> And it was almost identically rich 20 years ago. Actually, since the national debt keeps going up, and we've engaged in multiple wars since then, a case could be made that we're worse off.

I could argue against all of these points, but it seems like that would be pointless.

> So, maybe what you meant to say was,

I would rather lose absolutely everything (including things that have helped me out in the last 20 years like family assistance. the idea is that I have to go by my wits as much as possible) and stay in today's USA than step into a time machine with any amount of money to mid 1980s USA. I believe that, just by relying on national wealth, I could become as rich as I wanted to in relatively short order in a way that would have been impossible 30 years ago. You don't think the world's changed all that much but I do. We seem to lack the shared vocabulary needed for me to convey why I think that way.

> ...as long as it's in the United States. (Which you did not clarify in the first place.)

I did, in another part of the thread. I thought you would have been thoughtful enough to follow the rest of the discussion to get the missing pieces of my argument. A lot of times I'll, not just look at the whole thread, but also click to see some of the author's other conversations to see where he / she's coming from.

> So, as a rich person 20 years ago, you'd move to the nation with the greatest national wealth.

Maybe. Depends on how much I have tying myself down there. The aforementioned author's great great grandmother had brothers that died in the Holocaust rather than emigrate from Latvia because they had a thriving local business there. Elon Musk brought himself and his family over from South Africa, that's how much he believed in national wealth. I'm not sure I would come to the same conclusions so quickly, and Musk did have a really ugly childhood that he was anxious to escape. I perhaps might have found a local maximum rather than a bigger pond. Or perhaps not. I don't have the experience of growing up in an emerging market to draw on to be able to make a real guess. I can only judge based on my current awareness.

> I think my friends and family still unconditionally love me. Are you convinced they don't?

It's one of those things you don't know until you know. Or you know until you don't. Do I think it's possible you're miscalculating these feelings? Certainly. I do know that you haven't carefully considered the full breadth of things that could affect your relationships. What if part of your brain shut down and you became a different person than you were before? Read an article where that precise thing happened recently. What is it precisely that your family loves about you and what would happen if that thing were to be taken away? If you delve into that question, I think you'd find that each member of your family has different values and would react differently to each kind of stress. You'd also have to figure out what unconditional love is and how to define the event of that love going away.

Things get a lot more difficult when you apply real logic to mushy situations.

> the US twenty years ago isn't THAT different from the US today

I very much disagree.

> All the data says you're EXTREMELY likely to have the same wealth as your parents.

Data does not predict anything. It only describes what has happened. In a certain light. If you examined the data yourself and asked your own questions of it you might come to a different conclusion.

> Most of the people stocking soup kitchens are more like me.

How do you know this? Have you gone and looked? Have you asked a significant number of them their stories and how they came to volunteer? I'll admit my assertion in this regard is probably about as valid as this one. But that's how you find out.

> Even our beloved veterans are homeless, unemployed, and suicidal.

What that means is that the mental problems caused by going to war are worse than we have the ability to effectively help, at this moment in time. But there's plenty of research going into things like PTSD so that we can more effectively help these people. Suicide is an extremely difficult problem to solve.

> WHY BOTHER talking, if you don't ENJOY talking with people who think differently than you? SERIOUSLY?

I do enjoy it. There are any number of things I could have done with my morning, I chose to focus my attentions on this discussion.