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Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

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Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#141

Post by rayiner »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #131
rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but that's also only one side of the story. Statistically, most people won't need to use the safety net. And while Americans have less security, they also enjoy a substantially higher level of material comfort. Americans have more/newer cars, live in bigger houses, etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/ons-english-homes-are-a-thir... Now, I think it would be better to have more of a safety net and less i…

> Statistically, most people won't need to use the safety net As a person, you'll around 100% likely to the doctor. In any Western Europe country, you don't have to think about it. In the US, you either think about it because of your copay or your don't go because you don't have money.

Most Americans have insurance through their employer, or under Medicare/Medicaid. (And that was true before ACA.) Copays are small ($20-30 typically) and similar to what they are in say Sweden or Finland: https://megaphoneoz.com/why-sweden-gets-away-with-health-co-....

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#142

Post by RobAtticus »

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #120
RobAtticus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 10% for individuals is 114k[0] and for a household is 178k[1]. They may eventually get to millionaire status, but there's still a long way to go. Basically, getting to 100+k at the end of a long career and plenty of saving & investing (which Americans are not great at [2]) may get you there, but I don't think those stats you provided really bear out the case. [0] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator…

I find it strange you're pulling out stats to refute the person you're responding to and prove an oddly specific quote that I believe misses the point entirely.

Why? A bit of context to clear up a misconception or a misleading stats isn't a bad thing.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#143

Post by naravara »

malvosenior wrote: post #129
naravara wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. This is mostly a self-aggrandizing myth. According to the world values survey (here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map... ) the US puts LESS emphasis on self-expression than most of the Nordics and even the Anglosphere outside of the British Isles. All countries have much stronger safety nets than we do. It's Britain and the US where That…

It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Do you think I'm speaking in coded racist terms and not being honest? I'm not, I just think we're all better off with the mindset that we should help ourselves first.

>It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel.

Your feelings didn't just bubble up out of nowhere. They were incepted in you by the culture and values you absorbed growing up. When you're conditioned from the cradle to view social services as "hand-outs" being given to "underserving" populations who don't look like you, you're being influenced by a racially coded language and a racist cultural narrative. You don't even have to be consciously racist to be perpetuating it and influenced by it.

Political advertising made you imagine a specific type of person when I ask you to imagine someone on public assistance the same way advertising made you imagine a chubby, rosy cheeked man in a red coat when I mention Santa Claus. And we have to be honest with ourselves about accepting that when asked to imagine a recipient of public assistance, and it's not an accident how many of those stories are racially coded.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#144

Post by [deleted] »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #131
rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but that's also only one side of the story. Statistically, most people won't need to use the safety net. And while Americans have less security, they also enjoy a substantially higher level of material comfort. Americans have more/newer cars, live in bigger houses, etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/ons-english-homes-are-a-thir... Now, I think it would be better to have more of a safety net and less i…

> Statistically, most people won't need to use the safety net As a person, you'll around 100% likely to the doctor. In any Western Europe country, you don't have to think about it. In the US, you either think about it because of your copay or your don't go because you don't have money.

[deleted]

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#145

Post by malvosenior »

naravara wrote: post #143
malvosenior wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Do you think I'm speaking in coded racist terms and not being honest? I'm not, I just think we're all better off with the mindset that we should help ourselves first.

>It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Your feelings didn't just bubble up out of nowhere. They were incepted in you by the culture and values you absorbed growing up. When you're conditioned from the cradle to view social services as "hand-outs" being given to "underserving" populations who don't look like you, you're being influenced by a racially coded language and a racist cultural na…

How do you know that it wasn't you that was brainwashed by media to believe that your opposition are racists even when they tell you explicitly that their opinions have nothing to do with race?

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#146

Post by pwinnski »

malvosenior wrote: post #129
naravara wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the US there's a strong belief in self reliance. This is mostly a self-aggrandizing myth. According to the world values survey (here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inglehart_Values_Map... ) the US puts LESS emphasis on self-expression than most of the Nordics and even the Anglosphere outside of the British Isles. All countries have much stronger safety nets than we do. It's Britain and the US where That…

It's not a myth, it's how I and other people I know actually feel. Do you think I'm speaking in coded racist terms and not being honest? I'm not, I just think we're all better off with the mindset that we should help ourselves first.

When considering "I and other people" vs statistics, I'll generally acknowledge your experiences and go with the statistics. The statistics says that Americans are not more likely than residents of Nordic countries to believe as you do.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#147

Post by rayiner »

ixtli wrote: post #4

My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here. This causes them to act against their own best interests. (This was observed by Engels long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness )

[flagged]

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#148

Post by standardUser »

dmix wrote: post #88
standardUser wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would hope so, given the astronomical cost of healthcare and the near-universal requirement that every household own and maintain at least one car in order to work and attend school.

What is the average healthcare costs for an American? Aren't the majority of people in the US covered by Medicare or their employers plans? I'm from Canada so I'm curious what the yearly costs would be like. I typically lean libertarian on most areas of gov-run organizations but, much like prisons, public health insurance makes far more sense to be completely centralized vs the US random centralization and countless…

Having employer-provided health insurance in the United States does not mean it does not cost the employee as well. Many companies require the employee pay part of the premiums, especially for families, and there are many, many out-of-pocket costs that people must pay even when they have insurance.

In the US, there were about 1.4 million bankruptcies every year before Obamacare. There are around 700,000 per year now. But the majority of those are still widely considered to be related to medical costs (though exact statistics don't exist). That should give an idea of the burden most Americans face in terms of healthcare costs.

More anecdotally, my own costs this year - as a single adult having employer-provided health insurance - is already about $800 out-of-pocket for a few office visits and tests.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#149

Post by umvi »

residentfoam wrote: post #130
umvi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have anything to prove it but I swear countries like Japan and Germany are very good at this sort of thing because the people have a culture of strict obedience to authority be it the government or whatever. They love having and following well defined rules and are nonplussed (in the original sense of the word) when people break the rules. People in USA have the opposite attitude towards authority and rules.…

> Italy's healthcare is a circus 1 - Italy was the 4th European country to introduce a smoking ban in public places. 2 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/u-s-near-... "Spain’s health system efficiency ranked third behind Hong Kong and Singapore, followed by that of Italy, which moved up two spots from a year earlier. Italy ranked as the world’s healthiest country in a separate Bloomberg gauge."

> Italy was the 4th European country to introduce a smoking ban in public places.

Is the ban enforced? If not, it's just lip service. When I went there 3 years ago (Rome, Naples), people smoked in public EVERYWHERE, even on public transportation. Sometimes I would get on a bus and there would be some guy in the back blowing smoke out of a cracked window

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#150

Post by WalterBright »

ranie93 wrote: post #111
WalterBright wrote: post #81

Yet the chart shows that the US middle class is much wealthier than the middle class of other countries.

And also smaller, that can't be forgotten. Reading this through the lens of income inequality; I don't think having a smaller, yet richer middle class, is necessarily something to be proud of.

According to how the graph was constructed, you can't actually infer that the middle class in the US is smaller, because it defines the middle class as wealthier to begin with.
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