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Poor Americans have more living space than the typical non-poor person in
Sweden, France or the U.K. What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty
of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives
aided and abetted by the welfare state.
I believe it would be a humbling experience for poor to visit the slums of Egypt, they would be considered semi rich there.
??? More living space by what standard? I live in a house with 5 guys and I have a 10' x 12' room while shariing the common areas. Before I read the linked article I'm going to guess that two relevant facrors are 1) Dwellings in other countries are painfully small by North American standards, and 2) Many of our poor own houses which they either inherited or bought decades earlier during their working years. (Homes owned by the poor are rarely purchased under market terms and prices by these people while they are poor.) Developers build houses for the mass market - the middle class - and especially not for the poor e.g. tiny homes that many of the poor might prefer are often prohibited or tightly restricted by local governments. So you cannot even assert that poor Americans "choose" to have all that "extra" dwelling space. Having less money than their more affluent peers, they do not "choose" housing as much as they settle for what the market makes available to them - housing that has "filtered down" and which has lost favor among the middle class.
One more thing - I'm guessing that you are a heterosexual male, and as such you should be keenly aware that men who are relatively poor - by the standards of their own society - tend to be hosed in the context of relations with the opposite sex. NO American woman would view a poor man more favorably on the basis that he has so much more space (and perhaps other stuff) than people in othher countries.
??? More living space by what standard? I live in a house with 5 guys and I have a 10' x 12' room while shariing the common areas. Before I read the linked article I'm going to guess that two relevant facrors are 1) Dwellings in other countries are painfully small by North American standards, and 2) Many of our poor own houses which they either inherited or bought decades earlier during their working years. (Homes owned by the poor are rarely purchased under market terms and prices by these people while they are poor.) Developers build houses for the mass market - the middle class - and especially not for the poor e.g. tiny homes that many of the poor might prefer are often prohibited or tightly restricted by local governments. So you cannot even assert that poor Americans "choose" to have all that "extra" dwelling space. Having less money than their more affluent peers, they do not "choose" housing as much as they settle for what the market makes available to them - housing that has "filtered down" and which has lost favor among the middle class.
One more thing - I'm guessing that you are a heterosexual male, and as such you should be keenly aware that men who are relatively poor - by the standards of their own society - tend to be hosed in the context of relations with the opposite sex. NO American woman would view a poor man more favorably on the basis that he has so much more space (and perhaps other stuff) than people in othher countries.
Yep, libertarians are usually right about such things.
Especially here, his facts are well-documented.
??? Poor Americans often must "enjoy" more dwelling space than they might prefer because our poor often occupy housing which has been cast off and rejected by the middle class - some of which consists of functionally obsolete (by "modern" standards) larger than average space homes.. Housing for the poor is regulated so tightly that we can't even really accurately say how much dwelling space the poor would have if they had real choices.
It's another "I-phones in the ghetto argument". Typical crap libertarians spew to deflect from the fact the US is becoming more unequal.
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