Changes in Income inequality among the OECD Nations
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US leads the OECD in inequality but to hold our lead we need to make the new tax code permanent ASAP!
Sad that Britain and China are experiencing such dramatic shifts while the U.S. of A. is following well behind.
You can thank Maggie Thatcher and the country is still suffering from her legacy. As for China, you can blame Singapore as a catalyst.
There you go, always blaming someone... just embrace it
I don't understand why people obsess over these things.
The US is highest in these areas because it's the best place in the world to do business...yet most our richest people just became rich in the last few decades. And it's the still the easiest place on earth for a nobody to become rich.
You'd think we were battling some European aristocracy the way the left talks about wealth in America.
The US is highest in these areas because it's the best place in the world to do business...yet most our richest people just became rich in the last few decades. And it's the still the easiest place on earth for a nobody to become rich.
You'd think we were battling some European aristocracy the way the left talks about wealth in America.
There is a price to income inequality. Maggie's decisions was bad in the long run. I was there when she was around and the damaged she cause is still there to see.
The foolishness of the Brexit decision is an example -- a combo of nostalgia/patriotism and regional income inequality (the North-South divide.)
Doesn't that statement contradict itself? If the rich are getting richer, how does it make it the easiest place for a nobody to become rich? Its a rigged system and yet it's the most opportunistic place on earth?
Fyi. I don't agree thats its the easiest place on earth to become rich. Its easier to make money here in Asia. Its way too competitive in the States, with those with the best network and not necessarily the best product/service being successful. Plus the dominance of oligopolies within the larger, more mature sectors making it difficult for younger, better upstarts.
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Are you fkn high?
How short term you think?
The richest man on this planet was a ZERO just 20 years ago.
What other place does that happen on earth, in history?
Europeans battled aristocracy/wealth for centuries (and still do).
WTF...are people just dense of history?
What's with all the aggro?
Coming out of Princeton is hardly a nobody. He granddad was on the US Atomic Commission.
And yes, there are plenty of folks who were nobody and became billionaires -- Asia is littered with them. I know a few personally here, though a couple have died in the past few years.
Not being aggressive....I just disagree wholeheartedly with the position. The US is a very easy place to succeed.....if you give a Fk. Many don't.
Without sound too IGW, there is an element of elitism that exists. The idea of meritocracy has been diminishing steadily. My siblings and their kids all go to Ivy League schools and for a very good reason. Their networks. In England, they call it the Old School Tie.
And as JDB had pointed out, countries like China has rapidly caught up in the Income Inequality fault-line -- they have the fastest number of millionaires/billionaires in the world. Singapore has the highest per capita. Illustrating that it's not necessarily the easiest place to become rich. Its more jingoism than reality. Its part of Trump's schtick -- his supporters will get rich through him.
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There has always been the elite class in the US....but they become less relevant every year.
Silicon Valley has supplanted NYC as the basis of super-wealth. They'll do what they want for the next several decades. Then someone else will crush them when they get too big.
It's a great country. You make your own elitism here. May take more work for some than others....but how about you point me to a place where it is easier? I'll move there!
You have your pick. Pack well and safe travels.. Please send postcards..
https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/
Income disparity eventually pisses the masses off when it becomes too drastic and crappy things like the Downfall of Rome, The Bolshevik Revolution and the French Revolution happen.
LOL...don't know why people are obsessed with comparing the US with Scandinavian countries. Why not just compare Vermont/New Hampshire to them?
Your examples were exactly what I was referring to. And exactly what we don't have here.
The US continually has shown better standards of living for the middle class than the Eurozone.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...estern-europes-middle-classes-appear-smaller/
And most of those utopian states are poorer on a cost of living adjusted level than even the poorest US State (even after accounting for welfare benefits):
https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states
And while there is more disparity in the US....the idea that economic mobility in the US is a drastic laggard is a myth.
The absence of an agreed-upon standard for judging the just rate of mobility is typically dealt with by comparing America’s rate of mobility to those of other Western democracies. The highly publicized claim that social mobility in the U.S lags far behind that of other nations stems from a widely cited comparative analysis conducted 10 years ago, which placed the U.S.’s rate of mobility next to last among nine wealthy industrial democracies. However, in 2014 a team of economists from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley examined almost 50 million tax returns in what is arguably the most extensive and rigorous study of social mobility to date.
Calculating three alternative measures of mobility, the researchers offered persuasive evidence that the United States has one of the highest rates of mobility in the world, ranking fourth, just behind Finland, Denmark, and Norway. Moreover, the findings showed no decline in the rate of social mobility among children born in the U.S. over the last 40 years. (Within the overall rate, however, the degree of mobility varied among 709 geographic districts throughout the country. The four characteristics most significantly related to these geographic discrepancies were an area’s racial segregation, high-school dropout rates, percentage of households with single mothers, and amounts of community involvement, as measured by factors such as voter turnout and participation in local organizations. Among these characteristics, the share of children in single-parent families was the strongest and most robust predictor of differences in social mobility.)
Calculating three alternative measures of mobility, the researchers offered persuasive evidence that the United States has one of the highest rates of mobility in the world, ranking fourth, just behind Finland, Denmark, and Norway. Moreover, the findings showed no decline in the rate of social mobility among children born in the U.S. over the last 40 years. (Within the overall rate, however, the degree of mobility varied among 709 geographic districts throughout the country. The four characteristics most significantly related to these geographic discrepancies were an area’s racial segregation, high-school dropout rates, percentage of households with single mothers, and amounts of community involvement, as measured by factors such as voter turnout and participation in local organizations. Among these characteristics, the share of children in single-parent families was the strongest and most robust predictor of differences in social mobility.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/prosperity-upward-mobility/511925/
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The United States is unequivocally the best country in the world. Those who disagree are confused about mapping their values onto reality or reality onto their values. Or just confused.
Any place that seems better than the US is what it is because of the US but will still always lag behind the US in getting better. One confusion is the rate of improvement, the country is changing so fast from greatly lagging to somewhat lagging. It's still lagging.
Another confusion is our politics and two parties. They are not what's best about America. Closer to what's worst about America but overcoming that is baked into the US. The current version of the Republican Party is the worst in history when multiplied by its power. That the US will be able to overcome that is proof of the power of America.
Any place that seems better than the US is what it is because of the US but will still always lag behind the US in getting better. One confusion is the rate of improvement, the country is changing so fast from greatly lagging to somewhat lagging. It's still lagging.
Another confusion is our politics and two parties. They are not what's best about America. Closer to what's worst about America but overcoming that is baked into the US. The current version of the Republican Party is the worst in history when multiplied by its power. That the US will be able to overcome that is proof of the power of America.
To be completely honest, trying to make these direct comparisons are completely and totally useless.
I could sit here and link articles supporting both of your points for the next two weeks and we would still not have a decent answer.
I don't think people really take into account the difference it makes when you have no out of pocket expenses for healthcare and education.
From a purely personal point of view based on personal experience, I find that the average European while may be shown by your stats to have far less money, actually have more disposable income. All this while having from 4-8 weeks of holiday and 40 hour work weeks.
This is only my observation from my daily life and not meant as a statement of fact.
My broader point is that simply comparing numbers doesn't even come close to the reality of daily life.
Go spend some time in Sweden or Germany and tell if they are comparable to the poorest US states and you will finds that statement laughable. It just goes to show that the numbers you posted may be entirely accurate and also mean little to nothing.
Well that piece supposedly took into account social welfare items, to include healthcare costs. And it focused upon median income.
I'd probably agree that there is less variation on the low end in those European states than say in Mississippi.....perhaps looking at income adjusted quintiles would be preferable...of course comparing Sweden to Mississippi is apples and oranges for many reasons. And nobody typically travels to impoverished areas anywhere they go.
Got to applaud those who think income and wealth disparity is proof that America is great and make a good argument to support this belief.
Don't say that to Trump. He'd take it seriously. Even after you explained that you were being sarcastic. Then he'd tweet about. Then FOX would start pushing it. Within a week it'd be universally recognized Republican dogma.
Do you think that it is the government's job to equalize pay among earners? Why? How would oy do it? Is there authority in the Constitution for the government to undertake such a task?
Obsessed? It's the first time I've spoken about this on this or the other board. You have a strange definition of obsessed. And, I'm not "people", I'm one of "those" people. Please keep that in mind in the future.
You asked a question I found you one report. Sorry for giving you information. No it didn't prove anything but neither did your post but it should give you enough to pause and maybe, just maybe, consider that "American Exceptionalism" is a marketing term with as much value as "Nacho Cheesier".
I wasn't referring to you.....meant the people that write the pieces like that. And no, I'm not a big believer in the idea American expectionalism....never have been.
I think there are about a dozen countries that are worthy of living in and the US is one of them. It's just not the only one like some people (not the same people you reference vbg) believe.
I do believe in American Exceptionalism but it has nothing to do with American ideology, work ethic, political affiliation, or people. Simply that we have vast natural resource, low disease and two oceans are our major borders. Other great empires needed the commodities of other nations to survive. We don't. It gives us an edge that no other world power has had.
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unless Putin is the richest. in which case it was more like 30 yrs ago.
more recent for some other oligarchs i'm guessing.
i guess Russia is the "what other place" you inquired about.
To me American Exceptionalism is our good side without our bad side. It's what led us to create the nation and the Constitution. It's the beacon on the hill, forever setting a precedent and example for all nations henceforth. The world largely respects the United States for this and is thankful. They hate the CIA and our economic imperialism and such things, but love our democratic ideals and that no matter how big a fool we elect for president, it will last at most 8 years.
probably because the accumulation of wealth by one, is often done so at the expense of the wealth of the many who work for them. or used to work for them. or worked for all the competitors the "one" destroyed in the process.
winner take all, only is fair when the winner produces all.
not just because the winner has the key to the company treasury, and thus has the ability to seize all the revenue, or at lest a ridiculously disproportionate share of, that was acquired by the many for whom said wealth could not have been acquired without.
inequity is a function of the breakdown of the ability of the working class to negotiate their share of the pie.
and a function of the skimmers, skimming off all they can because they can, while contributing zero to the endeavor.
Let’s see.....I think that the inequlality is further exacerbated because the tax rates for the wealthy were decreased and that the tax rates for the wealthy should have remained the same, rather than be lowered, because the deficit is ballooning and the increasing number of baby boomers.
You go to the tried and true Rushian position of asking me if I think the government should equalize pay among earners. What a leap. Last year the McDonalds CEO made 21,800,000 which is roughly 84,000 per workday. Please show me the mathematical formula which proves that keeping a few points of his old tax rate in place “equalizes” the pay of someone making 21,800,000 per year vs the 24,000 per year McDonalds restaurant workers make.
My principle concern about the increasing concentration of wealth is not economic but political. Vast concentrations of wealth result in concentrations of political power. Your story about economic flux...I am rich today and then poor tomorrow is exactly what the rich want to prevent. The only way to prevent it is to create political protection to ensure that upstarts can't take their stuff. The only way to do it is to make sure that the masses can't redistribute vast concentrations of wealth for their own purposes. The way to prevent such transitions is by eliminating democracy and instituting oligarchy and autocracy. Autocracy has terrible long run economic implications. All this we used to know in this country.
Comparing incarceration rates makes the poor counties in the US seem rich. #lockemallup
More research below on how poorly the U.S. compares with Sweden in terms of intergenerational mobility. The bottom line, across a variety of measures intergenerational mobility is much higher in Sweden than in the United States.
https://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-transmission-socioeconomic-status
Researchers have long studied the extent to which inequalities in socioeconomic status persist across generations (for reviews of the literature, see Solon 1999, Björklund and Jäntti 2009, Black and Devereaux 2011). And, despite the US being affectionately referred to as the ‘land of opportunity’, the transmission of (dis)advantage has been shown to be stronger in the US than in most other high-income countries. The Nordic countries are at the other end of the spectrum, with some of the highest rates of intergenerational mobility in the world. That is, until a recent body of highly publicised work using new empirical methods proposed a ‘simple law of mobility’ (e.g. Clark 2014). The simple law suggests that intergenerational persistence is much stronger than previously believed in all countries, and is further uniformly high across (all) vastly different societies and over centuries (Clark 2014). Given the direct contradiction to established results in the existing literature, Clark hypothesises that these previous studies focused on a single ‘noisy’ measure of socioeconomic status, such as income, education, or occupation, which led to downward bias in the estimates; if the information from these measures were combined, estimated persistence would be much higher and in accordance with the ‘simple law’ (Clark 2014, Clark and Cummins 2015).
In recent work, we test this proposition about prior studies (Vosters and Nyborn 2017, Vosters 2018). We do not find evidence of a substantial rise in intergenerational persistence when information from multiple measures of socioeconomic status are combined, nor do we find evidence that persistence is uniform across countries.
In recent work, we test this proposition about prior studies (Vosters and Nyborn 2017, Vosters 2018). We do not find evidence of a substantial rise in intergenerational persistence when information from multiple measures of socioeconomic status are combined, nor do we find evidence that persistence is uniform across countries.
I don't even need to watch this video to KNOW that Denmark is the happiest because a good Danish is as good as it gets.
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