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Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

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Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#181

Post by pelle »

dkarl wrote: post #177
pelle wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole problem with these scaremongering articles about equality and the lack of it is that it doesn't matter. They promote this because it fits in to their zero sum world view. A world where it is always someone-elses fault and where we as community must do something or we are selfish. This world view thats based on Dickensian stories of children living on the streets with coal dust on their cheeks. It just isn't…

I find it particularly disturbing that these thoughts even find an outlet on HN which is the antithesis of the zero sum world. Splitting the world into two sides based on some simple criterion, and assuming that one side will always have one opinion and the other side the opposite opinion, is a gross oversimplification and disrespectful of everyone involved. To run with the taxation example, taxing the rich is not si…

First of all I was not at any point challenging the accuracy of the points in the article. I haven't fact checked them or anything but AFAIK they are completely accurate. I was however challenging the importance of them.

Policy decisions should absolutely be based in fact and reality. Yet they rarely are and the unintended consequences of almost every single law in every single country in the world proves it. This is why it's best to avoid policy decisions in the first place or at least minimize them and their impact.

Thirdly, yes it's terrible that people believe wrong things. But here is a surprise. They always have and they always will. Who knows maybe you and I both believe wrong things. As long as these wrong facts can't harm other people it doesn't do a lot of harm.

Should we try to teach them about the truth. Of course we should try. Should we punish them if they don't accept our version of the truth? No.

I for example am frustrated when intelligent people still insist on seeing the world as zero sum. It is a cultural issue more than anything. As that is what we have been brought up with from countless hollywood movies with evil rich guys taking land away from the common folks and what have you. I try whenever I can to teach about this, but I know it is an uphill battle.

Facts are important. But understanding the effects and importance of facts is even more important and is unfortunately not an objective task.

If you're interested Russ Roberts of EconTalk had a very interesting discussion of bias within Economics, where he attempted to look critically at his own and other economists biases in analyzing empirical evidence, which is essentially what our discussion is about:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/01/roberts_and_han.htm...

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#182

Post by tibbon »

rapind wrote: post #157
tibbon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, I think that anyone who understands general statistics and numbers as they apply to social groups would guess at this trend almost immediately as things like this almost always fit a Lorenz/Gini curve, although I guess the harshness of the reality of it really is shown here. I remember when studying some social network stuff the other year I found that pretty much everything in every social network I looked…

The reality looks a lot like the 80/20 principle doesn't it?

Yes, and the 80/20 principle does comply with this pretty fully.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#183

Post by scrod »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #34
michaelchisari wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A deli manager at a grocery store in the Chicago area in 1985 made $35k - $40k a year. Adjusted for inflation, that was the equivalent of around $72k - $81k a year. With full benefits. It's been clearly determined that wages have not kept up with inflation, so I would say that comparing one generation's wealth with their parents is not something that will yield hopeful results.

A grocery store deli manager in the mid-80's likely would have been a union member, especially in Chicago. It would be interesting to compare real wage changes in non-unionized vocations vs. highly unionized ones to tease out relative impact of macroeconomic changes vs. the decline of unions and their power to impart wealth transfer.

This is an excellent point. The decline of unions is probably one of the greatest reasons why wages have stagnated over the last 30 years.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#184

Post by abalashov »

jasonkester wrote: post #136
Khroma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this from Hackers and Painters. Money is a zero-sum game, wealth is not. So yes, I can't have the same dollar that you have.

I get a dollar, put it in the bank, which lends it to your company, which pays it to you. It's sitting there on both your and my bank statement. We both have it at the same time.

Well, minus reserve requirements. :-)

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#185

Post by hackinthebochs »

pelle wrote: post #180
dspeyer wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is a very unequal country that is true. Just not unequal in opportunities. The richest people in the US (the ones with 80% of the wealth) have probably in most cases earned it. Can you provide evidence for either of these claims?

Which part do I need to provide evidence for? That America is not unequal in opportunities? Just look at the membership of HN and YC. People from all over the world come here to follow opportunities they did not have at home. I may very well have overstated the issue about 80% of the wealth have earned it, but if they inherited at some point in their family history someone earned it. It is far from the old communist…

Assuming it wasn't inherited, I would still argue that its mostly unearned. I don't believe "passive" income is earned. In most cases, wealth over a certain threshold is essentially passive generation--money making money. The wealthy own the means of production and when technology advances makes this more productive, they're able to create more passive wealth. I don't consider this earned wealth. The same goes for bankers and investors who make money through a function of the money they already have.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#186

Post by jshen »

zacharypinter wrote: post #162
jshen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and there was no evidence given to support the original statement. How is quality of life for the middle class better now even though the disparity between them and the rich is far larger than before. I think I gave concrete examples of how it's worse, which is more than the OP.

An economist (I forget which one) posed an interesting thought experiment: Would you rather be a millionaire 100 years ago, or middle-class today. Sure, some people would choose 100 years ago, but a large majority of people, when asked, would rather live a middle-class life today than as millionaires 100 years ago. Clean water, sewer systems, restaurants, the Internet, television, microwaves, dishwashers, transportat…

I'm talking about how the middle class is disappearing. A thought experiment that guarrantees middle class status for your whole life seems to miss the point.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#187

Post by anamax »

jshen wrote: post #156
biafra wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"She would love to buy an individual plan that covered more than just catastrophic hospital visits, but she can't." I am not that familiar with the US healthcare system. Why can't she buy a different plan for herself? Is it too expensive? Or would it also kick in too late?

I'm not the OP, but if she is already having medical problems then the new plan would likely refuse to cover it because it's a pre-existing condition.

> if she is already having medical problems then the new plan would likely refuse to cover it because it's a pre-existing condition.

They can only deny coverage for pre-existing conditions if she let her coverage lapse.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#188

Post by anamax »

krschultz wrote: post #123
anamax wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters, those antibiotics will be followed by bankruptcy for the poor person in most cases. So? Bankruptcy eliminates debt, which is a good thing for poor folks. And yes, I've read the studies about "health care bankruptcies" - have you? They counted anyone who had health care expenses, and they included gambling and drug abuse as health care problems.

I don't need the studies, I'm living it. Right now my girlfriend and I are having a hell of a time with medical bills. She recently started her job, but they won't give her health insurance for the first 5 months. To cover the gap we bought our own individual plan. So far she has gone to the hospital for an allergic reaction to food she has never been allergic to before, and also needed to see 2 doctors along the way…

> So maybe you should stop reading the academic studies and start talking to people living in the real world.

Are you claiming that your experience is in any way typical?

Are you claiming that the only way to deal with your problem is to change health care for the rest of us?

I realize that $4k is a big deal to you, but the gap between "make decent money" and "our expenses are <$2k month" isn't many months.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#189

Post by borism »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #152
guelo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is starving in America? It's people with your callous ignorance that are allowing things to get so awful, I take it you have no idea what is going with the food pantries in your city.

The USDA seems to share his ignorance. Less than 2% of the country even reported losing weight as a result of food security. The word "starve" doesn't even occur in the report. http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR66/ERR66.pdf More intuitively, go live in a poor neighborhood. For the most part, the only skinny people you see are the addicts. Everyone else is fat.

and why do you equal weight loss/gains to being starving or not?

I bet most of the people adding weight are actually doing that because they feel starving (majority of American food being too fat and sugary and not nutritional enough).

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#190

Post by pelle »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #185
pelle wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part do I need to provide evidence for? That America is not unequal in opportunities? Just look at the membership of HN and YC. People from all over the world come here to follow opportunities they did not have at home. I may very well have overstated the issue about 80% of the wealth have earned it, but if they inherited at some point in their family history someone earned it. It is far from the old communist…

Assuming it wasn't inherited, I would still argue that its mostly unearned. I don't believe "passive" income is earned. In most cases, wealth over a certain threshold is essentially passive generation--money making money. The wealthy own the means of production and when technology advances makes this more productive, they're able to create more passive wealth. I don't consider this earned wealth. The same goes for ba…

What do you mean passive income isn't earned? Isn't someone's pension earned? What about VC's? PG? Isn't PG earning his keep or is he just sucking blood out of the productive masses? What is going on with this kind of neo marxism on HN?
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