I think that's a pretty astute assessment, but you mentioned the unspeakable: that America has become Second World. You'll be down-voted to oblivion out of an emotional reaction, but your analysis is smack on.
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No, he just conveniently defined the terms to make a provocative statement about the US. Consider the fact that if you intersect the US's population with its per capita income, the US's rank is far and away number 1. You have to do some intellectual contortions to match an entity like that with the second tier.
Consider the fact that if you intersect the US's population with its per capita income
you get #10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...
If you sample 100 households and take median income, it falls further.
If you factor in health care and university costs, it drops further. You're making an emotional response to a fairly clinical fact.
I won't bring up current account and debt. You get the idea. You're making my original point for me.
Those Wikipedia numbers are improper to use as an argument. Real GDP per Capita should be used, not nominal.
PPP says essentially to "divide by the cost of a BigMac." A BigMac might cost more in Europe, but they don't eat them. It's silly.
The result of PPP is that it makes the poorest states in the US appear to be richer than places like Switzerland. Go visit Switzerland, then Louisiana, and come back here and we'll talk.
PPP is indeed a silly measure as practiced. McDonalds has almost no competitors in Switzerland (no In&Out, Jack, TacoBell or Subway across the street) - therefore a BigMac costs at least 5 times more than in the US.
There are other measures that suck as well - e.g. external debt. OMG, Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg are completely screwed ... or are these popular banking places, that own foreign investors money that they actually are hording and did not spent it in the Looney-Tunes store at the local mall?
Can you elaborate more on:
" if you intersect the US's population with its per capita income..."
> if you intersect the US's population with its per capita income..."
Both the average and median income in the US are fairly high by world standards.
As far as being poor, poor people in the US typically have a car and one or more TVs. (Yes, there are exceptions. However, it's also nearly impossible to get many US homeless to use housing that is provided.)
The US probably belongs in its own category, since both mentalities are strong here, but between 1980 and 2008 we've clearly been pulling in the Second World direction. What's going on now is less clear, but we certainly haven't seen the miraculous change we'd hoped (but not expected) would follow Obama's election.
As far as this is true, this is the result of the massive immigration from Mexico and Central America.