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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

#161

Post by crushcrashcrush »

blissofbeing wrote: post #17
crushcrashcrush wrote: post #8

I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…

If the money you make is tied the hours you work, probably not. But once you figure out ways to divorce the two you'll probably feel more like you are "killing it."

Excellent point. Agreed. I want to start an Amazon business.

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

#162

Post by amanaplanacanal »

SilasX wrote: post #154
rayiner wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-... .

Wait, what? runako: If you make $23k, you don't have a job that gives you health insurance. rayiner: None of this is a big deal, because most Americans have health insurance through their employer. Er, what? Yeah, most do, I guess ... the part making much more than $23k.

Yeah, they are talking about two very different groups of people.

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

#163

Post by ranie93 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #50

I don't really like calling 75% to 200% of median income “middle class”, both because it's not really capturing an economic class distinction and because proportional symmetry suggests 50%-200% or 75%-133% would be properly centered middle income segments. But that doesn't change that it's interesting how much the US is an outlier in terms of the aggregate performance vs. distribution measure used.

Could you expand a bit on how its not really capturing economic class distinction ?

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

#164

Post by WalterBright »

ranie93 wrote: post #156
WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me the definition is fair, they define it as 75% to 200% of the median income in the respective country. I don't think this comparison (to ones own countries' median income, PPP-adjusted) can be escaped since "middle-class" is being interpreted as intra-country. This is what I would expect since when I think myself if I qualify as middle-class, I don't compare myself to the Yemenis, I compare myself to ot…

It's adjusted per PPI, which makes the income consistent across countries. PPI adjusted income is essentially a measure of standard of living.

So the graph uses different definitions of middle class standard of living and conflates the results.

Bluntly, it's lying with statistics.

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

#165

Post by notacoward »

the_economist wrote: post #46
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 )

They aren't completely wrong. 76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%, 56% in the top 10%. https://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-i...

Your claim is misleadingly stated. When you say "top 20%" in this context, people would naturally think you mean top 20% by wealth, because that had been the context previously. Somebody would have to follow your link to see it's actually about income. That's a very different thing. I've seen this particular sleight of hand entirely too much lately on HN, to the extent that I'm seriously beginning to wonder if it's merely coincidence.

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

#166

Post by acchow »

rayiner wrote: post #160
SilasX wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? runako: If you make $23k, you don't have a job that gives you health insurance. rayiner: None of this is a big deal, because most Americans have health insurance through their employer. Er, what? Yeah, most do, I guess ... the part making much more than $23k.

Even among households making less than $25,000 per year, the large majority (85%) of people have health insurance. Within that group, more people have employer-provided health insurance than lack coverage: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/hi-01/20... . (See row 200.) Even among the groups most likely to lack health insurance (households of unrelated individuals making less than $25,000), uninsured…

> the large majority (85%) of people have health insurance

From row 200 of that table, looks like you're reading off the "Covered by some type of health insurance during the year" (85%) column. This is ambiguous. It could mean there was at least some period during the year where you had some sort of coverage. Or it could mean that you had some coverage for the entirety of the year.

Which is it?

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

#167

Post by lotsofpulp »

xienze wrote: post #105
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need to subtract the cash you need to set aside in case if medical emergencies and higher education.

It really depends on what kind of job you have. If you’ve worked hard and have a good job (like most people on HN), your health insurance likely means that you don’t have to pay a lot out of pocket. In my case for example, I have a family of four covered with a very, very good plan for $300 a month and $5k max out of pocket. Household income is north of $200k in a low cost of living area. So my max theoretical out of…

There’s a couple costs missing from your analysis. One is the individual’s cost of being dependent on staying in the good graces of large employers. Second, the societal cost of large employers having a competitive advantage due to being able to offer taxpayer subsidized healthcare at lower prices. In the short term, your calculations are correct, for yourself. In the long term, you’re continuously losing negotiating power.

And all of that ignores the biggest cost, which is living in a society where we blatantly don’t care about other citizens and their families being destroyed by health issues. The middle class thinks they have a lot to lose, but they’ve already lost it and are hanging on by a thread.

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

#168

Post by hackeraccount »

runako wrote: post #115
rayiner wrote: post #86

It's worth reading the underlying OECD report: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-healt... Two points based on the charts on page 44, 46. 1) Looking at just "middle income" people exaggerates the situation in the U.S. because part of the reason the U.S. has a smaller middle class is because it has a bigger upper class. About 15% of the U.S. is "upper income" versus 5% in countries like Denmark, No…

You obviously know this, but for those who are not familiar with America, regarding #2 above, the experience in the US is vastly different from other rich countries. > The lower threshold for the U.S. is $23,416 PPP-adjusted 2010 dollars per year. A person that makes this in the US usually will not receive health insurance at work. Depending on the specifics of the person's demographics/state/income, a worker at the…

Wait. Hold on. You're acting like Medicaid doesn't exist. Firstly I bet that in most states if you're making $23,000 a year don't make enough for the ACA not too much so that you end up on Medicaid.

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

#169

Post by dmix »

standardUser wrote: post #148
dmix wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

How much does a standard office visit cost? How long do you get?

In Canada it's in 15min increments, you have to say beforehand if you need 30min or longer, because they break up the whole day in 15min chunks and bill each the same. Almost every time they are rushing you, so they can hammer out a ton of 5min appointments and bill them all for 15min. Which is kind of annoying.

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

#170

Post by wildmusings »

ixtli wrote: post #36
wildmusings wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather be richer and have more buying power in absolute terms, or just make sure the fellow next door doesn’t have more than you? This graph is misleading. It talks about middle class as a percent of national median income, which means large numbers of people counted as lower-class in the US would be counted as middle-class if they lived in Europe and made the same income.

Neither: I care that the fellow next door has access to first world quality food, shelter, education, and medicine without means testing. I also see no evidence that this desire is at odds at all with my lifestyle as a quasi-middle class person living comfortably.

That has nothing at all to do with the information in this chart though.
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