Quote:
Originally Posted by Aretha's doctor
Yes. To be fair though, I will stick out my neck and say that "the bottom" is found in every country of the world - not only America. But, from your earlier post on the relativity of what constitutes "poverty" (in various societies), I think you will agree with me that the important factor is not so much that there exists a "bottom" but at what standard of living do these "bottom people" find themselves. ie. are they destitute or are they millionaires living in a country of multi-millonaires?
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Yes, there is a "bottom" in every society except for true far left societies, none of which exist today or for the past 300-400 years. But when it comes to it, I would rather have a lower standard of living for the lower class but a greater opportunity for class movement than a higher standard of living with very little opportunity for class movement. The United States does allow for class movement, but it is limited by social factors and education standards. In both poor white and black schools, they expectancy of moving on too college is extremely low, along with very badly funded and run schools, so it is much harder for someone in the lower class to move up than in a place where lower class public education is closer in quality to middle and upper class public education.
But going to the standard of living for the "bottom" in the United States, we do have many people living at third world standards. A lot of the people on American Indian reservations have no running water, no electricity, and live in broken trailers. So even though the majority of the poor are better off than many parts of the world, there are still a few that live in absolutely horrible living conditions. But this is caused by a combination of corruption in both the "white" and Indian power class, neither care about the average person on the reservations.