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Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

wid.world

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Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#111

Post by evanlivingston »

dmix wrote: post #52

Changing 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…

What do you mean when you say success, progress or upwards?

Here's a hypothetical: If a person is moved from a situation where they have no money, but the food, services and mobility they need for a somewhat comfortable and stable life to a system of employment that is less stable and creates dependency on this employmenet is that progress? That person or family might have moved out of extreme poverty but is their situation improved?

I suppose my underlying point is a critique of how wealth and quality of life are connected. People in Cuba get $20 a month but they have have free healthcare and housing. I spend $20 a day and can't afford healthcare and worry every month about how I'm going to pay rent.

How much of the world is moving towards a situation where we're unable to see a doctor and hold down two or three jobs to make rent in a house we could never afford? Is this an upward trend?

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#112

Post by rconti »

ctdonath wrote: post #56
nashashmi wrote: post #34

Ok. So I looked into it and I had my "OHHH!!" moment. It seems income/wealth inequality got magnified because of the number of opportunities went exponentially higher. Those who were able, took advantage of those opportunities if they had education, business acumen, surplus income, liquid wealth, or were fortunate enough to have ownership in an industry that was not valued very highly before and became very valuable…

If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. Wealth has been increasingly taxed, poverty increasingly subsidized. For the bottom 50%, this matters.

So why is it that we have so many wealthy people and so much wealth?

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#113

Post by ameister14 »

euyyn wrote: post #103
ameister14 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>lowered inequality is a good metric for success For measuring the success of what, exactly? Economic success? Average incomes? Doesn't seem to be a very good metric for either. Lowered inequality seems to me to be a good metric for measuring the success of attempts to lower inequality, and not much else.

It's a good metric for success at giving everyone equal opportunity at birth.

Not really. You can have low income inequality through redistribution of wealth and still have massive differences in opportunity at birth based on other, non-monetary societal factors.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#114

Post by IncRnd »

JohnStrange wrote: post #76
IncRnd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You might be right. I'm not sure why I was downvoted for asking for a clarification.

In any case, it wasn't clear if he meant the average person or an average about wealth or income. Average could have meant a colloquial reference to the average person, or it could have been a misuse of the statistical term.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#115

Post by lotsofpulp »

hkmurakami wrote: post #86
Frondo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, my interest is in seeing the quality of life for my fellow citizens improve first. Yes, people in other countries are people too, etc., but they also have their own governance, their own resources, their own economics systems to manage and oversee. I can take no active part in any of that--only my own country's. Until we have one world government, I'm always going to prioritize the places where I have…

I just want to vocally support your having expressed this view. I don't necessarily agree wholesale with the position, but I think it's a perfectly reasonable and sound preference to have, but one that, if said in public, with your real identity attached to it, you may be admonished for. And that I find to be a shame -- that we find it so difficult to see the logic in a position we may disagree with.

Because in reality, it leads to the bigger guy (America) bullying the smaller guys (middle east, central and south america, etc) in the name of making life better for Americans. Now that China is in the fray, and India to a lesser extent, Americans will start feeling the real cost of having such a high standard of living compared to others.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#116

Post by dalbasal »

ctdonath wrote: post #66
dalbasal wrote: post #24

The interplay between wealth and income is a hard one to navigate, but I think important. Part of the economic story of the last generation (IMO) is embedded in this interplay. Financialization is largely the process of turning future income into current assets. EG, I buy a house, get a house and a mortgage. My wealth is net 0. One house owned. One house-value owed. Part of my future income is now someone else's curr…

I buy a house, get a house and a mortgage. My wealth is net 0. One house owned. One house-value owed. Need to consider temporal dimension: a house is owned because I'm already converting my future income into a house. There's a difference between "net $0 now because I'm borrowing from my substantial cumulative future creation of wealth" vs "net $0 now because I'm not productive and won't be".

Yeah, I think I may have written that badly.

The temporal aspect is what makes it hard, but it's what I was trying to comment on. Wealth now and income later are effectively fungible, in todays world to a much greater extent than the past. This includes negative wealth (debt).

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#117

Post by GcVmvNhBsU »

dmix wrote: post #79
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I highly doubt there is some hereditary trait that makes Asians better at running factories than those other countries. It's more likely that given the tremendous amount of manufacturing that's been pushed to those countries, they have had ample practice to become leaders at the process.

If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities.

Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does.

At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't. From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#118

Post by collyw »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
dangerlibrary wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't transfer a wealthy persons ability to generate wealth to another person or country." When wealth generation is coming from rent collection on existing assets, redistributing wealth and redistributing wealth generation are equivalent.

In other words, wealth is the means of production.

Nothing is being produced when rent seeking.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#119

Post by vandweller »

dmix wrote: post #52

Changing 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…

But which data segment are you looking at? Top 1% national income share is the default.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#120

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #99
dmix wrote: post #52

Changing 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…

Averages can be troublesome. Compare Population A where 9 people have $1 each, and one person has $100, to Population B where 9 people have $5 each and one person has $40. Which population is poorer? Which would you rather live among? EDIT: How about Population C, where 9 people have $10 each and one person has $10,000?

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