Political Crossfire Forums

This is just based on a percent of millionaires. It doesn't tell us the absolute number of millionaires or the percentage of the population who is able to become millionaires.

Also, I'm not sure about Europe, but in Asia, Middle East and South America, a small percentage of the people are actually wealthy and they're disproportionately wealthy because their businesses are tied with politics.

if this is based on welfare statism why is europe twice as good as we are?

The world is changing guys. We have to change too, or we won't keep up.

*also this is very, very bad. as tired as it may seem the enterpenuer and the innovation that came with them were one of the major reasons the US got where it is. this is a big sign of our decline.

This is certainly bad, but I don't see how you get from this to "welfare bad". If I were looking at causes to the decline, I would look at the group classically most poised to reach the millionaire bracket. The middle class. That isn't a function of welfare. The most likely culprit is an inability to save or earn enough capital to start new business. This could either be (or more likely is a combination of) a higher cost of living and burdensome taxation, a higher threshold of cost to enter a market, or a systematic inability to compete with established business.

My personal feeling is that the biggest problem is consolidation. Businesses have grown too large and are now able to stomp competition into the ground or acquire them outright. Second to that I think is the threshold one has just to get into business. The red tape, regulation, city ordinances, complicated tax obligations, cost of hiring, and any number of hoops makes operating one's own business into a terrible prospect. Third is being able to save up the capital. The middle class is now requiring two wage earners just to keep up, let alone to save enough to actually risk on a business.

Welfare I think would fall somewhere around the bottom of the list and only because of the schemes we use that puts the tax burden primarily on the middle class. The motivation to get a new business up and running might be crushed by reality, but not by the just-above-crushing-poverty that welfare provides.

I'll buy that welfare demotivates people from finding marginally better jobs, but not from going after a jump into a whole new economic class.

Wait, you're telling me there is are a major uptick in entrepenuership in some of the emerging markets?

No effing way.