Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

good.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 194 posts

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#61

Post by cletus »

jonhendry wrote: post #57
cletus wrote: post #55

I find posts like this one depressing. They're cynical and shortsighted. The premise of such posts is that if people were aware of who was getting a tax cut they would be against it. Put another way: the premise is that everyone is purely motivated by self-interest. There are two immediate problems with this line of thinking. The first is tha it ignores how aspirational people are.i remember a survey from the 2000 el…

" The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference." Can you afford to take a year off from work? It's just taking less money. The fact is that tax cuts aren't free. If they aren't matched by spending cuts, you're just deferring the tax increase until later and incurring deficits in the meantime. So you have to decide what you're going to cut. Which means weighing, say, decent healthcare for ve…

Nice try but no sale. This is the problem: talking about this issue will get you labeled as being anti- (health care for veterans in your case).

The budget is blowing out for three reasons: Social Security, health care and the military. Of the three only the last is largely discretionary (being the ongoing cost for campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan).

When FDR introduced Social Security there was something like 50 working people for every retired person and the average life expectancy was probably only 60 or so. It's a straight money goes in money goes out system with no saving or planning for future spending. Everyone knows this is unsustainable. It's merely a question of when something will change and what. The smart money is on raising the retirement age.

Health care costs are spiraling. This is a much more complicated and multi-faceted problem. Personally I think part of the problem is the blank chewue mentality we have to health care. Basically it doesn't matter how much it costs to research and develop pharmaceuticals and medicine, we expect to be provided it. So companies largely ignore the costs.

It's a bit like saying to a subcontractor: you can choose to spend as much as you like and I'll pay you a 20% margin on top of that. What is the motivation of that subcontractor and the inevitable outcome?

Also I think you need to look at the structure of the health care system. I suspect the US has the most expensive health care in the developed world. I think systemic inefficiencies and overprotective IP laws play a bigpart in this.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#62

Post by jonhendry »

ctdonath wrote: post #17
byoung2 wrote: post #2

What’s interesting here is the extent to which the public vastly overestimates the prosperity of lower-income Americans. I bet this is due in large part to the availability of credit over the last few decades. Credit has allowed lower-income people to "play the part" of the wealthy, giving rise to the distortion. In particular, interest-only, 0% down mortgages, low or no-interest credit cards, and car leases let some…

Most lower-income americans make more than the world median income. Our "poverty line" is 20x the income line for half the planet. Of late in Atlanta, one news story about someone unable to pay to heat more than one room had a dramatic photo of her showing her heating bill in her living room - with a 55" HDTV and Xbox360 in the same room. Problem with that chart is scale: while 20% may have most of the money, the poo…

"Of late in Atlanta, one news story about someone unable to pay to heat more than one room "

Meaning she probably was using an inefficient electric heater, in a poorly-insulated home in a normally-warm region, in an unseasonably cold period. I could see that raising the electric bill significantly. I once went away for Thanksgiving weekend and accidentally left my refrigerator or freezer door open a crack. That month's electricity usage was several times higher than any other month since I've lived there.

Was the HDTV a projection set? Those are cheap, especially second-hand. Might only be a 720p. EBay has larger TVs listed for $200. Hell, nobody wants those fuzzy room-hogging monsters anymore. Could have been a freebie from a better-off friend or neighbor who upgraded to a flat panel.

XBox 360s aren't particularly new, rare, or precious, so might have been acquired used, possibly as a trade. And might have been bought by a child, or received as a gift. Maybe her kid bought it then went into the military and left it behind.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#63

Post by jfager »

cletus wrote: post #61
jonhendry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference." Can you afford to take a year off from work? It's just taking less money. The fact is that tax cuts aren't free. If they aren't matched by spending cuts, you're just deferring the tax increase until later and incurring deficits in the meantime. So you have to decide what you're going to cut. Which means weighing, say, decent healthcare for ve…

Nice try but no sale. This is the problem: talking about this issue will get you labeled as being anti- (health care for veterans in your case). The budget is blowing out for three reasons: Social Security, health care and the military. Of the three only the last is largely discretionary (being the ongoing cost for campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan). When FDR introduced Social Security there was something like 50 wor…

I don't get how anything you wrote after "Nice try but no sale" disagrees at all with what the person you replied to said.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#64

Post by jfager »

waqf wrote: post #3

The question they asked is difficult to interpret, i.e. hard to translate between specific answers "I think the top quintile possesses N% of wealth" and an intuitive understanding of how skewed (or not) a distribution we're talking about. I have a strong quantitative background, and I have to do some calculations to interpret these numbers. And these guys are interviewing average Americans and inviting them to pull n…

Cognitive biases are going to skew these numbers horribly

I guess I thought the point of the article was to demonstrate exactly this skew.

Where does a person's emotional reaction to tax cuts or welfare come from? If people casually think that poor people aren't as poor as they really are and that wealthy people aren't as wealthy as they really are, they're going to act accordingly when it comes up in their daily life. How they actually think when forced to confront real numbers seems less relevant in that case - how many people actually sit down and do the math before deciding who to vote for?

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#66

Post by Encosia »

jonhendry wrote: post #62
ctdonath wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most lower-income americans make more than the world median income. Our "poverty line" is 20x the income line for half the planet. Of late in Atlanta, one news story about someone unable to pay to heat more than one room had a dramatic photo of her showing her heating bill in her living room - with a 55" HDTV and Xbox360 in the same room. Problem with that chart is scale: while 20% may have most of the money, the poo…

"Of late in Atlanta, one news story about someone unable to pay to heat more than one room " Meaning she probably was using an inefficient electric heater, in a poorly-insulated home in a normally-warm region, in an unseasonably cold period. I could see that raising the electric bill significantly. I once went away for Thanksgiving weekend and accidentally left my refrigerator or freezer door open a crack. That month…

It drops below freezing quite often in Atlanta. Most houses here have natural gas heating. Needing significant heat in the Winter here is a given.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#67

Post by johnswamps »

philwelch wrote: post #47
johnswamps wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means that if you're poor, you're spending a larger percentage of your income and saving less of it. Poor people have to spend a higher percentage of their money on basic necessities such as rent, food, clothing, transportation, etc.

I think you and redwood are violently in agreement. If you have more money, you can save your money and that money will make you more money. If you have less money, you can't.

I agree with the statement, but I disagree that it's responsible for the income and wealth disparity beween the rich and poor. Yes, money will make you more money, but by definition that increases your income.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#68

Post by jshen »

cletus wrote: post #61
jonhendry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference." Can you afford to take a year off from work? It's just taking less money. The fact is that tax cuts aren't free. If they aren't matched by spending cuts, you're just deferring the tax increase until later and incurring deficits in the meantime. So you have to decide what you're going to cut. Which means weighing, say, decent healthcare for ve…

Nice try but no sale. This is the problem: talking about this issue will get you labeled as being anti- (health care for veterans in your case). The budget is blowing out for three reasons: Social Security, health care and the military. Of the three only the last is largely discretionary (being the ongoing cost for campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan). When FDR introduced Social Security there was something like 50 wor…

I'm kind of confused. The big three are our biggest expenses (which includes healthcare for veterans). So giving tax cuts to the super rich (or anyone really) without addressing the big three is the problem that the person you're replying to is pointing out. How is that a "no sale"? Cause he mentioned veterans?

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#69

Post by jshen »

redwood wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #6

I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.

The other thing is that the bottom folks aren't as "needy" as folks were in, say, the great depression. - I.e. "no one starves in america" and most people know this: so while the distribution in wealth is extreme, the distribution in QUALITY OF LIFE is less extreme. - This biases people's view and makes them feel that generally, for most americans, things are okay. This is all true of course: except that the worry ab…

"the distribution in QUALITY OF LIFE is less extreme"

You're kidding right? Ever have someone in your family get an unexpected major medical problem while their young and either have no insurance or have the insurance refuse to cover care? That is a quality of life killer!

Or the simple fact that wages for the average person are stagnant or slightly down in the past few decades while healthcare costs are rising as well as the cost of an education. People are realizing that their children are likely to be worse off than they were and that is a quality of life killer!

Have you had a house foreclosed on? Again, quality of life killer!

I can go on, but you get the idea. What exactly do you mean by "quality of life"?

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#70

Post by TGJ »

joshes wrote: post #60

No matter the intent or implications of the post or the poll, the fact remains that 20% of the people control 85% of the wealth . This seems horribly lopsided to me. Plutocracy seems to be an apt description.

How is it lopsided? If you look at 10 of your friends, is everyone one of them extremely well off? Is everyone of them extremely talented? There is no getting around the fact that there are gifted people and not so gifted people. To say that it is lopsided would almost imply that everyone deserves equal shares.

20% seems about right. 20% of the people are entrepreneurs and are smart, gifted, talented people that employ the rest of the country to achieve their dreams.

Post reply on HN