundings.

Personally I would absolutely not want to be a poor person in the US. High crime, police violence, abusive work conditions, random shooters, health care bankruptcy, Fentanyl being pushed by medical professionals, zero Covid protections - it's a dystopian horror show.

This may surprise you, but there are locations around the world with much lower GDP and much happier people.

I find this a weird take. In my country we're always amazed that there are places in most largish US cities where it simply isn't safe to be if you aren't a native, and lethal violence is a daily occurence.

A poor person in my country is allowed to take time off for illness without fear of being fired. That time isn't subtracted from their legally mandated minimum number of holiday days.

A poor person in the US will show up to work sick because they know their boss can let them go. Their colleagues might then get sick.

While I'm not sure how common it is, I've seen US news articles lauding co-workers for donating sick days to a colleague with a life threatening illness. While they're obviously doing a good thing, the necessity of the act honestly comes across as barbaric.

A poor person in the U.S. more likely as not does not have proper health insurance, no unemployment benefits to speak of, is highly unlikely to receive disability benefits even when diagnosed with a disability, is subject to a highly prejudiced and often violent police force, must rely on a famously expensive legal system to press civil claims, must content with a social environment that in many places is shaped by easy access to drugs, has no access to government housing, can be fired at will, etc. etc.

Yes, there are many countries where being poor is even worse. But among developed economies (so about a quarter of all countries), it is hard to come up with a worse place for being poor than the U.S.

> After accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and food stamps, the poorest 20 percent of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries.

https://www.justfacts.com/news_poorest_americans_richer_than...

This "study" (not peer reviewed) is questionable in various ways and published by a "think tank" that has a strong libertarian agenda and an obvious axe to grind.

First of all, it compares figures from two different data sets. That is usually something that is quite hard to do correctly, because different data sets usually use different definitions for stuff like "household consumption" etc. Without a peer review it is really hard to tell if they've done it correctly and given the intricacies of economic statistics, my guess is they didn't.

But maybe even more importantly, the data concentrates on "private consumption" and thus leaves out all the goods and services that governments pay for – which is the entire point of public services like a public health care system. I.e. when a poor person in the U.S. visits a doctor, they pay for it out of pocket, the transaction will be registered as "private consumption". If I (in Germany) visit the doctor, no money ever changes hands. My contributions to the public health care system are deducted from my income before it ever reaches my account and about half don't come out of my own paycheck anyway, they are the responsibility of my employer.

So my guess would be that this "study" undercounts exactly what it professes to account for: Goods and services consumed (but not necessarily paid for) by the poor.

But how about we measure outcomes? For example in terms of life expectancy, the U.S. is much more "unequal" (if you are poorer, your are more likely to die younger) than other developed economies: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#inequality-of-lif...

And because the U.S. has worse life expectancy than other developed economies in general, poor people are likely to die younger in the U.S. than in, say, Germany in absolute terms as well. That is just one indicator but if you accept that "the number of years you live" is an important indicator for general quality of life, the U.S. seems to score quite badly on this.