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Radiolab recently featured (http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted-americas-poverty-myths/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents

• auxym 10y ago
  People reading this on HN are probably already in the top 20% of earners, or close enough. As such, they are likely better off in the US. Edit: actually, based off a quick Google search, it seems that if you earn 150k, you are in fact in the top 5%
  • imaginenore 10y ago
    Which I wouldn't consider rich. Moderately wealthy, but not enough to even buy a 2br in SF or Manhattan.
    • jononor 10y ago
      Richer than 95% of people in your country is not rich?
      • dsacco 10y ago
        I agree with you. But speaking as someone who is in "the 1%", my experience is that most Americans don't define wealth by numbers, they define it by how jetset a lifestyle can be. Of course being richer than 95% of the country makes you "rich"; that's near tautological. But that's not really the perception. Rather, the perception is that you're rich when you no longer need to work at all and can simply do whatever you want. That's really fuzzy, and I'd agree that it's indicative of wealth disparity in America that this has become the predominant conception of wealth. My point is that you two are probably talking past each other without meaning to.
    • jblok 10y ago
      Those areas cover probably max 0.1% of total land area in the USA. Since these are some of the most sought after real estate areas, it seems these areas would be the preserve of the top 0.1%, or 1%. Back of the napkin maths here I'll admit. The good news is there's still a huge chunk of the country where you would be considered wealthy by land value prices.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • croon 10y ago
        > Those areas cover probably max 0.1% of total land area in the USA. Much less than that. I did a quick calculation and Manhattan + SF is 0.0018% of total US land area. Might be 0.1% if it's only developed land. > Since these are some of the most sought after real estate areas, it seems these areas would be the preserve of the top 0.1%, or 1%. Back of the napkin maths here I'll admit. 1.6M live in Manhattan, 800k in SF. That's 0.8% of the population.
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      You are right but why is that something to strive for though? Most people here say they want to become 'rich' to achieve freedom. Why would your artificially make achieving that freedom harder by wanting to buy a 2br in Manhattan or SF? In many other, cheaper places, you have the freedom and thus achieved 'rich'. I am incredibly puzzled by the need to live in the most expensive places on earth; how does that benefit your quality of life? This is my lack of imagination maybe, I am not trying to judge here.
      • ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
        >>>I am incredibly puzzled by the need to live in the most expensive places on earth; how does that benefit your quality of life? You have the causality in the wrong order. They are the most expensive places on earth because they improve your quality of life, not the other way around. The price is derived from demand which is derived from a desire to have access to many goods, services, and experiences not available in many other places. I can speak personally to two other cities I've lived in where housing costs are quite high (though lower than SF and Manhattan): DC and Santa Monica / West LA. My fiancée and I lived in DC for 5 years in a wonderful expat bubble. While I'm am American, the vast majority of our friends were from all around the world and worked at international development organizations. The extra money we paid for housing was worth all the interesting experiences. Los Angeles is no different. It's easy to find interesting experiences and food through its diverse populations. There is a fundamental aspect to the nature of cities, viz. that there is a good to density itself. It enables humans to get value out of the shear existence of interacting with other humans in interesting ways. You need enough demand for an experience to support the existence of many experiences (e.g. You can't have a live punk music scene in a town of 100 people. Or even if somehow you do bc the entire town loves punk, it will be at the expense of those people being into other interests. Having enough people with enough wealth and distributed across enough interests/cultures/foods/music tastes, etc facilitates access to way more possible experiences. That, at least, I why I love large American cities.
        • tluyben2 10y ago
          That is a good point, but those experiences can be had in other, much cheaper cities around the world. Why pick exactly the most expensive ones. The experiences can be had in most big cities I have been, the goods + services are getting there but i'm not personally not too driven by that but can see others might be. For all these things I can see your point, just not why pick the most expensive ones? And I guess it also has to do with the phase in your life; I value freedom above goods & services handy. The satisfying experiences I have in cities all over, also cheap as chips cities in Asia and cities & villages in Asia & Europe. For people making so much money it seems that freedom is within reach if only compromise on the place of living is made. But you make a good points; I made/make decisions based on those points as well at some times; just now I value freedom more than other things.
    • manarth 10y ago
      Which I wouldn't consider rich Perhaps this is a sign of the severity of income and wealth inequality: that even having more income than 95% of the country isn't enough to be considered 'rich'.
    • wklauss 10y ago
      Manhattan is a big island. You can buy a 2br (and not in a terrible location) with 150k/yr.
  • icemelt8 10y ago
    From Pakistan earning $1600 per month :( Hackernews is not as small as you think
    • yread 10y ago
      You probably live like a king for 1600 in Pakistan though
      • icemelt8 10y ago
        I have my good days thanks :)
    • oblio 10y ago
      Are you earning $1600 in Pakistan on in the US? I'm pretty sure you're top 10% if not 5% with that income, in Pakistan.
      • aclsid 10y ago
        $1000 bucks can get you decent living standards in developing countries. But I would not say by a long shot he is in the top 5% by any standard. Developing countries main characteristic is the huge disparity between the haves and have-nots, which of course, leads to emigration and crime among other issues. Countries with a large middle class therefore are relatively better off. In any case, making $4000 per month or more is what'll get you royalty style living in those countries.
        • oblio 10y ago
          According to Wikipedia, the GDP per capita in Pakistan is $1400. He's making > $19000 per year, so he's making 14x what the average Pakistani citizen is producing, not earning. I'm pretty sure he's in the top 5% :)
    • Kurtz79 10y ago
      ... and it doesn't put you in the top 20% in Pakistan ? http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/pakistan http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/pakistan It would be a decent salary for many countries in Europe.
  • branchless 10y ago
    Better off because their compatriots are worse off. And the downvotes begin. Usa high inequality means low pay for many which benefits the wealthy!!
• CSMastermind 10y ago
  I'm biased here. I grew up well within the bottom 20% if not the bottom 10% of family incomes. I'm now personally in the top 5%. At no point in my life did it feel like there was anything holding me back. In fact if anything it was frustrating to watch as other people in my situation got handouts while I had to work my way up. I think America is just fine (with maybe a little too much affirmative action).
  • oblio 10y ago
    Well, it depends on your environment. What where your parents doing and what was your personal "big break"?
    • kamaal 10y ago
      >>what was your personal "big break"? This. Many times. Often people luck-out and think that the same would happen to everyone sooner or later. Or worse they think it was their work all along and nothing else. You can very easily deceive yourself into believing a certain set of things when the times are going good. Unfortunately you might have to fail for reasons beyond your control(for a lot of time, on a lot of things) to convince you otherwise.
      • amelius 10y ago
        And then there are people who reject any "big break" coming to them because they feel they need to accomplish something on their own.
      • david38 10y ago
        None of the successful people I know had a single "big break". It took a handful, but more importantly it took the willingness to take risk or do without. 1. Did you study in high school while everyone else was having fun? 2. Break - get into good school 3. Did you graduate with a difficult degree? This is pure tenacity. 4. Did you do interesting projects on the side in college? Tenacity. 5. Said degree + projects lead to job. Sort of break. 6. Moving across the country for a better job - tenacity. 7. Switching jobs many times to move up - tenacity 8. Promotion to management/lead/whatever. Tenacity + break because you have a boss that likes you 9. Large jump in salary by jumping to a company on the way up - break. 10. Several years with low medical bills, no divorce, whatever so you can save $50k+ per year. Break with slight tenacity for not splurging on stuff
• oblio 10y ago
  > In other words, what is the statistical basis for the belief that in America, anyone can go from "rags to riches"? Inertia of perception. If someone's perception of something is relatively solidified, it takes a long time - or major events - to change that perception. More so for massive groups of people. The whole "rags to riches" mostly comes from the late 19th century, when the US was still expanding geographically and all the new folks could still get a piece of land for nothing. That perception was solidified after WW1/WW2, from which the US came out unscathed and a lot richer due to becoming the world's supplier of weapons, materiel and a lot of other things that couldn't be reasonably produced in countries that were actually feeling the effects of those wars (occupations, massive bombings, etc.). Now the US is a plain ol' regular country where almost everything has been divided up but to make things worse the general culture is very individualistic (self-perception changes just as slowly...).
  • antisthenes 10y ago
    Not to mention, the post-war period leading up to 1973, US saw the highest oil consumption per capita of any country in the world, and higher than today still. That wealth didn't come from anywhere - it came from extensive exploitation of fossil based fuels.
• svdree 10y ago
  Could it be that the distance between the top and bottom 20% is less in Canada, making it easier to move from one to the other?
  • hackerboos 10y ago
    That's a fair point. Average earnings of Canada's 1% - $358,238 USD - http://globalnews.ca/news/3079173/heres-how-much-canadas-top-1-of-income-earners-made-in-2014/ http://globalnews.ca/news/3079173/heres-how-much-canadas-top... Average earnings of US's 1% - $1,153,298 USD - http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/see_the_average_income_of_top_1.html http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/see_the_average_... Couldn't find averages for the poorest but Canada's bottom 20% is 0-13,223 USD - http://www.moneysense.ca/save/financial-planning/the-all-canadian-wealth-test-2015/ http://www.moneysense.ca/save/financial-planning/the-all-can... America's bottom 20% 0-18,500 USD (US Census Bureau, 2006; income statistics for the year 2005) Looking at raw numbers skips over a lot of things such as healthcare and education. You're probably better off being poor in Canada and rich in the US.
  • colefichter 10y ago
    > Could it be that the distance between the top and bottom 20% is less in Canada You're just describing the results of inequality: two things are further apart than two other things. It doesn't tell you anything about the cause of inequality, only the magnitude of one symptom. It's like saying "a mile is longer than a kilometer". Well, yes that's an apt description but it doesn't tell you why that is the case.
• yummyfajitas 10y ago
  This number conflates can with will. We cannot rule out the possibility that actual mobility is low because people at the bottom choose not to engage in behaviors that would help them rise. I.e., imagine if the poor simply refuse work that's available [1], choose to have children outside of wedlock, do lots of drugs and commit lots of crime, they will likely remain poor. That's not evidence that "rags to riches" is impossible or even difficult, it's merely evidence that some people prefer other things more than riches and those people don't move up. Here's a concrete thought experiment: imagine a poor Gujurati or Bengali moves to the US. Do you think he'll remain poor? [1] It's a common liberal trope that we need Mexican immigration because they do jobs that "Americans just won't do". Strangely the implications of this are never explored.
  • timr 10y ago
    " We cannot rule out the possibility that actual mobility is low because people at the bottom choose not to engage in behaviors that would help them rise." Actually, your statement is such a common (and cruel) myth that there's a there's a whole episode in the series debunking it. You should listen to it. http://www.wnyc.org/story/who-deserves-to-be-poor/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/who-deserves-to-be-poor/
    • yummyfajitas 10y ago
      No, it's you who is spreading myths. The poor choose not to work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-profile-of-the-working-poor-2013.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-prof... http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Single motherhood is strongly correlated with poverty: http://www3.uakron.edu/schulze/401/readings/singleparfam.htm http://www3.uakron.edu/schulze/401/readings/singleparfam.htm The poor commit lots of crimes, including crimes with no economic motive (wife beating, rape): https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf The poor also disproportionately do drugs: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTab...
• flexie 10y ago
  Yes, the social mobility of Americans is almost non existent. One thing I noticed when I lived there is that even people at the bottom and in the middle thought that it was a meritocracy because 1) smart people who 2) studied really hard get into one of the great colleges, get the good jobs and become powerful and wealthy. The paper that the article is about shows that your chances of going to a great college are 117 times higher if your parents are top 0.1 percent than if your parents are in the bottom quintile. So little Zach who's dad packs parcels for Amazon doesn't even have 1 percent of the chance of getting into Princeton as Matt who's father heads a team working on the Amazon Web Services. Not even 1 percent. And apart from that I never understood why a genetic advantage like being born smart is less unfair than other birth rights or whether success in life depending on making the right choices when you are a teenager should be much more of a meritocracy. Almost no kid makes those right choices - to study the right things hard, do extracurricular activities etc - without a supporting parent enabling it. And when there seem to be no fair meritocracy it's so much worse that the wealth distribution is skewed beyond anything.
  • Shivetya 10y ago
    Well there are not many opportunities for the poor in major American cities to get out of their condition and the way welfare and assistance programs are structured it can be detrimental to get beyond a certain means. To solve a good amount of the city's poor prospects we need to get the War on Drugs back to reality. It not only strikes the city but it hits the poor outside as well. Families that least can withstand the loss of one income are the most affected. Fix this damn War on Drugs, fix the police preying on the poor with seizure laws, and find a means to reduce the everyday government fees that hit the poor disproportionately will go a long way
  • cmdrfred 10y ago
    I wouldn't claim 7% is non-existent. I think we tell children that college is the only path to wealth and thus many whom never had the opportunity to receive any college believe that they can't achieve anything but a poverty level standard of living. I grew up poor and believed this myself up until a few years ago and even without the benefit of a high school degree I have found that my upward mobility is only limited by my willingness to work hard and make strategic moves. I wish one of my teachers would have told me that success is possible without education, but then again they went to college and got a government job so they probably had no idea that the path I'm traveling even exists.
• otalp 10y ago
  I'm thinking of doing my masters in(and eventually moving to)Canada instead of the US. For the country that I'm from, the waiting time to get permanent residency in the US is much more than a decade, and with the political instability that's present now, it doesn't look to like changing soon. I don't think spending the best years of my life on a temporary worker visa- with all the restrictions and uncertainties that come with it, is worthwhile. That comes with a compromise of course. The Canadian tech industry is, as far as I'm aware, miniscule compared to the US; but then the tech industry in the US exceeds virtually every other country in both quantity and quality, so it's not a fair comparison. I wonder if people familiar with the tech scene in Canada can talk about how it compares to say, Europe, or if it really is a big compromise working in Canada instead of the US for a tech job(because of the lower wages and higher taxes).
  • phil21 10y ago
    > I wonder if people familiar with the tech scene in Canada can talk about how it compares to say, Europe, or if it really is a big compromise working in Canada instead of the US for a tech job(because of the lower wages and higher taxes). I can't give you much direct experience, but I will say every "rockstar" level talent I know from Canada either immigrated to the US or is working remotely for a US company. Based on those conversation the top level talent seems to be making 2-3x more in the US on average than in Canada.
    • RodericDay 10y ago
      Doctors also make less in Canada. Lawyers also make less. Movie Stars also make less. CEOs too. Everyone at the top makes less money in Canada, but the lower bound is quite higher as well. Education is much, much more affordable (e.g.: 4k/yr for university in Quebec), health care is universal (e.g.: as a clueless student I didn't pay anything when I had peritonitis and had to spend weeks in the hospital), etc. People need to understand this. That extra money you get to pocket when working in the US isn't coming out of nowhere. You're complicit in the horrible state of US welfare, and profiting from it.
• anovikov 10y ago
  Well why it has to be more? See, if that was 20%, it meant that wealth distribution is entirely random and parents can't do anything to help their children succeed - that is not the world where many want to live. There should be a balance - getting from poor to rich must be possible, but hard. People who get rich are those to work towards distant goals and accept delayed gratification. If they are unable to pass anything at all to their children they'd have a much better time drinking and smoking hash - there isn't so much they can spend in their lifetimes anyway, and if they can't pass anything (even cultural! that helps besides money and would already skew that ratio away from 20% down, even if all money was taken away) to their kids - why bother? To me, 7% of 20% poorest making it to 20% richest sounds already too much.
• ismail-khan 10y ago
  This isn't the fairest comparison, because the richest Americans are richer than the richest Canadians. If the Canadian income distribution is tighter, then it's easier for a Canadian to reach the top 20% simply because the gap between bottom 20 and top 20 is smaller. I think a fairer comparison would be to specify the "yardsticks" on both sides: what % of people in either country below X income manage to achieve an income above Y?
• Thimothy 10y ago
  "since you likely have the kind of education and experience that makes immigrating here a breeze" I don't think you ever tried immigrating to Canada. I don't mean this snarkily but the world would be a much better place if every citizen was forced at some point to go through his countries immigration process. I have a friend who has been for the last years going through the Canadian immigration and his lengthy facebook posts describe an awful and demeaning experience. In all disclosure, his partner is from a third world country, and that's probably the biggest problem, but he's a clever, resourceful and valuable person that has been living all around the world, including SV, and it's absolutely incredible how have made everything in their hands short of blocking his entry in the country to stop his immigration.
  • adriand 10y ago
    This didn't seem snarky to me. I appreciate the comment. I'm sure it's very hard - and my comment about it was unnecessarily flippant. In fact I know my country has some unjust immigration policies, like skimming the cream from developing nations. They invest in educating people to become doctors, then we lure them here. I'm sure there's a lot of other stuff like this that would be easy to criticize.
• aanm1988 10y ago
  If you're a software dev, don't move to Canada.
• pasbesoin 10y ago
  If this is what I recall hearing recently, it also had a very interesting, long segment with a professor who studied e.g. payday loans by having an in and working for 4 months at a payday loan business. She also did some other work pertaining to low income individuals' finances -- I don't recall exactly what, right now. Turns out, listening to people and their reasons and how it all works, that these people were not acting "irrationally" at all -- within their contexts. There were very valid reasons they did not have bank accounts nor rely on banks to deposit checks, etc. It didn't negate the expenses involved. But it provided a lot of information that balanced that not just against the sometimes unavailability of "traditional" alternatives but also against the unreported, undiscussed, perhaps too frequently not known or discussed downsides of those "traditional" alternatives. As just one example: You have to pay rent, or your workers, or whatever, today or tomorrow or soon. With the payday or check cashing business, you leave with cash in hand. With the bank, you have to wait for e.g. a client's check that you just received today, to clear. Up to three days. And if something doesn't clear or there's some other mistake, suddenly you have $25, or $50, or whatever amount of penalties hit your budget. That continue to accumulate until you can fix your cash flow. And, with software, banks have taken to deliberately, algorithmically maximizing those penalties. E.g you have $100 in your account, and three checks hit for $25, $50, and $125 on the same day. The bank will prioritize the $125 check first, so that you are hit with three overdraft checks, three sets of fees. Instead of e.g. clearing the $25 and $50 checks and leaving you with one overdraft. It can be argued, I suppose that the bank is minimizing its exposure in some combinations of amounts and overdrafts it decides to allow. But really, it is racking up the fees. And if you're on a very tight budget, these fees totally disrupt it. Say a check you deposited didn't clear or clear in the expected timeframe. Bam, now your budget has a big hole in it due to large, unexpected fees. People avoid this, instead paying the cut the the check cashing business. It was very interesting. And a lesson in the risks of just absorbing and parroting some often reported "common sense".