Americans are losing spending power, say researchers: Most can no longer afford a 'minimal quality of life'
Americans are losing spending power, say researchers: Most can no longer afford a 'minimal quality of life'
The Ludwig Institute's Minimal Quality of Life Index found that, in 2023, only 40% of Americans earned enough money to get by in relative comfort.
They're also losing their constitutional rights and their entire republic.
Marines deployed in US cities...
And nobody does a damn thing about it...Personally, I've written off America. It's now officially a fascist hellhole.
Personally, I’ve written off America. It\s now officially a fascist hellhole.
That's how the fascists win.
"All that's needed for evil to prevail, is for good men to do nothing."
- Someone I don't rememberI don't have to do anything. I left the US and gave up my citizenship 25 years ago because it started to scare me when Dubya signed the USA Patriot Act and started turning Gitmo into a concentration camp. I'm watching the disaster unfold from afar.
I was kind of hoping America would get its shit together, but the only thing Americans are apparently good at is voluntarily drowning in more shit. They wanted Trump once because they're fucking morons, and they wanted it a second time after knowing exactly what he was and what he did because they're fucking fascists.
There's nothing good in America because there's nothing good in Americans. I should know, I was one.
Yeah okay sure, when the US was putting down mass insurrections in Detroit etc with the National Guard and there was armed combat in the streets (1960s) the US wasn't a fascist hellhole officially. Or the entire period until the 1965 Voting Act and the multiple Civil Rights Acts (didn't end in the 60s) that it took for "constitutional rights" to be applied to all residents because simply being a resident didn't make you a full citizen in the "constitutional republic" if you didn't have the right skin tone, that also wasn't officially a fascist hellhole either.
What else? Henry Ford publishing a ton of dodgy anti-Semitic literature in the 1920s and inspiring Hitler and the Euro OG fascists? Not officially fascist hellhole enough.
Blood quantum laws, one drop rules, eugenics programs etc that also directly inspired the Nazis but were often rejected for being too extreme for them (the Nuremberg blood laws that determined Jewish ancestry are significantly more lenient than US one drop laws)? Not officially fascist hellhole.
Yeah, USA was straight up Weimar Republic or maybe the USSR or maybe anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War until Trump won in 2016.
Can people start pushing back against this self-serving center-lib romantic bs already? Because simply put, if it all got ruined because of Trump then come right out and say openly that you're fine with everything that came before because it mostly affected natives, blacks and foreigners but not US WASPs. Or I don't know, relax because saying it's always been a total hellhole doesn't mean you support Trump.
Maybe I should mention that this is Cold War era propaganda about USA representing "freedom and democracy" (the free world bs) vs totalitarianism etc back during the time segregation and putting people in jail for sodomy were supposedly freedom loving acts?
Stop advocating for violence when you don't live here and you aren't willing to do it yourself. You sound like a proud boy plant trying to discredit the people who oppose Trump.
Good thing we haven't given up.
Cool
And the "Big Beautiful Bill" will just make it worse.
There was a post recently saying the total sum of wage theft, including conventional theft and the results of suppressed wages, totals to like $50 trillion over the past few decades.
Shit's bad. But other than the rich, people in the US have like no class consciousness.
This isn't news. It's BEEN like this. Why people are letting these guys get away with it is beyond me. Why is he still alive?
I know this isn't really a universal indicator, but for me it's been watching the price of simple things like chips, candy, and soda ($3 for a 20 oz bottle?!?). All things that i enjoy occasionally but as the price of all these things continues to rise it becomes easier to say no. I was shocked to see the bagel place in town charging $15 for a sandwich on a bagel. Nobody seems to bat an eye though. I think I'm probably just getting gradually priced out of my town ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course I'm aware i don't have to buy any of that stuff and i can cook and make food at home, and that's what I've started doing. I may treat myself on occasion but i just can't justify spending that much on stuff that didn't used to cost half that. I'm probably just getting old and remember "back in my day" all too well, lol
Compensating for relative lower income with low cost of consumer products is a bit like pissing your pants to get warm. The underlying issue is declining wages, caused by the loss of labor power. If people had decent wages a rise in prices would not be a problem. But while scraping by a rise in prices is a huge problem.
Facts. But the other side of that is the massively unequal tax burden. Tax corporations and wealthy proportionally to their reported net worth and use that to fund substantial public services (healthcare, transportation, education, childcare) so that rising wages aren't just funneled back into the same pockets.
Same here - ive even started buying rice and dried beans in bulk And taken to canning and growing veg. I'm not giving up my recreational funds for a Mc Crapwich
Are we great again?
We already did great. Now we’re keeping it great
/s
What a coincidence. Europeans are also losing spending power. Almost like there's a crisis of the liberal order or something. runs off crying
The American Dream ended in 1975.
Hey America are we great yet?
You must be so tired of winning.
Amen! Glad to see people appreciating and sharing "tax wealth, not work"!