Prosperity of American Workers
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) claims that “Americans are hanging on by their fingernails in an economy that funnels wealth to the ultra-rich and leaves crumbs for working people.”
IN FACT, American workers have more material abundance than their counterparts in every other nation of the world, and they could potentially have even more were it not for policies supported by progressives like Warren. Here are the specifics:
- The World Bank’s “preferred” indicator of material well-being is “personal consumption,” a comprehensive measure of the goods and services consumed by households, including those provided by work, investments, governments, and charities.
- As explained by a paper in the Journal of Human Resources, consumption is the most “direct measure of material well-being.”
- Using international purchasing power parities so that goods and services like apples, cell phones, MRIs, and square feet of living area are counted the same in all nations, the USA has the highest average consumption per person of all developed nations.
- The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is primary source for U.S. consumption data, normally reports consumption for the entire nation and doesn’t break down the data to show how people at different levels fare. However, a chief economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis conducted a study in 2012 which provided that data for 2010.
- Data from the same study also show that the poorest 20% of U.S. residents, including illegal immigrants, consumed more in 2010 than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries.
- Using international purchasing power parities, the U.S. has the second-highest median household disposable income of all developed nations in the world but the tiny country of Luxembourg. Per the OECD, this is an “objective indication of material quality of life” and is very comprehensive because it accounts for all forms of income from the private sector and government, including non-cash income like healthcare benefits, housing, and food. Importantly, disposable income subtracts out taxes, since households cannot use income that governments have taken from them.
- In 2012, the American Economic Review published a study that found McDonald’s workers in the USA had the second-highest real wages of McDonald’s workers in all economic regions of the world, including more than in Europe, twice that of Russia, and 6 times that of Latin America. Only Japan fared better.
- Progressives like Warren support expansive government social programs, which reduce incentives to work and the ability to save.
- Progressives like Warren support government money printing, which is the primary driver of inflation and increases the wealth of current asset holders while making homes, stocks, and other investments less affordable for everyone else.
- Progressives like Warren support pervasive and aggressive government regulations, which raise the costs of living and make it difficult for small businesses to compete with major corporations.
- Progressives like Warren support mass illegal immigration, which reduces the wages of low-income workers and decreases the prices of services that high-income people purchase, like maids, nannies, landscapers, and restaurant meals.
- Progressives like Warren support green energy mandates, which increase the costs of energy and virtually everything else.
- Progressives like Warren support government-mandated employee benefits, which reduce workers’ wages.
- Progressives like Warren support monopoly powers for unions, which raise taxes and consumer prices.
- Progressives like Warren support liberal ethics about sex, which create household fragmentation that dilutes workers’ incomes and is strongly associated with poverty.
- Progressives like Warren support significant increases in education spending, which raise taxes while failing to substantially improve student achievement.
