This brief video brings up a lot of important questions that we've been discussing relative to Piketty's book about inequality. The richest congressman, Darrell Issa argues that America has made their poor the "envy of the world" because of their access to opportunity compared with other countries such as India. When the interviewer pushes him further and asks if we should be comparing our poor to other first world countries, he says we need to be comparative to all countries because we are competing with all different world wages in the labor market. He puts forth that America could "absolutely" do better in terms of inequality but also asserts that America has a lot more to offer than other countries.
Do you thin America's poor and inequality levels should be measured against other first world countries? Or against the global market as a whole? What do you think of Issa's statements in the video?
This video was pretty amazing to me. Personally, I don't think a Congressman should be comparing the lives of the America's poor to anyone. I think that the comparison completely disregards the fact that he is talking about actual people. He also mentions that America's poor have a greater amount of opportunities than many other nations. While this may be true in terms of potential income, I think it ignores some of the other very serious problems that are present along with income inequality in the United States. There is a large class of American's that are not provided very many opportunities and many of them are of lower income.
ReplyDeleteI think that America needs to set the bar higher for the conditions of the poor. This congressman's statement that America's poor is the "envy of the world" is very strange to me. The "American dream" isn't to come to America and live in poverty conditions, it's to have the opportunity to succeed, something that is not always available for America's poor.
ReplyDeleteThis video was very interesting to me because I do agree with Kate that the US needs to set the bar higher for the poor within our economy and with Bronte that I did not think it was right to compare the lives of our poor to anybody. I also agree with Bronte that he ignores some of the issues going on that relate to income inequality in the US.
ReplyDeleteThis video is interesting, and I agree a lot with what Kate posted. I don't think it's really appropriate to make such comparisons, especially in the context of saying America's poor people have more opportunities than in other locations. I kind of felt that a lot of the comments were, for lack of a better term, distasteful. America can do better than what we are doing. Why would we settle for poverty that is "still better than other places"?
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone that America's poor should be compared to other first world countries. It makes no sense to me when he compared with countries like India because the economies and average living conditions are totally different. It seems to me that the current degree of inequality is "acceptable" in some way...
ReplyDeleteI like Hang's point that our economy and living conditions are completely different to most other countries, especially developing countries like India. That makes it very difficult to do a one-to-one comparison about inequality in the countries. I also like Bronte's point that when we talk about the poor, we sort of lose sight of the fact that we're actually talking about humans.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Cameron that most of the congressman's points were distasteful. His basic logic was seemingly "are poor people are better off than other poor people," and uses much poorer countries (i.e., India) to enforce his argument. If you compare opportunities available for the U.S. poor against other countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, etc, it's clear that the U.S. poor are not the envy of the world. Ironically, Darrell Issa himself is much more likely to be the "envy of the world" as he's worth $350 million and has a political position that helps him protect that healthy sum.
ReplyDeleteI agree e the previous comments stated above. I think that the congress man should not compare the American poor circumstance to that of people of developing countries. I find his comparison absurd. Also, I think by ignoring the inequalities low income American deal with, the congressman is basically signalling, that the poor Americans have no disadvantages against other wealthy Americans. Basically, his statement seems to be ignoring the issue at hand rather than addressing possible way to improve the living conditions of poor American citizens. Also, I think America's poor and inequality level should be measured against other first world countries opposed to against developing countries.
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