There are not really frills, but in terms of “have shelter and food” it can work. Not everywhere is SF.
And speaking of food, the USDA says that over 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household in 2024. That's 1 in 7 people. In the world's richest country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity.
This statistic looked suspect so I had to look it up. The study defined multiple levels of food insecurity. The big 47 million number included mostly households where eating patterns were not disrupted and people did not reduce their food intake.
So most “food insecure households” actually had enough food and maintained their normal eating patterns. That’s not what most people would think of from that statistic.
I do agree that we should continue working on food security for all, but if you think 1 in 7 people in the US are going hungry then you’re consuming some misleading statistics.
In the wealthiest country in the world.
I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.
You mean it is easy to get access to nutritious food?
If you're the kind of person to invent new definitions to fit statistics and then cry about the fabrication's implications then perhaps it's better for Americans if you keep living abroad.
> Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
https://frac.org/news/usdafoodsecurityreportdec2025
"1 in 7 households (13.7 percent) in America experienced food insecurity, or lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet, in 2024."
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
"These households had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members."
"Lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet"..."access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life".
I'll let you digest that.
> ...then perhaps it's better for Americans if you keep living abroad.
That's such an American thing to say. Ha.
But yes, I'm doing fine without the US. And the US is clearly doing great without me. I do miss all the winning though.
Further, you keep shifting the goal posts on the discussion from
Living->Surviving->Food insecure (claiming not enough to eat)>"affordable nutritious"
Opinion: 50k/yr (outside urban areas) is enough for a family of 4 to have necessities and eat healthy, America is still the land of opportunity.
No it’s not. You’re not even reading the study you’re quoting. You’re just using your own beliefs off the top of your head.
That almost 50 million number was from an overly broad questionnaire that included answers about being “uncertain” about being able to acquire “nutritious” food, which was self-reported with little guidance. So anyone who, at any point, was uncertain about acquiring vaguely defined nutritious food would be counted, even if they actually acquired nutritious food for everyone the entire year.
Your misquoting of what I said is really annoying. I’m pointing out real problems with the study and you’re trying to act like I’m saying they’re not technically starving.
Socioeconomically, the post-WW2 era is widely considered America's peak. The strong economic growth was broadly shared and created the largest and most prosperous middle class in modern history.
During this time, a single breadwinner could buy a car, a house and support a family. This is the "land of opportunity" and "American Dream" people talk about today and politicians have been promising the return of for decades.
The vast majority of Americans aren't calling for a new Gilded Age, although that's sort of what they're getting now, which is a big reason so many Americans are dejected and angry.
I'd be interested to see the economic mobility stats for the gilded age. Because the vibe I get is that it was better than today for the people who wanted to work hard and were flexible but there were also a ton less opportunities to just go through the motions and be materially well off.
The "vibe" you get? You were there?
I'd point out that during the Gilded Age, women were largely excluded from the work force, blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming while under threat of racial violence including lynching, Chinese workers were forced into the most dangerous jobs and then punished for the privilege (see the California's Foreign Miners' Tax), and so on.
But I guess if you were a white Murican with ambition and a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed, it was a great time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
At the end of the day most of those downtrodden minorities you think you care about ultimately wound up creating successful ethnic communities, before we adopted, at the behest of people like you, central policy that dismantled them starting in the mid 20th century.
Take https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Miners%27_Tax_Act_of_1....
This is an example of the type of law that was passed during your "good vibes" period that was designed to push out non-white labor.
So the point that you don't want to seem to acknowledge: the period of time that you seem to be holding up as an ideal (read: where Americans could work hard and get ahead) was filled with laws and even violence that sought to restrict opportunity for non-whites and women.
This is historical fact, whether you like it or not.
> At the end of the day most of those downtrodden minorities you think you care about ultimately wound up creating successful ethnic communities, before we adopted, at the behest of people like you, central policy that dismantled them starting in the mid 20th century.
What in the world are you on?
But this is the perfect example of America today: you can't have a vigorous debate without somebody resorting to casting aspersions on another's intentions and blaming them for things that happened when they weren't even alive.
It is an historical fact that women and minorities were excluded and discriminated against in the 1800s, and that this was to the benefit of white men.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canad...
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-chinese-exclusi...
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/rock-springs-massacr...
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-doc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_v._Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Contract_Labor_Law
Instead of concerning yourself with other people and trying to guess their views so that you can criticize them, you should educate yourself.
Or accept that every culture does things that look bad to outsiders and that doesn't change the fact that they may have gilded ages - no matter how good social mobility is for black people today, it's still crap for chickens.