[WarmWash]

It's impossible to answer because the language is too imprecise.

Poor people in the US live like gods compared to people living in 3rd world jungles, but they complain just as much if not more.

So you quickly realize that "comfortable" is a relative term, and envy poisons any honest measure of "comfort".

[lenkite]

> Poor people in the US live like gods compared to people living in 3rd world jungles, but they complain just as much if not more.

May have been true once upon a time, but true no longer.

[thrance]

> Poor people in the US live like gods

The fentanyl addicts drying in the Sun on Tenderloin's sidewalks beg to differ. What a ridiculous statement. There is less poverty in the US, but extreme poverty isn't any easier here.

Also you missed the entire point of the comment you responded to.

[WillAdams]

I've traveled quite a bit, and I'm well aware of both poverty in the U.S. and in other countries --- that's part of what informed my query --- what is the end-game for capitalism as many countries of the world go into steady state or even negative population changes in the future?

[WarmWash]

Are you asking what the living baseline would be if there was some kind of global socialist government, and everyone was cut an equal slice of the global income and global resource pie? It would be pretty hard to dial that in because there are so many intertwined factors. But we could be pretty confident it wouldn't land near current first world standards.

No one knows what the end game of capitalism looks like, because we landed on the system because it is largely self-regulating and has worked well for carrying society forwards for the last 400ish years. Everything else has done poorly and kind of sucked.

[johnnyanmac]

I disagree. We've seen the endgame of capitalism a few times, and every country decided that was not right. Hence we introduced socialist policies. Like antitrust policies, social security, and nationalized Healthcare (among other necessities).

Meanwhile, I'm not sure if we've truly seen an endgame socialist policy. Captialism seems to turn into imperialism and break that up before seeing the endgame there.

[the_doctah]

It's better than the endgame of Communism.