Not true at all. If the wealth of the entire planet was evenly divided among the population, everyone could have a standard of living even higher than the average American.

Latest figures are that 2% of the world's population owns half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 50% of the world's population owns barely 1% of the world's total wealth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm

That means that just redistributing the wealth of that top 2% would double the standard of living of everyone else.

As far as the standard of living here in the US, we are slipping...

From the encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar..._United_States


On the Human Poverty Index the US is ranked worst among the selection of 17 wealthiest countries, scoring bad on all counts but long term unemployment.

The United States has more people below the defined poverty line than 26 other countries; however, the measures used to establish a poverty line are controversial and may not always be comparable among countries. What is clear, however, is that the United States has the widest rich-poor gap of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow.The ten percent of Americans with the highest incomes earn 15 times more than the bottom ten percent. In Japan, for instance, the ratio is only 4.2:1. While the exact reasons for this extent of economic disparity are complex, some analysts and critics regard the imbalance as a product of the United States' long policy of having more of a free market economy, while other countries have enacted policies which may sacrifice net wealth in favor of economic equality.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...