WUI (Writing under the influence)

I don't really know what drives liberals. They will always find something to complain about. But it seems that they have to invent new reasons to complain as fast as the old disappear. Most of those new complaints have to do with the state of the middle class in the US.

Here's a small sample of the many ways in which ordinary Americans today are Bill-Gates-like rich compared to almost all humans who've ever lived:

* None of us has ever starved to death
* We have indoor plumbing and artificial light
* We bathe regularly
* We have solid roofs over our heads, rather than bug-and-vermin-infested thatched roofs
* We routinely converse in real time to people one mile or one thousand miles away
* We don't get smallpox
* Our life expectancy is decades longer

And while it's possible to list some ways in which the average person today is worse off than were pre-industrial folk -- for example, no one before the 20th century died in airplane crashes -- only the most doctrinaire ascetic would deny that almost everyone today in the Western World is vastly better off than were the overwhelming bulk of the human population before the industrial revolution.

[...]

Among the best of these studies is one produced annually by economists James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, and published jointly by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute. The 2006 study will be released this week. Among the most important findings of Economic Freedom of the World: 2006 Annual Report are these:


Nations in the top fourth in economic freedom have an average per-capita GDP of US$24,402, compared to US$2,998 for those nations in the bottom fourth

The top fourth of economic freedom also has an average per-capita economic growth rate of 2.1 percent, compared to 0.2 percent for the bottom fourth

Unemployment in the top fourth of economic freedom averages 5.9 percent, compared to 12.7 percent in the bottom fourth

Life expectancy averages 77.8 years in nations in the top fourth of economic freedom but a mere 55.0 years in the bottom fourth

Nations in the top fourth of economic freedom have only 0.3 percent of children in the work force, while nations in the bottom forth suffer 19.3 percent of their children in the labor force

In the top fourth, the average income of the poorest 10 percent of the population is US$6,519 compared to US$826 for those in the bottom fourth

As this careful new study makes clear, there is no denying that more freedom means more prosperity for more people -- and that lack of freedom ensures poverty for the masses, regardless of the degree of technological sophistication.

It's clear to me that the only reason why liberals complain about economical state of the middle class is to gain more power. The problem is that liberals offer more prosperity for less economic freedom which is an oxymoron.