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Constitutional Paulicy
06-19-2013, 09:51 AM
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/URW83lMvrneYqwWf_fDidPxc2ib6LflMAiSvwew4jY90vqa2DC XYQHnoP4_wrCVfwxEd8GjoZRUcHlFMnMtPuBMJxTcCi4-LFvELvIK12fbvXVNOABYG2uqlrbhE0dscLA

Big Lie: America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World...We're Ranked 27th!
AlterNet / By Les Leopold
June 18, 2013


Unfortunately, it's a lie, one of the biggest ever perpetrated on the American people.

Our middle class is falling further and further behind in comparison to the rest of the world. We keep hearing that America is number one. Well, when it comes to middle-class wealth, we're number 27.

more here... http://www.alternet.org/economy/americas-middle-class-27th-richest?paging=off

asurfaholic
06-19-2013, 09:53 AM
Is it something that can be measured by this chart alone? Or its relative? Maybe it costs way more to live in Australia?

fisharmor
06-19-2013, 10:00 AM
So where's the chart showing how big each respective middle class is?
That seems like it would be important info... if Australia has 3000 people making 193,000 a year, that's significantly different from our 300,000,000 making about $40k.

AuH20
06-19-2013, 10:06 AM
Much smaller populations that chart is depicting.

RDM
06-19-2013, 10:08 AM
The story has flaws.

FTA:
America is the richest country on Earth. We have the most millionaires, the most billionaires and our wealthiest citizens have garnered more of the planet's riches than any other group in the world. We even have hedge fund managers who make in one hour as much as the average family makes in 21 years!
This opulence is supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, improving the lives of everyday Americans. At least that's what free-market cheerleaders repeatedly promise us.
--------------------------
There lies the flaw.....if we had a "TRUE" free market system...which we don't.

HOLLYWOOD
06-19-2013, 10:28 AM
That's because the US Middle classes are subsidizing the other 26 countries ahead of America's dying middle class. The wealthy narcissistic bastards inside the Washington DC beltway, are sucking the life out of hard working Americans and giving it to their criminal friends, on Wall Street/Banks, besides Subsidizing all the other countries around the world, in multiple forms. It is not theirs to tax by threat of force and hand it over to wealthy people in foreign lands.

Latest report findings are, the US subsidizes 27% of United Kingdom's (UK) national defense. I think that's kinda low, when you add in all the covert ca$h being handed out to collaborating ally countries in multiple forms of defense, ISAF, GWOT, surveillance state, etc etc etc.

Alex Libman
06-19-2013, 12:03 PM
You have to be a pretty economically illiterate to fall for this socialist BS...

There are no references, so the accuracy of those numbers is anybody's guess. But what is even more important than the credibility of the numbers is to understand the conceptual nitpicking involved.

It uses "wealth" instead of "income" - favoring older populations with no kids, encouraged or forced to save by the government, who pay large income and sales taxes but little in property taxes.

It also uses "median" instead of even "average" - yet another example of the biased assumption that stealing from the competent and rewarding the incompetent (as politicians tend to do for their own gain) is somehow a good thing! Having poor people does not make a country bad, and chasing the poor people away does not make a country better.

The text of the article is nothing but a circular argument: "capitalism is bad because... capitalism is bad!"

Particularly funny is: "This opulence is supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, improving the lives of everyday Americans. At least that's what free-market cheerleaders repeatedly promise us." Yeah, you keep whining and spreading lies, and someone immeasurably more competent will create wealth for you... :rolleyes:

The idiot who wrote this was even too computer-illiterate to make a coherent graph - a lot of things are unreadable. And, "United Kingdom" and "Great Britain"?!

The factual numbers are as follows:

Median disposable household income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income#Median_equivalized_disposable_hou sehold_income_.28PPP.29_.24) - USA is #1.

Average wage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage) / per hour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_employee_compensation_(per_ho ur)) - USA is #1.

GDP per person employed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_person_employed ) - USA is #4, behind oil/gas rich Qatar and Norway, and highly specialized little Luxembourg.

And that's in spite of the fact that these reports fail to adjust for things like fertility rates, and other demographic factors. A a family with two kids is NOT half as wealthy as a family with equal income and no kids - consequences of low fertility rates are very likely the biggest economic crisis humanity will face in the 21st century!

And then there's the controversial matter of culture... Swedish Americans ("the wretched refuse of their teeming shores") earn more (http://www.cato.org/blog/swedens-big-welfare-state-superior-americas-medium-welfare-state-then-why-do-swedes-america) than Swedes who stayed in Sweden (including all the monarchist wealth that accumulated for centuries). Those countries that occasionally rise above USA in certain statistics are populated by cultural groups that do even better in the United States. Another factor - a lot of European and East Asian countries have simply had a harder life (ex. World War 2), which naturally makes people more frugal and more likely to save.


And, to counter some of that article's other BS:



R&D spending as percentage of GDP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spen ding) - USA is #6, behind some of its highly specialized allies that USA itself subsidizes.

Various university rankings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings) - USA is so far ahead the rest of the world combines it's ridiculous!

You can't talk about median savings without adjusting for cost of living (http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/cost-of-living-rankings), which is particularly high in Australia and other high-savings countries.

One's ignorance of the financial sector is not an argument for its irrelevancy.

asurfaholic
06-19-2013, 01:19 PM
Thanks for the awesome post Alex

ClydeCoulter
06-19-2013, 01:32 PM
•You can't talk about median savings without adjusting for cost of living, which is particularly high in Australia and other high-savings countries.

Isn't that a seemingly difficult statement?

What about "after tax" wealth considerations? Not just hourly or salary rates.

The link you posted, Alex, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income#Median_equivalized_disposable_hou sehold_income_.28PPP.29_.24 has a convoluted way of calculating the Median "Equivalized" Disposable Household Income.

Zippyjuan
06-19-2013, 02:03 PM
"Wealth" is assets- not income- homes, stocks, bonds, etc. But it is important if you want a realistic comparison to discount that wealth based on what it can buy for you. $100 in Haiti will buy you much more than $100 in Switzerland.

Alex Libman
06-20-2013, 11:34 AM
A quote about Australia's immigration policy: (http://www.immagine-immigration.com/do-i-qualify/australia-immigration-policy/)


The Australian Government operates a strict and rigid immigration policy to achieve social and economic goals through the temporary and permanent movement of people and skills. Nowadays, the Australian Government is focusing more on migrants who can demonstrate they will bring Professional, Trade or Business skills to Australia, whilst still maintaining the policy of allowing family and humanitarian based applications as well.

What is clear, is that the Australian Government will only allow entry to those migrants it believes will settle well and add benefit to Australia.

Australia's ethnic groups (http://www.jrank.org/history/pages/8369/How-Has-History-Affected-People-Australia-Pacific-Region.html): 92% European (mostly Brits) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Celtic_Australian), 7% Asian (including wealthy refugees fleeing communism), and 1% "aboriginal and other". Compare that to USA being 63.7% European ("non-Hispanic white"), and USA's "white" population is more diverse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#White_Amer icans) as well, with more recent immigrants from the poorer countries of Europe. (For example, while USA has over 6 million Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country), Australia has less than 100,000.)

So if you have a country populated largely by land-owning WASP's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic) who've inherited large beach-front property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline), with more fertile land per capita (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_ara_lan_hec_percap-arable-land-hectares-per-capita) than any other country on Earth, and only the richest / smartest immigrants are allowed to enter... of course you'll have higher median wealth!

Australia's current success is also explained by relatively high economic freedom (http://www.heritage.org/index/country/australia), but it has many flaws as well: ridiculously high minimum wage, socialist medicine, gun control, etc. It probably won't stay on top in the long run. We should watch out for socialists using Australia as an example to promote those flaws - like a kid who sees a high school quarterback smoking a cigarette, and thinks smoking cigarettes will make him a star athlete also...

Australia is like California without Mexicans, wrapped in a doughnut, with a desert in the middle. I love my Mexican brothers and sisters, and they should be allowed to go wherever the marketplace will have them. They don't do much for USA's "median wealth", but that's for socialist paper-thumpers who put twisted statistics ahead of people. Living in a country where poor people live also does not make you less wealthy, and it only increases your buying power. Keeping poor people out by force is tyranny.

Alex Libman
06-20-2013, 11:54 AM
Next on that list is Luxembourg - a tiny nation between the Netherlands / Belgium, France, and Germany, that is highly specialized in key industries, tourism, and banking. With the population of 537,853 people, it has lower GDP/capita than Washington, DC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_by_pe r_capita_GDP_(nominal)) - USA's equivalent subdivision (pop 632,323 in DC proper). Comparing apples to apples, you could find plenty of Lux-sized chunks of USA that are wealthier, and would be wealthier still if they were sovereign from Uncle Sam. And, also comparing apples to apples, nowhere in Europe (or elsewhere) will you find a USA-sized population of ~315 million that can equal USA in wealth.

Next, Japan - an ancient civilization that has kept most of its wealth and cultural momentum, and was only aided by USA's hegemony over the past 68 years. Japan (along with other East Asian Tigers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers)) is a prime example of what happens when a nation isn't having enough babies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories _by_fertility_rate) (while also remaining relatively closed to immigration) - existing people retain more per-capita wealth, but the long-term outlook is very bleak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan)...