Why does the Per Adult National Wealth line for France stop in 2010?
Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
71–80 of 248 posts
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#72Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…
Depends on which average. In the case of very large wealth inequality the mean is going to make the picture a lot rosier than the median. I’d posit the average person cares more about the median than the mean as well.
What do you mean by "depends on which average"? As far as I know, average is another word for mean, and median is the middle value, unrelated to mean.
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#73Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…
Are you sure you didnt select average income for the top 1% (which is the default on the left)
Switch to middle 40% and it will be still an increase but definitely does not look exponential - which most likely is the main point of the site creators
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#74Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…
There is a great TED talk by Hans Rosling showing the same improving global condition through different metrics.
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#75Wealth inequality changed drastically between 1900 and now. According to the graph, in 1901, the U.K.'s top 1% controlled 73.8% of the nation's wealth. Today it's about 20%. I wonder what factors caused that change. Wars and emigration maybe have something to do with it?
The biggest factor is probably inheritance tax and the slow fade of the aristocracy. There may also be a "hidden wealth" effect as people move it offshore; is someone domiciled in the Cayman Islands who lives in the UK for <6mo a year part of the "UK" graph?
Major factors:
In 1900 there were almost no taxes - A lot of taxation is not just for 'services' - it's distributional. So there's that.
Literacy, voting, emancipation - this to me is the biggest in the long run. People have skills, professions, they can create/read contracts, everyone can hire a lawyer, there is rule of law. There's much dynamism and much ado. In 1900 almost all of us lived on farms. The economy is way more diversified now.
Labour Unions - just started real power about then. Also maybe an awakening in business: Ford paid his staff a lot more so they could actually buy Model T's. There's some deep insight there.
Mass Media - radio, TV, internet. Information equalizers.
Gender Equality - female workforce participation exploded during the war and I think peaked about 20 years ago. This is a massive shift in economic outcomes.
Teddy Roosevelt - he broke up 40 (!!!) monopolies. Wow. Think about that. Basically, America was possibly taken over by corporate cabals who, in a less diversified economy could control everything. This was I think a huge thing. And though we can think of G, FB etc as monopolies, I don't think they have quite the relative strength. I'm still more worried about Wallmart and Amazon ...
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on which average. In the case of very large wealth inequality the mean is going to make the picture a lot rosier than the median. I’d posit the average person cares more about the median than the mean as well.
What do you mean by "depends on which average"? As far as I know, average is another word for mean, and median is the middle value, unrelated to mean.
He probably meant to say "measure of central tendency".
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#77What does 'Income Equality' look like?
Abolition of class. Democratic control over the means of production.
"Abolition of class. Democratic control over the means of production"
Oh wow, these people still exist.
We tried that in the last century and it ended up being the most horrific, mass-murdering, totalitarian, controlling era in all of history.
About half of my schoolmates growing up in Canada came from places like Cambodia, Vietnam, Ukraine, Russia, Czech, China, Serbia, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Hungary ... see the common thread there? :)
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#78What does 'Income Equality' look like?
Milton Friedman's three categories for human equality: equality before God, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome - the second is compatible with liberty, and the third is socialism.
Everybody wants to live in a country with a reasonably low Gini index. The disagreement is only about what "reasonably low" means and how to achieve it.
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world would be moving away from poverty a lot faster if there was less inequality.
I really dislike the effects that globalization and growing inequality has had on rural America in particular, but I'm not sure that _global_ poverty would be improving at the rate that it has been without globalization. Much of impoverished eastern Asia has been growing economically because manufacturing jobs have been shipped there from the richest areas in the world. Without that massive injection of capital into…
This would be true only if China, et al, just took the jobs and did them the same. But Asia is not just known for their cheap labour, they are really really good at running factories and manufacturing products.
If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production.
I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with.
Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.
Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database
#80What does 'Income Equality' look like?
The opposite of income inequality isn’t income equality. It’s less inequality and more integration. My wife grew up in small town Iowa. There were rich people (doctors and some farmers) and poor people, but everyone’s kids went to the same school (there was only one), went to the same cornfield parties (apparently a real thing), etc. The millionaire farmers still worked for a living—they weren’t making passive income…
tl;dr: The opposite of New York.
I grew up in a town with a high per capita income, but fairly low inequality. There were a few tiny religious and Montessori schools, but pretty much everyone's kids went to the public schools. Home prices probably varied by a factor of 10 or 20; there were both crappy old duplexes and McMansions, but no genuine slums or palaces with car elevators. No one commuted by helicopter. The richest and poorest had shared interests.