Why the U.S. Will Always Be Rich

The New York Times Magazine ^ | 06/09/2002 | David Brooks

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

This is great. I haven't heard such a paeon to materialism since Atlas Shrugged. And from the New York Times, no less!

[Flying Circus]

The average household in America now pulls in about $42,000 a year. The average household headed by someone with a college degree makes $71,400 a year. A professional degree pushes average household income to more than $100,000. If you are, say, a member of one of those college-grad households with a family income of around $75,000, you probably make more than 95 percent of the people on this planet. You are richer than 99.9 percent of the human beings who have ever lived. You are stinking rich.

But you still can barely afford rent in the San Francisco Bay area and don't even think of buying a house.

[SpottedBeaver]

Is David Brooks a complete communist?

This reads like a comelplete communist hit-piece on Capitalism. It doesn't surprise me that it comes from the New York Times Magazine Pravda.

[dheretic]

How the hell did you get that out of this article? It's meant to be a celebration of materialism and abundance, not a damning criticism of them.

[nevergore]

bump

[thinktwice]

Everything in this -- the whole 99 yards -- was a setup for one sentence in the next to last paragraph ...

That could change, of course. Efforts to reduce the inheritance tax could help produce a huge class of trust-fund millionaires. But so far, Jefferson and Adams were wrong. The gurus of the simple life are wrong. The noblest, most creative and fullest life is not to be found by the backwaters of Walden Pond but in the rushing mainstream of life, in the office parks and the malls and the Times Squares twinkling with lights, screens and money.

[SpottedBeaver]

Thank you. I was actually going to respond to that, but you did it just fine.

I only hope that dheretic was being sarcastic.

[jordan8]

The U.S. will not always be rich, it will eventually pass away like all things. Pride goeth before a fall.

[independentmind]

Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn:
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful:
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart:
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[cartoonistx]

My father used to say that if you were to "level-out" all the nations' wealth and make the Earth's inhabitants economically equal tommorrow, by the end of the week the U.S. would have 75% of the money back. Those blessed by God cannot help but be so. Our cup runneth over, so let's get busy crafting a bigger cup!

[scottinoc]

This is the coolest article I've read all year. I'm off to Costco.

[LibKill]

Yep. We are on top.

Heck, our poor people are the fattest poor people on earth!

I've been to a few third world countries. Their poor people are very, very, very thin. As in starving to death.

[Age of Reason]

But you still can barely afford rent in the San Francisco Bay area and don't even think of buying a house.

Nowadays you need a working couple with professional degrees to afford the same house a high school dropout blue collar worker lived in with his stay at home wife forty or fifty years ago.

We're rich in gadget junk only--the important stuff were poor in.

And the good things in life that used to be free, now cost more every year.

[Age of Reason]

because wealth here is a loose floozy, available for nearly all the good-time Charlies, it does not enervate.

Only a liberal rag of a newspaper would look at modern American culture and values, and not see enervation.

[dheretic]

I have mixed feelings on the estate tax. I do not believe the average person should pay one iota of it, but families like the Rockefellers and Kennedies are walking, talking arguments for it. They haven't earned their money in how many generations? They are a bunch of power-craving rich bastards IMO and letting generation after generation of them accumulate wealth they never earned seems like a great way to create a 18th century European style aristrocracy in this country. In case you all haven't figured it out, that aristrocracy was what created the socio-political conditions for the rise of Communism in Europe.

[dheretic]

Blessed are those that don't sit on their asses waiting for God to bail them out for they will actually get $hit done.

[Revolting cat!]

The average household in America now pulls in about $42,000 a year. The average household headed by someone with a college degree makes $71,400 a year. A professional degree pushes average household income to more than $100,000. If you are, say, a member of one of those college-grad households with a family income of around $75,000, you probably make more than 95 percent of the people on this planet. You are richer than 99.9 percent of the human beings who have ever lived. You are stinking rich.

Total nonsense! Where do we start? Yeah, rent in San Francisco. Yeah, $2 cuppa java (cents in impoverished Brazil.) Yeah, $4 subway fares (cents in Hong Kong!) And so on. Typical commie propaganda - give us static numbers and compare figures using absolute terms.

[The KG9 Kid]

Brother, you got that right. What am I doing here?