Bod wrote:

43 million people living below the breadline in the world's richest nation.

The phrase "world's richest nation" is misleading. It invites the
fallacy of division, which ascribes a characteristic of the whole to its
parts.

America has the biggest national economy (GDP) in the world, but it
ranks only 19th in per capita GDP. When China's economy passes that of
America's, its per capita GDP (currently 113th) will still be far below
that of Qatar (1st), whose total economy is smaller than Singapore's
(6th per capita) and only about 2 percent the size of China's.

I'm not sure America ever led the world in per capita GDP. In 1870, the
leader was Australia. (Lots of sheep, few people.) In any case, median
income is better than per capita GDP, much less total GDP, as a metric
for the overall prosperity of a nation. On that measure, America does
better but still trails Norway and Luxembourg, among others.

It's true that a lot of Americans have gotten poorer over the past 15
years. But talking or writing about it won't do much. Nor will raising
the federal minimum wage, which is slightly higher today (in constant
dollars) than it was in 2001. In the meantime, more Americans are now
unemployed or underemployed.