The problems are security, sovereignty and economic stagnation. Being dependent on super powers and vulnerable to their whims is not good. Weak supply chains are not good. Neither are worsening standards of living.
You are proving the point. The avg. person gets an enormous benefit from it, even in countries like USA, Japan or Korea with far less generous welfare. The gap in standards of living of somebody in the US and somebody in Georgia or Vietnam are ridiculous.
How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam.
Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.
That worked before globalization. Nowadays, having a small apartment in a city of McMansions means you're upper middle class. Poor people in the west have no apartments and no goats.
What is equivalent adjusted income level? PPP between Russia and USA is around 1.8. Median annual salary in the US is $57 ($1196 per week), median salary in Russia is $13200. Even if you adjust it, it's roughly two times smaller.
As someone who lived in a bunch of countries, some rich and some poor, no, living standards among the avg. Joes of the world are not even remotely the same.
I choose to live in a richer country where I am relatively a lot poorer, but overall the advantages of a rich country outweigh the disadvantages.
Using money as a proxy doesn’t work perfectly because things can be more expensive, and trying to normalize with things like “living sq ft” doesn’t calculate externalities.
The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?
*compared using nominal exchange
>The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?
I like this approach. It's much more holistic and captures stuff that really cannot be quantified with prices and numbers, like freedoms and rights.
No, you need more than one goat if you want to be rich, regardless of what other people have. Really, you need a few dozen.
One goat can't do anything but age and die.
Poverty levels are measured relative to median. Poverty in US and poverty in Bangladesh, Russia or Vietnam are completely different things.
In the US poverty line is about $16k, while in Russia for example it is $2300. Even considering the PPP it's like 4 times the difference in living standards. I guess Vietnam or Bangladesh are far worse.
Upd: downvotes with no counterargument. Orange site is becomming more and more a reddit.
In Europe, innovation in the end help everyone. Better healthcare starts with the rich, and ends distributed to everyone. The same is true for everything else.