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Analyzing some statements from the article: * "It's easier to achieve the American Dream in China, South Africa, and Brazil than it is in the US." South Africa
by MrPowers 6y ago
Analyzing some statements from the article:
* "It's easier to achieve the American Dream in China, South Africa, and Brazil than it is in the US." South Africa and Brazil are two of the most unequal countries in the world as measured by the Gini Coefficient. I think the author is reading the data backwards.
* "as US billionaires got $637 billion richer since March" - seems like this is cherry picking a market low. If you start the year with 100, it goes down to 60 in March, and is currently 120, I'd say it's more accurate to say your worth has gone up 20%
I agree with Shiller that growing inequality is a big problem facing the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwhUN42BGE8&ab_channel=sssirob https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwhUN42BGE8&ab_channel=sssir.... This article is a low quality analysis in my opinion.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago>South Africa and Brazil are two of the most unequal countries in the world as measured by the Gini Coefficient. maybe using hyperbole for rhetorical effect.
- MrPowers 6y agoAccording to The World Bank Data, South Africa has the highest Gini in the world: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?most_recent... Brazil is up there. Some of the data is old, let me know if you have a better source. I wasn't trying to exaggerate.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI meant that maybe the original article was trying to exaggerate to make a rhetorical point about U.S inequality.
- aaaxyz 6y ago> "It's easier to achieve the American Dream in China, South Africa, and Brazil than it is in the US." South Africa and Brazil are two of the most unequal countries in the world as measured by the Gini Coefficient. I think the author is reading the data backwards. Gini Coefficient and social mobility aren't perfectly correlated. I.e. imagine a society where people's accumulated lifetime wealth is highly unequal but where a 100% inheritance tax effectively resets familial wealth every generation.
- dalbasal 6y agoThey are even opposed, in some sense. The more inequality, the more potential for mobility there is.. at least if you are measuring mobility in absolute terms. Since much of China's wealthy (idk about Brazil and SA) are newly wealthy, any billionaires are likely to be 1st generation wealthy. Before the 80s, being wealthy was basically banned.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nsriv 6y agoMarch may seem like cherry-picking, but for those in the US managing their household finances, March is when everything went belly up.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe point is that it's not a real increase in wealth. It's like measuring unemployment rates from April to today and concluding that the pandemic created millions of jobs.
- adamjb 6y agoIf you click through the headline for that first claim is "The 12 countries where poor children are more likely to get rich and actually achieve the American Dream than in the US". It's a claim about social mobility, not inequality. I don't think the author is reading the data backwards
- makomk 6y agoWell, that'd probably explain South Africa - the end of apartheid there has done wonders for the number of black South Africans in better-off jobs, even if it hasn't done all that much good for overall inequality or the economy as a whole, and I suspect this one-off event has messed with however they're measuring social mobility.
- MrPowers 6y agoIt links to this article with a graph showing that Brazil and South Africa have some of the worst income mobility in the world: https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerational-income-mobility-is-better-than-us-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat... I live in Colombia and was in Brazil recently. They're both amazing countries with great people. Go to a comuna or favela and you'll quickly see that it's incredibly difficult for lower income people in these countries to climb into a different social class.
- refurb 6y agoIt’s BusinessInsider. The article was probably written by a 25 year old intern and the author just edited it. The BI model is to churn out as many articles on “business” as it can. Clicks are king so headlines are dramatic.
- defterGoose 6y ago> seems like this is cherry picking a market low The point is to show that the system is rigged so badly that even during (inevitable) times of crisis, the wealth at the top keeps increasing. The idea being that any group completely insulated from disaster is being insulated unfairly by the suffering of the rest.