Is the American standard of living is too high?

Are American workers being punished because our parents and grandparents raised our standard of living, making it impossible to live on the same wages that Chinese and Indian workers can live on?|||I think it's too wasteful, too consumer-oriented, and too materialistic.|||Too high compared to what...





The countries at the other end of the spectrum just have average or low standards of living.. that doesn't mean ours is too high.. it's where its supposed to be.|||yes, according to the "global ecological footprint" USA consumes several times their fair share of what mother nature can provide sustainably.





No you're not being punished, by the work your grandparents accomplished. You have to pay because money is created (by banks) in the form of credit, that "has to" be paid back, *with interest*





The main reason you can't live on a chinese/indian wage is that you have to pay for advertising and shareholders' profit|||No. That is foolish. We could choose to live at a lower standard.|||Actually, the inherent problem with runaway out of control capitalism, is that there's no incentive to "share the wealth" with production labor which, (typically) if you're not a stock broker or hedge fund manager, you do not have any right to profit-share unless you happen to be able to afford stock options or happen to have stock options that are directly part of your corporate compensation package.



Regressive undervalued labor coupled with overvalued money manipulation overcompensation tends to make the vast majority of Americans beholden to their corporate slave masters for their meager regressive compensation for rendered labor.



Meanwhile middle management and everyone above them generously overcompensate themselves not for doing any heavy labor intensive "lifting", but for "controlling" the working class by micromanaging their labor by making productivity their variable for how little compensation they're willing to "share" with production labor as a disingenuous perpetual carrot as a basis for continued employment.



I noticed some false equivalency responses, you can't compare the distractions of technology based

objects with relative wealth or poverty, after all, the wall street journal recently made the same false equivalency comparisons when they tried to state that poor people are not really poor if they have some of the following modern conveniences: microwave oven, DVD player, cable TV, etc. etc.



My point is, you could own the same "things" as rich people own, but, how hard and how long does a poor person have to work as a member of the working poor, before they can "afford" these basic conveniences....



Having modern conveniences does not quantitatively qualify as arriving at the same or equal plane of economic access as ultra-wealthy money hoarders, there is no comparison.



I don't know about being punished, but there is a common thread of competitiveness in America where people are assumed or conditioned to believe that we're not successful unless we own or are in debt in order to possess material object X, Y or Z.



Considering that there's little chance that elements of uber wealthy individuals/corporations are going to suddenly start paying their production labor a generous living wage with full medical coverage and a generous retirement plan, we can only control what we do with the few scraps that the money hoarders decide to throw into our labor intensive feed bag.|||The WHOLE WORLD is under attack- your attackers, your elite


are among the deadliest %26amp; richest. No difference otherwise.|||it is too high and this is why we are being puinished|||But your parents didn't have cell phones, personal computers, the internet, iPods, cable TV, Netflix, or cars that get 30+ miles per gallon. Your grandparents didn't have DVDs or even VHS tapes, microwave ovens, CDs. Maybe even color TV, a second car, clothes dryers, or garbage disposals.





My point is that we create our own wealth, not just in the cash we have, but in the things we invent that suit our needs in our time. The important thing is that we have the freedom to do that. Then we will never be poor.|||People forget about the talk of ending consumerism. The government (EPA) is trying to decide what products we may have available to us. Often foreign workers get preferential treatment for jobs and education opportunities. Our trade deals are never to our benefit in any way. Nothing is really being done to keep our jobs in this country or to create a business environment that will lead to growth. Even people with a good education are having problems finding jobs. Wait until the health care bill is completely implemented. Our standard of living is on its way down.|||Check your grammer, Webster?|||Obama and the libs think so.