Elio Campitelli

I really wish people stopped using "capitalism" as a catch all for anything that they see as bad in the world right not.
Just to put one number in perspective, the poverty line in the US was $12,880 for a single person (per wikipedia). That is a lot of money in international and historic terms (it's more than what I make in Argentina with a PhD scholarship!).
The "contradiction" here is that poverty is usually measured relative to a country's wealth.

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Aug 17, 2023 at 7:04pmPhanpy
Show threadElio CampitelliAug 17, 2023
Also, what does the US government budget distribution have to do with capitalism? First, we are talking about the government, not private enterprise, two, there are other "capitalist countries" with different budget distributions (some of them don't even have an army) and, third, historically, communist countries also spent a bunch in the military.
Show threadDanielle NavarroAug 17, 2023
@eliocamp I’d have to agree. Capitalism is terrible, but the absurdly bloated US military expenditure doesn’t strike me as capitalism at all. It’s straight up imperialism. The US does a lot of truly horrible things that other capitalist countries don’t precisely because it’s the closest thing in the world to 21st century imperial power. It projects power militarily as all other empires do, regardless of their economic system
Show threadOscar WestAug 17, 2023

@djnavarro @eliocamp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism - Wikipedia

Show threadDelajor🍞Aug 17, 2023

@eliocamp You have to put things in relative terms, though.

If you are at a country's poverty level, then its likely you are living in impoverished conditions. And its not like you can just up and move to a place with a lower GDP. If you could, you might still be stuck in poverty circumstances.

Show threadElio CampitelliAug 17, 2023
@Onsequitur Those impoverished conditions are relative to a regional standard. People below the poverty line in the US are much richer than people below the poverty line in Argentina, for example.
Show threadDelajor🍞Aug 17, 2023

@eliocamp I get that, but their buying power is probably the same relative to someone below poverty in Argentina, is my argument. So their relative poverty is still the same. I don't have data to support that, though.

Obviously there is probably a scale here where some country's mean impoverished quality of life is lower than anothers.