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Old 06-30-2018, 02:17 PM
 
30,876 posts, read 36,854,288 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty View Post
The percentage of Americans in the middle and upper class has been increasing nicely. The percentage of Americans in the lower class has been shrinking nicely. The quality of life for all is increasing.
Only partly true. About 2/3 of the shrinkage in the middle class is due to movement into the upper middle class--and this positive fact is ignored all too often. But the other 1/3 means people are moving down.

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/how...-really-faring
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Old 06-30-2018, 03:08 PM
 
8,726 posts, read 7,384,678 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost View Post
I think you are making some significant errors here. A larger population also increases demand for goods and services, thus creating a need for more jobs. It isn't as though there is a fixed number of jobs in the world, and if we make too many babies, we will have a lot of unemployment.
India must be the number one economy per capita in the world then, right? Per capita wealth probably trends with the number of people in a country, right?

Oh wait, no it does not.
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Old 06-30-2018, 03:12 PM
 
Location: Washington state
6,988 posts, read 4,848,051 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nor'Eastah View Post

Why are all the Latin American masses risking life and limb to cross our southern border illegally?? Surely, not because they think this nation is a pox on the planet. Far from it.
Oh, maybe because there's an ocean between them and Europe.


This might be one reason for the income disparity:
Attached Thumbnails
America has unprecedented amounts of income disparity in a developed country.-unnamed_13.jpg  
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Old 06-30-2018, 03:40 PM
 
502 posts, read 389,644 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rodentraiser View Post
Oh, maybe because there's an ocean between them and Europe.


This might be one reason for the income disparity:

I agree 100% if I could have gone to Europe I would but the US was the nearest developed country for me to get the hell out and survive.
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Old 06-30-2018, 06:53 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziggy100 View Post
I came across this global statistic when it comes to wage stagnation


What's more important than income disparity in my opinion is upward mobility. Most 3rd world countries with high income disparity have distinct social classes and wealth is largely inherited and the poor rarely are afforded the opportunity to ascend into a higher social class. In this area we do very well, but we could improve https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-...ries-mobility/
Note the Scandinavian countries don't seem to afford much upward mobility. Slovenia is the leader, but it's not really surprising given the previous generation were communist, and there was essentially nowhere to go but up.

You're reading the results backwards.
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Old 06-30-2018, 06:58 PM
 
Location: Paranoid State
13,044 posts, read 13,826,471 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi View Post
That says nothing about the corporations. All that says is about financial investment by pension funds.
Who vote for the Board of Directors.
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Old 06-30-2018, 09:26 PM
 
Location: Ohio
24,623 posts, read 19,105,746 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ColoGuy View Post
Our rulers say there is no problem with that. Surely cream rises to the top?

When I consider the general standard of living and quality of life in northern European nations, it does get my attention.
It's not just "rulers" it's the Laws of Economics which also say there is no problem with that.

Comparisons between homogeneous nation-States with populations smaller than the entire population of Cook County, Illinois, and heterogeneous countries whose population is 65 times larger are not valid.

You are apparently totally oblivious to the problem of unfunded future obligations those European nation-States face.

The United Kingdom is the best situated, sits its obligations are only 70% of GDP, while Italy is in serious trouble since theirs are 350% of GDP, according to a study by the Bank of International Settlements.

France has tried to stave off those problems by making changes to their retirement system. Instead of getting 50% of your average wages (indexed just like Social Security does), that's been slashed to 37.5%.

If you're born after 1952, you have to work for 42 years to qualify for benefits, and if you're born after 1973, you'll have to work 43 years to qualify. Contrast that with the 35 years you need in the US.

And the retirement age has been increased from 65 to 67 years.

Note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that from 2008 and on into the foreseeable future, 2/3rds of all "new" jobs "created" will be "created" by retiring Baby-Boomers. I don't know the French situation related to their Baby-Boomers, but forcing people to remain in the work-force another 7-8 years is going to create perennial unemployment problems, unless France can get its economy to double GDP growth to create more jobs to absorb new and returning entrants into the work-force.

And after all that, France still has serious issues related to future unfunded liabilities.

So, before extolling the virtues of those homogeneous nation-States, you might want to wait and see how they deal with future unfunded obligations coming due between 2020 and 2050. After taxes are increased and the program's benefits are reduced in order to pay for them, you might not like what you see.
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Old 07-01-2018, 01:59 AM
 
Location: NYC
20,550 posts, read 17,604,980 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by k350 View Post
India must be the number one economy per capita in the world then, right? Per capita wealth probably trends with the number of people in a country, right?

Oh wait, no it does not.
We're lucky that even we import tons of Indian workers here, our immigration quota for India is 100k and they demand we up the limit because tech companies want more cheap labors. The green card limit for India now is over 25 yrs of waiting period because Indians want to be paid US $ rather than rupis.
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Old 07-01-2018, 05:29 AM
 
Location: Phoenix
30,106 posts, read 18,921,258 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ColoGuy View Post
This government is. I don't see the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, or even Germany in that way.

There is a backlash coming I think. The Millenials are quite fond of socialism, a very large percentage harbor a venomous hatred for capitalism. They will be voting for awhile. They almost elected one of the more unelectable candidates we have ran in some time. Actually Sanders would likely be our president if the DNC didn't corrupt the process.
Those nations haven't taken in 50 million immigrants over the last few decades like we have. They are just now taking in immigrants and it's already causing problems and they are headed for disaster when they can no longer pay for their social programs.

I had a young engineer work for me that is now working in our Amsterdam office and is depressed because the pay is much lower, taxes much higher and opportunity much lower than what is available in the USA...after hating the USA, he now wants to emigrate here partially because he says the Europeans only promote white Europeans (he's Muslim Asian) while America doesn't discriminate and hold back minorities...merit based promotion compared to tribal based.
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Old 07-01-2018, 09:15 AM
 
Location: Paranoid State
13,044 posts, read 13,826,471 times
Reputation: 15839
The usual statistics invoked to support assertions of US income inequality are misleading - on purpose for political reasons. By design, they are greatly exaggerated. They are based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Those statistics are misleading because the CPS of the U.S. Census Bureau explicitly excludes about $1 trillion in annual transfer payments to lower-income households and do not account for the effects of taxes. When those transfer payments and tax effects are included, income inequality in the United States is lower than that in many Western democracies and has grown at rates similar to income inequality in other nations.

Improved estimates of poverty show that only about 2% of today’s population lives in poverty rather than the headline-popping numbers (10-15%) the progressive left disingenuously promotes.

The net effect is that pretax data overstate the true income of upper-income households by as much as 50* percent, and missing transfers understate the true income of lower-income households by 200% or more. Thus, if the government were to raise taxes on the wealthy tomorrow and transfer all the additional money to the lowest income groups through a larger EITC, the official metrics of inequality would not budge by a single penny because neither the new taxes taken from the top nor the additional income transfers given to the bottom would be used in the*calculation of the Current Population Survey (CPS) from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Last edited by SportyandMisty; 07-01-2018 at 09:24 AM..
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