That said, it is of course possible I overstated my case - the provenance of sources I am finding is not as strong as I would have expected.
[1] https://mises.org/wire/poor-us-are-richer-middle-class-much-...
Note: I appreciate your calm responses and engagement of the arguments. I concede that I should have included some refutation or concession based on the merits of the article themselves in my original reply.
Edit: to add another source refuting the Mises thesis, stating that income inequality is highest in the US among G-7 countries (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mises_Institute
Even if they got the numbers right, which I doubt, they completely miss that US income has to pay for a lot more than in most of Europe, healthcare and education just as the most prominent examples, also lack of public transit etc.
And of course anyone who has ever lived both in the US and in one or more European countries knows that this "analysis" is BS.
> And of course anyone who has ever lived both in the US and in one or more European countries knows that this "analysis" is BS.
mm. if we are going by anecdata, my dad grew up in Europe in latter 20th century and they could not afford shoes or electricity. his siblings were put up for adoption. things have certainly changed, but that is intense material deprivation relative to latter 20th century US.
Take a tour of rural Alabama or Appalachia today and you will see plenty of extreme poverty like that. We have a whole industry of NGOs and bin manufacturers [1] just to supply them with used clothes and shoes, massive subsidies to provide them with internet and electricity, and so on.
Once you get out of the big cities, especially in "fly over" states, the poverty in the US can be downright staggering.
[1] https://d2jald4mo73t7v.cloudfront.net/banners/_1200x630_crop...
They claim to account for them. Whether they actually did so in any way that makes sense is not documented. Given the credibility of the source... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, their claim is "social benefits paid to households". That wording strongly suggests that they only took into account those social benefits that result in a payment, of money, from the government to the households, such as social security payments or unemployment benefits.
Which would miss the vast majority of benefits, including all the ones I mentioned, because those benefits don't work that way.
Here's one analysis, but there are others. I would prefer a less conservative source.