RE: Ranking Your Position in the US Economy
Neither do I @adriangee.
Having been there, however, I know that in a theoretically free market society there is a poverty level below which all a person's energy and creativity is spent on survival and elevation beyond that becomes virtually impossible.
This is a serious flaw that breeds crime and enslavement. In a rich caveman environment everyone has equal access to resources and a fair distribution of opportunity to apply their talent to elevate their quality of life from rock bottom up. In modern urbanized society this is most certainly not the case.
Human-powered bureaucracies are doomed to fail by corruption sooner rather than later and tend to get bloated through laziness and other subtle forms of theft. So I agree, that is not the answer.
A decentralized mechanism that automatically distributes the minimum amount of power of purchase equivalent to the free means of survival available to every caveman is the answer.
This will provide a buffer from which all but the sickly can recover, earning an increase to their own quality of life by adding to that of others.
What I am working on is a decentralized currency with a value related to the cost of producing basic necessities that can be seen, on the one hand, as a first step in that direction, but that can also serve as functionally reliable means of trade in general.