Comments on: American’s Better Off Than Ever Before? Yeah Right!

By: Adventures In Money Making

Adventures In Money Making — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:29:00 +0000

Just because you have airconditioning , a 7 ft TV and 2 cars does not make a person wealthy.

Being able to survive on one income so that one spouse can stay home & raise the kids is what really matters in life. If thats what you want out of life and you can’t afford it, you’ll feel mighty poor.

By: MEG

MEG — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:02:00 +0000

I think Americans–even and especially poor Americans–have the highest standard of living they’ve ever had. I read a study a year ago that compared what the poor, middle class and rich households have now versus what they’ve had at different periods in history. It also compared what those groups classify as a necessity. Things like air conditioning, refridgerators, microwaves, television, and even telephones are now considered necessities by the vast majority of Americans–and those items (and many more) are also possessed by most Americans, including the poorest group of us. That was not true 20, 50, and especially 100 years ago. Our standards of living have gone WAY up, and have always trended up throughout history. I wonder how long that can last though…

By: mOOm

mOOm — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:33:00 +0000

I have no doubt that material standards of living are higher in the US than anywhere else (and any previous time in the US) except some small countries. But US health and life expectancy are not the highest and leisure is much lower than in Europe. Australia scores higher in the last two areas too. Housing standards (size) are about the same. GDP per capita is lower. This is expressed by higher prices for most goods apart from food. But services (medicine and education) are cheaper (stuff like internet access is not).