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.