5 ms·

> The second link has the same 2010 chart, where is the more recent data? I'll have to find some more recent data — but the state of the world hasn't dramatica

by bhupy 6y ago

> The second link has the same 2010 chart, where is the more recent data? I'll have to find some more recent data — but the state of the world hasn't dramatically deteriorated since 2010. In fact, the opposite has happened: we've experienced recovery since the Financial Crisis of 2008, so we should expect the numbers to be even better. In many ways, 2010 represents the low watermark for most metrics. As a data point, in 2019, the wage growth for low-wage earners out-paced that of the higher wage-earners: https://www.hiringlab.org/2019/03/05/february-jobs-report-preview/ https://www.hiringlab.org/2019/03/05/february-jobs-report-pr... > A nation should not be dependent on handouts from rich people. Eh? Why not? This is certainly debatable and not some axiomatic truth. The vast majority of the world works on handouts from rich people — it either comes in the form of taxes and transfers, or voluntary handouts. In the US, we see that both play a role in maintaining the high standards of living we enjoy. All that matters is the standard of living, given the current set of systems. The disposable income and consumption metric is downstream of all potential sources of material income, which enables access to goods/services/resources. Also, "without the handouts", if the state of the US deteriorates, this impacts the political will to turn voluntary handouts into taxes and transfers: you can't change a variable in the system, then conclude that all other variables will remain constant. And even if you do account for all variable changes, it's still a hypothetical. It's impossible to refute or falsify hypotheticals and counterfactuals. > Which comes back to education, which means they dont get proper education compared to their peers in other developed countries. Erm, okay — but the US is one of the most educated countries in the world. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/the-10-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/the-10-most-educated-countri... Total inflation adjusted per pupil education funding is the highest it's ever been: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.a... In any case, if you’re making the argument that drug abuse and unhealthy diets are caused by the K-12 education system rather than cultural differences, you’re going to have to back that up. Pretty much everyone in the US attends an increasingly funded (though perhaps inefficiently administered) public school, where we learn that drugs are bad and that eating your vegetables is good. > Yes but then why is poverty rate high as well compared to other developed nations. Because poverty rate is a relative measure within the country, not a comparative measure across countries. We measure it by drawing a line in the income/wealth distribution, and determining the percentage that live below that line. What it doesn't tell us is how the absolute standard of living for someone below that line in country A compares to their counterpart in country B (ask yourself what it means to live in poverty in Switzerland vs Swaziland). It also doesn't account for taxes and transfers. That's exactly what the analyses I've linked shows. After taxes and transfers, the bottom 20% of Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than their counterparts in comparable OECD countries — measured by PPP adjusted disposable income and consumption.

sumedh 6y ago
> The vast majority of the world works on handouts from rich people Taxes are not handouts. Ultra rich people can change tax laws to benefit them so that they can throw some money on a charity. Why do you think that is good option? > All that matters is the standard of living > As a data point, in 2019, Not sure why a random blog post is data point. > the bottom 20% of Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than their counterparts > cultural differences What cultural differences make Americans do more drugs and be more obese? And yet US is behind among the developed world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
- bhupy 6y ago
  > Taxes are not handouts Taxes fund welfare/entitlements, which are literally handouts. Your beef is with the mechanism by which the welfare is funded. > Ultra rich people can change tax laws to benefit them so that they can throw some money on a charity. Why do you think that is good option? I'm not making a value judgement, I'm showing you the current result of it. You took issue with the observation that consumption metrics include "handouts", implying a hypothetical that such handouts might cease to exist. I rebutted that hypotheticals are impossible to falsify, and that the real world results speak for themselves. > Not sure why a random blog post is data point. It's not a "random blog post", it's data published by Indeed's labor market research lab. In any case, the idea that the collective standard of living typically improves with bull markets, and that the last 10 years have been a bull market...isn't controversial. > What cultural differences make Americans do more drugs and be more obese? Great question, we don't know! But it's a phenomenon that we observe empirically: Americans on average consume more sugar, eat less healthy, and abuse more opioids. Evidence in the link I shared shows that simply changing that culture can bring the average life expectancy to parity with OECD peer nations (modulo car crashes and gun homicides). > And yet US is behind among the developed world. Again, you're using a metric that internally compares income, and using that to somehow make external comparisons between cohorts. "Inequality adjusted HDI" does not tell us what the absolute standard of living is, and it does not tell us how the poor in the US fare compared to poor people in other countries — it just tells us how unequal the US is. The poorest people in America could be richer than even the median earners of every other country, and the inequality-adjusted HDI wouldn't change all that much as long as there are ultra-rich billionaires like Bezos, Gates, et al. The GP comment claimed: "Isnt the US poor people in worse conditions than the poor in other developed countries?". Inequality-adjusted HDI is ill-equipped to answer that question. The specific answer to that question is "No", based on the specific, directly related metric that compares the standard of living of the bottom 20% of the US with their counterparts in other comparable OECD countries. Even median earners in the US are better off than their counterparts in most other comparable rich countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... You wouldn't know that by looking at the inequality-adjusted HDI, because what it measures is completely unrelated. To remind you again: Internally relative comparisons compared across countries (like inequality-adjusted HDI and poverty rate) tell us close to nothing about how well off (or not) the poor are. To suggest otherwise is just poor data science. The important metric as it relates to the GP commenter here are those that directly compare standards of living across countries, by income level (apples to apples) — and that's typically done by measuring PPP adjusted income and/or consumption by quintile, and then comparing those across countries.

by bhupy 6y ago

sumedh 6y ago

> The vast majority of the world works on handouts from rich people Taxes are not handouts. Ultra rich people can change tax laws to benefit them so that they can throw some money on a charity. Why do you think that is good option? > All that matters is the standard of living > As a data point, in 2019, Not sure why a random blog post is data point. > the bottom 20% of Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than their counterparts > cultural differences What cultural differences make Americans do more drugs and be more obese? And yet US is behind among the developed world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...

bhupy 6y ago
> Taxes are not handouts Taxes fund welfare/entitlements, which are literally handouts. Your beef is with the mechanism by which the welfare is funded. > Ultra rich people can change tax laws to benefit them so that they can throw some money on a charity. Why do you think that is good option? I'm not making a value judgement, I'm showing you the current result of it. You took issue with the observation that consumption metrics include "handouts", implying a hypothetical that such handouts might cease to exist. I rebutted that hypotheticals are impossible to falsify, and that the real world results speak for themselves. > Not sure why a random blog post is data point. It's not a "random blog post", it's data published by Indeed's labor market research lab. In any case, the idea that the collective standard of living typically improves with bull markets, and that the last 10 years have been a bull market...isn't controversial. > What cultural differences make Americans do more drugs and be more obese? Great question, we don't know! But it's a phenomenon that we observe empirically: Americans on average consume more sugar, eat less healthy, and abuse more opioids. Evidence in the link I shared shows that simply changing that culture can bring the average life expectancy to parity with OECD peer nations (modulo car crashes and gun homicides). > And yet US is behind among the developed world. Again, you're using a metric that internally compares income, and using that to somehow make external comparisons between cohorts. "Inequality adjusted HDI" does not tell us what the absolute standard of living is, and it does not tell us how the poor in the US fare compared to poor people in other countries — it just tells us how unequal the US is. The poorest people in America could be richer than even the median earners of every other country, and the inequality-adjusted HDI wouldn't change all that much as long as there are ultra-rich billionaires like Bezos, Gates, et al. The GP comment claimed: "Isnt the US poor people in worse conditions than the poor in other developed countries?". Inequality-adjusted HDI is ill-equipped to answer that question. The specific answer to that question is "No", based on the specific, directly related metric that compares the standard of living of the bottom 20% of the US with their counterparts in other comparable OECD countries. Even median earners in the US are better off than their counterparts in most other comparable rich countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... You wouldn't know that by looking at the inequality-adjusted HDI, because what it measures is completely unrelated. To remind you again: Internally relative comparisons compared across countries (like inequality-adjusted HDI and poverty rate) tell us close to nothing about how well off (or not) the poor are. To suggest otherwise is just poor data science. The important metric as it relates to the GP commenter here are those that directly compare standards of living across countries, by income level (apples to apples) — and that's typically done by measuring PPP adjusted income and/or consumption by quintile, and then comparing those across countries.