6 ms·

Yeah, looking at GDP per capita rather than median income totally disregards the inequality that makes $54k/person ludicrous to describe as typical in the US.

by gshdg 6y ago

1123581321 6y ago
The US is #6 worldwide measured by median income. Luxembourg, three Nordic states and Australia outrank it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
- mhandley 6y ago
  If you also factored in healthcare and education costs (including university), I suspect the US would rank lower than that.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    YOu would be wrong in your suspicion. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "disposable income" (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
    - mhandley 6y ago
      That number is for mean, not median, so it rather misses the point.
      - TMWNN 6y ago
        As mentioned elsewhere, the US still does quite well in median income rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income).
      - mdorazio 6y ago
        Median available at [1]. US ranks #3, behind Switzerland and Norway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      $3.8k per month disposable income per person?! Wow. What's the median gross income, and level of tax, that is based on?
      - jandrewrogers 6y ago
        The median household income in the US is ~$64k currently. Since disposable income is net various income and social taxes, it implies an effective tax rate of 30% at the median income. This number is deceptive in that the US is geographically massive and the economies, State governments (taxes), and cultures vary widely across thousands of kilometers. The difference between the median income of the highest and lowest States is almost 2x, so your experience will be very different depending on which State you live. Also, in terms of discretionary income, cost of living varies a lot so disposable income isn't the entire story. Note that the average discretionary income (money left over after all ordinary expenses) in the US is ~$2k/month whereas the median discretionary income is $1k/month. This implies that high income earners (think $100k, not FAANG) have a few thousand dollars left over each month after expenses. I've worked in Europe for several years and the differences in discretionary income are stark, both due to income levels and taxation. Americans are kind of oblivious to just how freely they spend money due to having so much discretionary income; we tend to assume the rest of the developed world is similar when that really isn't the case.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  How does this account for things like taxes and shifting of expenses? It is common knowledge that in the USA, they will pay you extra in the corporate world, but that extra money goes to family health care, education, transport, and other things that are covered by European taxation schemes. If you look at discretionary income, the median corporate employees are making similar incomes. And of course, SWEs are outperforming in USA, and manual laborers are outperforming in EU
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    I have not researched that until now but it appears the US is #3 for median disposable income behind Switzerland and Norway. If there’s a better metric I’m interested. However, I think it’s safe to say the typical US resident is not relatively impoverished. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...
harryh 6y ago
Looking at median income doesn't significantly alter the conclusions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
nabla9 6y ago
Usually rich and poor means net wealth, not income. Median net wealth per adult, in US dollars is relatively good measure. US is ranked 22 globally. Source: "Global wealth databook 2019" (PDF). Credit Suisse. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2019.pdf https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab... European countries ahead of the US: Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland, France, UK, Spain,Austria, Italy, Malta, Norway. Interesting how many countries (France for example) is ahead of Germany in both mean and median net wealth per adult. In the US 34.5% of population has wealth between 100,000 USD and 1 million, In UK 44.8%, France: 46.3%. US has significantly more people with wealth over 1 million. German Gini index is 81.6, France 69.6. USA 85.2. EDIT: Table 3-3 is super interesting. Membership of top wealth groups for selected countries, 2019. (absolute number of people). Over USD 100,000; Number of adults (thousands) China 113,410 United States 103,198 Japan 55,370 Germany 26,012 United Kingdom 25,388 France 25,110 Italy 23,284 China already has more people with wealth over 100,000 USD. (20.8% of total) than any other country. No wonder why US companies want to stay in Chinese markets.
- gshdg 6y ago
  And yet more than half of Americans don’t have $400 to cover an emergency. I wonder how the US would stack up in 25th percentile wealth against European countries? Also, there are measures like food insecurity that I suspect would be very telling.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    Per the government, the median American household has >$1000 remaining every month after all ordinary expenses, far more than enough to cover a $400 emergency. The "can't cover $400" trope doesn't imply what you think it does, it is pulled out of context from a survey about how people would cover an emergency, not whether they could. Many popular financial stats used in the media are misleading in service of a narrative. As another example, you'll see many articles stating some large percentage of Americans don't have any savings, which is only true because they define "savings" as having a savings account, which many Americans with plenty of money don't even have (myself included). And then there is the one about Americans having no retirement savings, where "retirement savings" excludes any real estate investments, taxable brokerage accounts, etc which is where many Americans have the majority of their retirement savings. The "food insecurity" surveys are a similar story. Same with "food deserts". If you dig into the underlying studies none of them imply what the media tries to imply with them. It is a hazard to uncritically accept statistics from the media. They have an incentive to paint the most dire story possible.
rst 6y ago
And even looking at median income would still leave other things out -- like the much higher fraction of that household income which goes to medical expenses in the US than in, well... the entire EU for starters.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  No. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "disposable income" (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    That's an average again. Also not sure what you mean by "No." That data neither proves nor disproves what your parent comment said. Additionally disposable income doesn't account for "optional" spending on healthcare etc. by the individual. When you look at median disposable household income, the US still comes in somewhere at the top, but the top 15 countries all have about the same ballpark figure (~30k USD), with US being the only country among them that doesn't have unemployment benefits, affordable healthcare, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      As mentioned elsewhere, the US still does quite well in median income rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income).
      - chmod775 6y ago
        Is there any particular point you're trying to make? You keep responding to people with at best tangentially related data that is not relevant to the discussion. Now suddenly we're looking at median gross income. And this time I don't know at all how to respond to that in a manner that will somehow make it relevant to the discussion again.
defertoreptar 6y ago
The author is looking at consumption, not income. It's been shown that when you look at consumption, inequality isn't nearly what people think. https://economics21.org/html/when-it-comes-inequality-consumption-what-matters-978.html https://economics21.org/html/when-it-comes-inequality-consum...
- standardUser 6y ago
  Doesn't focusing on consumption completely obscure to bulk of inequality, which takes the form of endless billions constantly accumulating among a minuscule portion of the population?
amiga_500 6y ago
Even per capita is misleading. Go to get stitches in the eu vs america. Buy a regular pizza in the eu, get quality, buy it in the usa get synthetic yuk.
LargeWu 6y ago
Indeed. Don't be fooled by North Dakota as the top GDP per capita state in the US. There are a relatively small number of landowners in the western half of the state making crazy passive income from oil rights their great-grandfathers lucked into when they immigrated a hundred years ago. The state is very working-class. It maybe doesn't have the same amount of abject poverty that you see in other places, but people here work hard for a living. Also, the numbers in the article are from 2014 when the oil boom was in still full swing. That's what provided a lot of the highest paying jobs in the state. Drilling levels today are less than 10% of what they were at the peak, and consequently many of those jobs have gone with it.

Yeah, looking at GDP per capita rather than median income totally disregards the inequality that makes $54k/person ludicrous to describe as typical in the US.

by gshdg 6y ago

Yeah, looking at GDP per capita rather than median income totally disregards the inequality that makes $54k/person ludicrous to describe as typical in the US.

1123581321 6y ago

The US is #6 worldwide measured by median income. Luxembourg, three Nordic states and Australia outrank it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

mhandley 6y ago
If you also factored in healthcare and education costs (including university), I suspect the US would rank lower than that.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  YOu would be wrong in your suspicion. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "disposable income" (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
  - mhandley 6y ago
    That number is for mean, not median, so it rather misses the point.
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      As mentioned elsewhere, the US still does quite well in median income rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income).
    - mdorazio 6y ago
      Median available at [1]. US ranks #3, behind Switzerland and Norway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    $3.8k per month disposable income per person?! Wow. What's the median gross income, and level of tax, that is based on?
    - jandrewrogers 6y ago
      The median household income in the US is ~$64k currently. Since disposable income is net various income and social taxes, it implies an effective tax rate of 30% at the median income. This number is deceptive in that the US is geographically massive and the economies, State governments (taxes), and cultures vary widely across thousands of kilometers. The difference between the median income of the highest and lowest States is almost 2x, so your experience will be very different depending on which State you live. Also, in terms of discretionary income, cost of living varies a lot so disposable income isn't the entire story. Note that the average discretionary income (money left over after all ordinary expenses) in the US is ~$2k/month whereas the median discretionary income is $1k/month. This implies that high income earners (think $100k, not FAANG) have a few thousand dollars left over each month after expenses. I've worked in Europe for several years and the differences in discretionary income are stark, both due to income levels and taxation. Americans are kind of oblivious to just how freely they spend money due to having so much discretionary income; we tend to assume the rest of the developed world is similar when that really isn't the case.
sushshshsh 6y ago
How does this account for things like taxes and shifting of expenses? It is common knowledge that in the USA, they will pay you extra in the corporate world, but that extra money goes to family health care, education, transport, and other things that are covered by European taxation schemes. If you look at discretionary income, the median corporate employees are making similar incomes. And of course, SWEs are outperforming in USA, and manual laborers are outperforming in EU
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I have not researched that until now but it appears the US is #3 for median disposable income behind Switzerland and Norway. If there’s a better metric I’m interested. However, I think it’s safe to say the typical US resident is not relatively impoverished. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...

harryh 6y ago

Looking at median income doesn't significantly alter the conclusions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

nabla9 6y ago

Usually rich and poor means net wealth, not income. Median net wealth per adult, in US dollars is relatively good measure. US is ranked 22 globally. Source: "Global wealth databook 2019" (PDF). Credit Suisse. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2019.pdf https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab... European countries ahead of the US: Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland, France, UK, Spain,Austria, Italy, Malta, Norway. Interesting how many countries (France for example) is ahead of Germany in both mean and median net wealth per adult. In the US 34.5% of population has wealth between 100,000 USD and 1 million, In UK 44.8%, France: 46.3%. US has significantly more people with wealth over 1 million. German Gini index is 81.6, France 69.6. USA 85.2. EDIT: Table 3-3 is super interesting. Membership of top wealth groups for selected countries, 2019. (absolute number of people). Over USD 100,000; Number of adults (thousands) China 113,410 United States 103,198 Japan 55,370 Germany 26,012 United Kingdom 25,388 France 25,110 Italy 23,284 China already has more people with wealth over 100,000 USD. (20.8% of total) than any other country. No wonder why US companies want to stay in Chinese markets.

gshdg 6y ago
And yet more than half of Americans don’t have $400 to cover an emergency. I wonder how the US would stack up in 25th percentile wealth against European countries? Also, there are measures like food insecurity that I suspect would be very telling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  Per the government, the median American household has >$1000 remaining every month after all ordinary expenses, far more than enough to cover a $400 emergency. The "can't cover $400" trope doesn't imply what you think it does, it is pulled out of context from a survey about how people would cover an emergency, not whether they could. Many popular financial stats used in the media are misleading in service of a narrative. As another example, you'll see many articles stating some large percentage of Americans don't have any savings, which is only true because they define "savings" as having a savings account, which many Americans with plenty of money don't even have (myself included). And then there is the one about Americans having no retirement savings, where "retirement savings" excludes any real estate investments, taxable brokerage accounts, etc which is where many Americans have the majority of their retirement savings. The "food insecurity" surveys are a similar story. Same with "food deserts". If you dig into the underlying studies none of them imply what the media tries to imply with them. It is a hazard to uncritically accept statistics from the media. They have an incentive to paint the most dire story possible.

rst 6y ago

And even looking at median income would still leave other things out -- like the much higher fraction of that household income which goes to medical expenses in the US than in, well... the entire EU for starters.

TMWNN 6y ago
No. At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/), where "disposable income" (http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46 http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46) accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
- chmod775 6y ago
  That's an average again. Also not sure what you mean by "No." That data neither proves nor disproves what your parent comment said. Additionally disposable income doesn't account for "optional" spending on healthcare etc. by the individual. When you look at median disposable household income, the US still comes in somewhere at the top, but the top 15 countries all have about the same ballpark figure (~30k USD), with US being the only country among them that doesn't have unemployment benefits, affordable healthcare, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    As mentioned elsewhere, the US still does quite well in median income rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income).
    - chmod775 6y ago
      Is there any particular point you're trying to make? You keep responding to people with at best tangentially related data that is not relevant to the discussion. Now suddenly we're looking at median gross income. And this time I don't know at all how to respond to that in a manner that will somehow make it relevant to the discussion again.

defertoreptar 6y ago

The author is looking at consumption, not income. It's been shown that when you look at consumption, inequality isn't nearly what people think. https://economics21.org/html/when-it-comes-inequality-consumption-what-matters-978.html https://economics21.org/html/when-it-comes-inequality-consum...

standardUser 6y ago
Doesn't focusing on consumption completely obscure to bulk of inequality, which takes the form of endless billions constantly accumulating among a minuscule portion of the population?

amiga_500 6y ago

Even per capita is misleading. Go to get stitches in the eu vs america. Buy a regular pizza in the eu, get quality, buy it in the usa get synthetic yuk.

LargeWu 6y ago

Indeed. Don't be fooled by North Dakota as the top GDP per capita state in the US. There are a relatively small number of landowners in the western half of the state making crazy passive income from oil rights their great-grandfathers lucked into when they immigrated a hundred years ago. The state is very working-class. It maybe doesn't have the same amount of abject poverty that you see in other places, but people here work hard for a living. Also, the numbers in the article are from 2014 when the oil boom was in still full swing. That's what provided a lot of the highest paying jobs in the state. Drilling levels today are less than 10% of what they were at the peak, and consequently many of those jobs have gone with it.