The employment rate in the USA is usually somewhere around ~5% depending on what subset of the workforce you're looking at. The rest of the world usually isn't too far off that.
If the vast majority of people are in the group, is it not an easy group to be a part of?
> The employment rate in the USA is usually somewhere around ~5% depending on what subset of the workforce you're looking at.
Well based on the number of friends I have that work multiple jobs and can't afford anything more than a room and basic necessities, that's not a very useful perspective.
Is that actually true though? Your friends don't have a smartphone with mobile internet, a computer, a TV, a fridge, a microwave, AC/heating, high speed internet, maybe a game console, a bounty of clothing, etc?
Because I think those aren't really necessities, yet the average person in the US has them. We're just quite spoiled in the 21st century, and many would argue (including clearly OP) that the reason for this abundance is (at least in part) free market capitalism.
People complain about needing to work to live, but that has always been the case. The difference is now you can work reasonable hours (40/week) doing a low-skill job and still have all those things.
> Because I think those aren't really necessities, yet the average person in the US has them. We're just quite spoiled in the 21st century, and many would argue (including clearly OP) that the reason for this abundance is (at least in part) free market capitalism.
If you want to consider that "spoiled" you're more than welcome to, but it doesn't change decades of increasing wealth inequality, nor the fact that we have no choice but to live in the 21st century.
> The difference is now you can work reasonable hours (40/week) doing a low-skill job and still have all those things.
My point is that that's no longer possible to achieve this with just 40 hours.
Wealth inequality is a red herring and a silly metric to consider in this conversation (and probably any conversation). Everything else the same, would you rather live in a world where the average person makes $100k/year and the richest person is worth $1T, or a world where you make $1k/year and the richest person $1M? Because if you're focusing on minimizing "wealth inequality", I guess you'd choose the latter, which is clearly the wrong choice.
Not sure I understand what you mean about "choosing" to live in the 21st century. Yes, you didn't choose the century, but lucky you, you got born into the one with more baseline access to material wealth for the average person than any other century before it. Sucks to be us, eh?
Your final point is objectively untrue. I don't know what your friends do but there are many (not highly-skilled) jobs that pay enough to easily afford all the listed things.
> Everything else the same, would you rather live in a world where the average person makes $100k/year and the richest person is worth $1T, or a world where you make $1k/year and the richest person $1M? Because if you're focusing on minimizing "wealth inequality", I guess you'd choose the latter, which is clearly the wrong choice.
It depends on the wealth curve, obviously, and how the rest of the market is structured. But in neither scenario are you going to see the problems of wealth inequality relaxed. Wealth inequality doesn't seem to offer society any benefit and creates the problem of poverty.
Wealth inequality, by definition, does not create poverty, unless your definition of poverty is "having less money than other people", which would be an absurd definition.
