Wealth is also a function of age - older people tend to have more - and that ranking is not normalized by such extraneous factors.
The US is number 2 by median income, and number 1 for median disposable income, both of which are pretty important, especially to younger people that want cash flow to enjoy life.
not sure how accurate wikipedia is here, but I've seen this claim elsewhere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_and_discretionary_i...
Apparently what I meant above is discretionary income, which would include all fundamental bills/payments such as healthcare etc. Disposable income does not include those, it only includes income plus direct payments from the government.
What would interest me is discretionary income, which includes healthcare, mortgages etc. plus education, public transport, daycare, energy and I'm possibly forgetting some fundamental things.
"Disposable" is very much misleading here. If you have 1000$ "disposable" income but you still have to pay for or cannot afford all of the mentioned things then you are in worse shape than someone who has 500$ "disposable" income but can lean on public infrastructure and subsidies for those things. The difference can be quite massive.
The reason I'm specifically suspicious of the US here is that public infrastructure seems to be quite a bit behind and fundamental things like healthcare is substantially more expensive than in some of the most developed countries.
>The following table represents data from OECD's "median disposable income per person" metric, which includes all forms of income as well as taxes and transfers in kind from governments for benefits such as healthcare and education and is equivalised by dividing by the square root of household size. This metric, in addition to using a median rather than a mean, uses "data calculated according to the new OECD terms of reference"; compared to previous terms of reference, these "include a more detailed breakdown of current transfers received and paid by households as well as a revised definition of household income, including the value of goods produced for own consumption as an element of self-employed income." As OECD displays median disposable incomes in each country's respective currency, the values were converted here using the World Bank's PPP conversion factors, accounting for each country's cost of living in the year that the disposable median income was recorded. Unless noted otherwise, all data refers to 2019. Data are in United States dollars at current prices and current purchasing power parity for private consumption for the reference year.
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
[0,0,0,0,5,6,11,11,11,11]
Another example that I know fully well is Brazil: the mean is 8,560 BRL and the median is 8,220 BRL for monthly salaries, that is, very close. But these monthly salaries are known to vary widely from 2,170 BRL (USD 417) to 38,200 BRL (USD 7349), so hardly anyone is really making 8220 or close to that.
Yes, they do. I am a PhD mathematician with decades of work using these tools. I am quite clear on the meanings and shortcoming of all sorts of indicators. I am also aware how real world data trends instead of cooked up examples that don't match reality.
Median is a common value used by economists precisely because it more likely shows what a person makes as opposed to the mean, especially in cases of high inequality.
> If you don't believe
Yes, you can make up all sorts of nonsense. Not a single country follows the distributions you made up.
>Another example that I know fully well is Brazil:
You conclusion does not at all follow from your claim. Or from the actual data.
> so hardly anyone is really making [the median] or close to that
Well, by definition, over half of people make the median or more. Is that hardly anyone?
If you look at the data [1] (income by decile in Brazil), besides the 50% making median income or higher, another 30% of the people make within 30% of median. That leaves 20% of the people making under 70% of the median income.
What is your definition of "hardly anyone"?
Look at the data. Clearly median is much more accurate than mean for explaining how much people make, as this example showed.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251075/average-monthly-...
???
Did you compute them? do you know how?
The Brazil data I just posted has median around 1383, mean of 2308.36, which is 65% larger.
An interesting test: compute with details the median and mean of the data I just posted. I already gave you the answers. I think you don't understand these terms.
That you don't like the outcome of the most two commonly used indicators is not the fault of the indicators - it's the result of you wanting to put things in the data that are not there.
Your claim about Brazil having "hardly anyone", which I showed was nonsense, shows exactly what you're trying to do - put things in data that simply are not there (and in the case of your claim, are mathematically invalid no matter the income distribution).
>Now, if you start using the percentiles as you're doing here, then you are looking deeper into the data
Percentiles have the exact same graph as dollars, or pesos, or anything you desire.
% = exact$ / total $.
So they have the exact same graph, merely a different label. Do you understand this? The % of total income versus income shows nothing different, there is no "deeper into the data" or "more accurate and reflective of reality" for this.
It's simply scaling ALL the numbers by a constant. No one changes place. No income compared to another changes in ratio. There is no subtle nuance pulled out of anywhere.
>which just proves my point.
Is your point that you don't know what any of these terms mean? Then yes, you proved your point. Mean, median, percent, ratio, decile, all the terms related to income - you have screwed them all up beyond reason.
Don't bother replying until you answer the questions I poste last time:
Do you admit 50% of people in Brazil make median income or more? What amount of people did you mean by "hardly anyone"?
Also answer: is the graph of income by % the same geometric shape as income by $, or yen, or peso, or any currency you care to pick, thereby giving no "looking deeper into the data"?
You're pretending to not understand what I said. The figure for median income of 8K is very different from what most people make in Brazil, because a lot of people will make less than that, and a lot make more than that. So, the median has little value, because there is just a small group that makes close to that figure compared to the other groups that make more or less. It is a society with large inequality that is polarized on the two sides, instead of concentrating on the middle. My point is that this measure is more useful for societies that have more equality, such as a few countries in Europe. For the US, the median is less and less useful to get a clear picture.
I see you've moved from "hardly any" to "a lot". Nice goal post move. I bet if you look at the actual data enough you might get to what the data shows.
The majority of people, for every country for which there is data, are close to the median income. End of story. You so far have posted so many simple math errors that it's hard to know where you got your understanding of these things.
> It is a society with large inequality that is polarized on the two sides, instead of concentrating on the middle.
There is no such country. Don't believe me? You can check this yourself:
[1] has all the data to check. Select the datasets showing income share. Select them, pick years, say 2016-2021. Download the CSV. There are 114 countries in the dataset for which all 5 quintiles of income are available for recent years.
For each compute the median. Then look at how close the middle 60% of the people are to the median.
If you really want to see that distributions are not what you believe, graph every single one. If you need tools, jupyterlab using python, pandas, and matplotlib make this task pretty easy.
In EVERY single one you will find the majority of people are decently close to the median. I just checked. Do it yourself so you stop believing all this mystical non-existent income distribution where people are not majority near the median.
I know you're convinced there are income distributions like those you made up, but there simply are not. It is empirical fact.
So, if you want to continue to claim what you are - do what I told you to do, pick the country you think best supports your claim, and post the actual data.
Until then you are simply wrong.
This is why economists, even those working in inequality, start with the median income when discussing income. It is the best point indicator of what the majority of people in a society earn.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/gini-index-coef...
Last I checked, poverty line in the US is at the 85th percentile in world income.
And most importantly, most of that inequality and poverty levels are what are called pre-tax-transfer: they do not account the value given the poor and lower incomes via benefits, which lowers a lot of that inequality (and makes our poor even richer than most of the planet).
For fun, pick a country that you think is better for lower income people, and let's look into it :)
Inequality is relative. Absolute income means a significant amount, even more so to the poor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Ito does, it's PPP adjusted. Just look it up instead of projecting flaws to obtain a result you desire.
>My point was that there are many countries, including ones that are tiny in comparison (definitely not "top dog"), that enjoy a comparable standards of living.
I agree completely. All the top countries would be good places to live, with tradeoffs here and there.
But for most of the world, the US is a terrific alternative to where they are, at least if one wants to raise their standard of living.
For example, in the US the median network for an 69 year old (right around retirement) is over 33 times as much as an 18 year old [1], with values in between spread as expected. So a society with significantly more old people (such as Japan) would have higher median wealth but not necessarily more income (for example, US pays more than Japan on average [2], but we're younger).
So, if you move to Japan from the US assuming you'll end up richer, you may be making a mistake because you made that choice based on comparing things incorrectly.
This is why it matters.
[1] https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/
[2] https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/japan/usa?sc=XE...
GP even mentioned the reason in their post.
I guess you'd have to be an idiot like Trump to even suggest such a thing.
Most of the studies about “people are irrational” are times psychologists fail to realize that people are acting on an iterated (rather than single round) game — and enforcing reciprocity through their “irrational” acts.
We know at an instinctive level that reciprocity is necessary in game theory — eg, Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
You always start out by cooperating but if someone defects on you, you defect on them.
Your argument is so general as to be almost meaningless. It can be used to justify not responding to almost anything.
The Chinese "elite capture" program is well-documented. They intentionally ensnare govt & business elites (and family members) in extremely lucrative deals with China to ensure they remain pro-China's interests. And there are some big names in there (Bidens, Pelosi, and McConnell etc).
The media doesnt talk about this corruption as they all have movie studios and want to sell their movies into China.
Its why there may be occasional discussion of the problem (like here) but for some inexplicable reason, simple and obvious steps are never taken.
The political will simply isn't there due to elite capture IMO.
This is true, but it only works if everyone does it. If one country is the main one that safeguards trade, releases costly scientific research (and open source codebases) for nothing and plays as well as it can, but others don't (and even look down on the safeguarding country for spending so much on defence instead of bread/circuses) then it takes a massive force of goodwill on the part of that one country to keep doing it.
(I am not a US citizen/resident, to pre-empt the standard ad hominem :)
By what metrics? As an example, longevity is slightly higher in China than in US (77.30 years vs 77), it is GROWING in China while decreasing in US, or china has a transportation system that is orders of magnitude better than the US one. Ever heard of the high speed train system and how quickly was it built?
Median income alone isn't enough to judge the quality of life of a country. I'd rather be poorer but live longer and in a country that works also for non-millionaires, but you can take more money with the lower longevity if you prefer.
So the answer is that even in purchasing power parity terms, the average American is 4x richer.
The pont being that you can still have somewhat higher life standards with less purchasing power but a stronger social state.
Not everyone lives in Shanghai or Beijing you know.
In China if you're the wrong religion they put your men in prison camps and assign a rapist to sleep in bed with your women and indoctrinate them into the communist party.
If you are in prison, China will murder you and sell your organs.
In China the labor conditions are so bad they have to install "suicide nets" in factories because so many people try to jump out of windows or off roofs to kill themselves.
America has MANY warts, but there's really no comparison.
And US is Russia with better PR? :-D
I think the parent post means top dog in military and power sense, not welfare of citizens which is all well and good until another nation is trying to undermine your core values.
> Your successor will be judged by the standard you set
What successor are we thinking of here? Is that China? India? Russia? These are all very scary regimes.
gp's argument has no parallel to appeasement.
That's what I was referring to. Not appeasement exactly but seems like similar logic.
Making enemies of people who are not enemies is one of the stupidest moves imaginable. It is hard to overstate how mistaken that sort of mistake would be.
All this ignoring for the moment the general Western enterprise of erstwhile colonialism and current economic neocolonialism that makes the destruction wrought upon developing nations by direct war/attacks pale in comparison.
Limiting ourselves to the currently existing states, India has annexed Hyderabad, Junagardh, Dadra, and Nagar Haveli, while China has invaded India and Vietnam, and is presently annexing the South China Sea. This doesn't excuse the US actions in Iraq, but it does show that they are less unique than you claim.
Now compare this to Afghanistan.
The same Afghanistan that was invaded by the Soviet Union?
If you consider Taiwan a country, that's technically true but misleading. China would have invaded long ago if the US weren't capable or (claiming to be) willing to defend it.
Feel free to prove otherwise; note that Chinese statements are quite often misquoted.
“The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] would have no choice but to fight … and crush any attempt of Taiwan independence, safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/10/china-tells-us-it-w...
My biggest concern is domestic policy, given that being "top dog" would probably imply a general cultural and political movement towards whichever regime wins.
USA has done awful things, and nowadays seems to have a very uncertain future but values such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion are important to humanity and happiness imo and they still stand in the US despite all the craziness.
China and Russia shouldn't need any explanation in that respect, I can point to many sources. India's BJP is almost openly persecuting Muslims and doctoring history to be more Hindu.
Second, it's not necessarily in one's best interest to live in a "top dog" country. There are plenty of happy and prosperous people living outside the USA. The USA ranks 26th for median wealth. To give another example, even if China took the top dog spot, the average US citizen would still be better off than the average Chinese citizen.
Thirdly, I don't think the US remaining top dog is a realistic objective in the long term. In my opinion, it would be smarter to lead by example knowing that your successor will be judged by the standard you set.