71–80 of 144 posts
Original version has charts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it...
Interestingly the original has a bad interaction with my adblocker where the "x" to dismiss the popup dumps me back at the homepage rather than the article
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I think it all comes down to how Americans see and value money versus how the rest of the developed world values it. American culture puts 100% emphasis on how much money you make, and how you make it. More than health, or stability, or a well rounded life, American's are taught that money is the cure-all. And sure, when you are in the top 1/4 of income earners, the U.S. has quite a bit to offer. But what good is all…
> we as American's have been brainwashed to believe that we are all just 'down-on-our-luck millionaires' I'm not sure I'd say "brainwashed" -- this is a founding mythos of the United States. It's embedded in our most sacred documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. -- that the individual (in theory) reigns supreme and (in theory) has ultimate control over his/her life. It's…
The American Spirit (for lack of a better term) is at odds with the economic and political structure of current-day America. We are led to believe (for good reasons) that we control our fate, but the infrastructure no longer supports it in a way that makes it available to every American.
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Same in France, I guess the US is structured differently but overall it's probably the same amount of years. I doubt they study more than 6 or 9 years after high school or otherwise it's a bit too long.
Post-high school schooling for a standard family doctor (one of the lowest paid doctors): 4 years bachelors + 4 years medical school + 3 years residency = 11 years post-high school education.
https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/lengt...
The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to create such an environment worker protections cannot be as robust as in Europe. This biased article of course ignores that fact. Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well. They get to keep a greater portion of their income, their income goes…
Understanding the 30 year Decline in Business Dynamism
https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html
"Recent empirical work has drawn attention to an unmistakable shift in U.S. firm dynamics since the late 1970s. Principally, the entry rate, measured as the share of new employer firms out of all employer firms, declined by nearly 40 percent from 1977 to 2007, even before the impact of the Great Recession. Remarkably, this steady decline occurred relatively uniformly within geographic areas and within relatively narrow industry aggregations. Taking this trend decline or startup deficit as given, Pugsley and Sahin (2014) show that both its direct effect on business formation and its indirect cumulative effect through a shift in the employer age distribution partly explain the emergence of slower employment recoveries with each business cycle."
Declining investment since the early 1960s:
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-inve...
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> They get to keep a greater portion of their income I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50% but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV…
This is really what it comes down to. This is also where the basic argument to "tax the rich" comes from. For the price of a yacht, you could feed and house multiple families for a year in some cities.
Then I was asked to do the math on how long it would take to spend 1 billion - the minimum amount to qualify as a billionaire - at that rate.
IIRC, ignoring interest and inflation, it worked out to 216 years.
Now billionaires dont have a bill sitting around in liquid cash, this is just a thought experiment to try a grasp how much a billion is, but it is an effective one. (Also cool as a party trick, as people tend to always pick a power of ten, so based on their answer you can whip out 2161 years or 21.6 years or whatever)
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Yet, social mobility is higher in Europe. Also, americans can keep more of their income, if they skimp on health insurance and pensions savings. I don't think americans in general grasp how much higher quality the healthcare system is in Europe. Example: get scorned at by your GP doctor for seeing them for a bad cold. Get billed $20. Receive open heart surgery and triple by-pass. Get billed $20.
Social mobility doesn't really matter when everyone more or less has the same quality of life, as in Europe. That's what many don't understand. The Europeans have essentially nullified the value of social mobility in the first place. That is why their economies are more stagnant than that of the US.
What I don't understand, and you may say that it's the intrenched powers keeping the status quo, is why the US picks such poor implementations of certain ideas. The article mentions low collective bargaining. Our model, as an American, is pretty much one union per vertical. There is the Teamsters. There are no unions that compete with the Teamsters. I believe that Germany has unions that fight each other for contract…
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> I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings This is not true. Those same workers get most or all of their insurance costs covered by the company. Same goes for retirement with 401k plans, etc. > Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer. This is true.
This comment betrays an incredible misunderstanding or naivety of how medical insurance works in the US, and what/how it covers people. Also a completely bizarre use of 401(k)’s which are not available to most citizens and are highly volatile. Compared to the rest of the world the US spends more individually on healthcare & gets less. It’s average retirement savings are amongst the lowest in the developed world! Hand…
Anecdote, not data, but it has come up enough and this background detail isnt the author TRYING to persuade me, so it has been very effective at doing so nonetheless.
What I don't understand, and you may say that it's the intrenched powers keeping the status quo, is why the US picks such poor implementations of certain ideas. The article mentions low collective bargaining. Our model, as an American, is pretty much one union per vertical. There is the Teamsters. There are no unions that compete with the Teamsters. I believe that Germany has unions that fight each other for contract…
Then by the time the scales began to tip, the unions suddenly had all the power in the world to prevent other competing unions coming in.
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Yet, social mobility is higher in Europe. Also, americans can keep more of their income, if they skimp on health insurance and pensions savings. I don't think americans in general grasp how much higher quality the healthcare system is in Europe. Example: get scorned at by your GP doctor for seeing them for a bad cold. Get billed $20. Receive open heart surgery and triple by-pass. Get billed $20.
Social mobility doesn't really matter when everyone more or less has the same quality of life, as in Europe. That's what many don't understand. The Europeans have essentially nullified the value of social mobility in the first place. That is why their economies are more stagnant than that of the US.