askchapo

The western proletariat has such an artificially inflated standard of living

No one can afford a house or health care and half of American adults are functionally illiterate. 2/3rds are medically overweight. Food is primarily processed sugar. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year due to preventable diseases, car accidents, gun violence, drug overdoses, and suicide. A million people died from COVID and the government response was to stop counting. Natural disasters go entirely ignored by state authorities. Young Americans today die younger, have less buying power, and are far more miserable than the generation preceding them.

However, they can acquire huge mounds of plastic at a low dollar amount, so I guess living standards are pretty good

The standard of living isn't even that high. Everything just costs a shitload because we refuse to densify/reduce carbrain infrastructure and ship things from the other side of the world instead of producing locally. There's too many middlemen driving the cost up of everything. So despite the relatively high wages, life still fucking sucks for most people.

What most Americans see as a reduction in living standards would actually be a huge increase once they got over their dumb rugged individualist brainwashing.