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==people are going to look at countries growing faster than them and wonder why they have to slum it like peasants without their flying cars and vacations on th

==people are going to look at countries growing faster than them and wonder why they have to slum it like peasants without their flying cars and vacations on the moon== On the flip side, France typically has slower economic growth than the US, but that growth is spread much more evenly across the population. What good is growth if only a small portion of the country is benefiting from it?

merpnderp 7y ago
But that sums up my point. The US's median income is nearly 2x France's mean income. Nearly everyone in the US is earns more than their income percentile equivalent in France, and the vast majority earn multiples of their equivalents. Growth rates matter.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I don't really understand your post. Did you mean the US's mean income is double that of France's median income? I think[1] that's factually correct. I'm not sure if it's meaningful though. Also, my intuition suggests that if the mean and the median are further apart ([1] suggests France's mean and median are half the distance apart as the US's) the French income curve should be mostly above the US one. Could you point me to some graphs? [1] ten minutes on wikipedia.
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  Can you provide a citation for this claim? I see a report from the Quarterly Journal of Economics that says: "The bottom half makes more in France than in the United States today, even though average income per adult is 35% lower in France (partly due to differences in standard working hours in the two countries)." [1] If you look at people "with disposable income between 66 percent and 200 percent of the country’s median income", France has a larger percentage of citizens in that middle class. [2] France spends less than half of the US per capita on healthcare and has a longer life expectancy. [3] [1] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/133/2/553/4430651 https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/133/2/553/4430651 [2] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle... [3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-average-wealthy-countries-spend-half-much-per-person-health-u-s-spends https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

merpnderp 7y ago

But that sums up my point. The US's median income is nearly 2x France's mean income. Nearly everyone in the US is earns more than their income percentile equivalent in France, and the vast majority earn multiples of their equivalents. Growth rates matter.

pasabagi 7y ago
I don't really understand your post. Did you mean the US's mean income is double that of France's median income? I think[1] that's factually correct. I'm not sure if it's meaningful though. Also, my intuition suggests that if the mean and the median are further apart ([1] suggests France's mean and median are half the distance apart as the US's) the French income curve should be mostly above the US one. Could you point me to some graphs? [1] ten minutes on wikipedia.
take_a_breath 7y ago
Can you provide a citation for this claim? I see a report from the Quarterly Journal of Economics that says: "The bottom half makes more in France than in the United States today, even though average income per adult is 35% lower in France (partly due to differences in standard working hours in the two countries)." [1] If you look at people "with disposable income between 66 percent and 200 percent of the country’s median income", France has a larger percentage of citizens in that middle class. [2] France spends less than half of the US per capita on healthcare and has a longer life expectancy. [3] [1] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/133/2/553/4430651 https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/133/2/553/4430651 [2] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle... [3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-average-wealthy-countries-spend-half-much-per-person-health-u-s-spends https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...