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America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

fortune.com

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Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#211

Post by jjav »

stasomatic wrote: post #136
DarkNova6 wrote: post #2

As somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens. To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.

I live in the US. I disagree about the hostility towards non-citizens. If you are talking about ICE, it's more about racism. They are not gunning down Brits, Germans or Australians. Agree about the rest. Can I come live in your country? :)

> They are not gunning down Brits, Germans or Australians.

I don't know their heritage, but both Renee and Alex were very white (not that it should matter) US citizens, savagely murdered by ICE.

So yes, ICE is gunning down pretty much everyone they see.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#212

Post by anonym29 »

rjrjrjrj wrote: post #203
anonym29 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but almost never from a school shooting - usually from a car accident. That is one place where I'll be the first to acknowledge America isn't doing great on with regards to child safety.

Often from a gun

Extremely rarely from a gun. And even when it is from a gun, it's not your kid dying from a gun, it's hundreds to thousands of "kids" (young teenagers) in places like Detroit and Chicago who have chosen an early career in armed carjacking and gang warfare, that skew the statistics for the entire nation.

If you remove shootings committed by African Americans (which are overwhelmingly against other African Americans), America's gun violence rate per capita drops below that of Canada, below the Czech Republic, close to the EU average. See: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7242a4.htm

Gun violence is something that the vast majority of Americans will never personally witness or experience, and will never even know anyone who has personally witnessed or experienced it.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#213

Post by inigyou »

gadders wrote: post #210
inigyou wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"oh you think drinking water is good? why don't you just drown at the bottom of the ocean?" is a 100% reddit-tier comment.

"Reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity") is a valid argumentative technique that disproves a statement by demonstrating that its logical conclusion leads to an absurd, impossible, or contradictory result."

The logical conclusion of "drink more water" is not "drink infinite water until you drown" and the logical conclusion of "make minimum wage $15" is not "make minimum wage $100000000"

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#214

Post by inigyou »

anonym29 wrote: post #107
inigyou wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School shootings in America are not statistically unlikely, they are a regular occurrence.

The odds a child will be killed by an armed assailant at a school in the USA are about 1 in 5 million per year, and if you narrow down to mass shootings at schools, that drops to about 1 in 10 million. Between 2013 and 2022, a total of 77 students in grades K-12 have been killed in 11 school mass shootings, in a country with 50 million school children. A child in America is about 500-600x more likely to die in a car…

Nobody was talking about those odds though.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#215

Post by mlrtime »

danbruc wrote: post #86
mlrtime wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point, If the floor and the medium are rising, why does the gap need to narrow? Why is this better factually, not ideologically.

Because the gap indicates unfairness and people care about that. If you are poor, raising the floor will be good enough, you primary worry will be sufficient income. Once you reach a comfortable life, your priority will - or at least may - shift, now you are in a position that allows you to worry if the situation is fair. Also narrowing the gap is a way to raise the floor including in absence of growth while raising…

Fairness is ideology. The world will never ever be fair, nature isn't fair. We should strive for fairness of course (raising the min/medium).

But that still isn't a convincing reason (I want to be convinced)

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#216

Post by mlrtime »

watwut wrote: post #89
mlrtime wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point, If the floor and the medium are rising, why does the gap need to narrow? Why is this better factually, not ideologically.

Because needs and preferences of lower level are less and less reflected in policies and production. They are becomming permanent underclass with no future. They dont matter for politics nor for economics. Preferences of super rich are overwriting them, while super rich become richer, while super rich offload all risk they take on others.

That still doesn't explain why the gap needs to narrow if the min/median are rising. The pie can increase, everyone can be better off without shrinking the gap.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#217

Post by spwa4 »

dqv wrote: post #125
DarkNova6 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary alone is meaningless if you don't factor in purchase-power-parity and other quality of living aspects. E.g. a lot of people are happy to move to Denmark, and accept a paycut because they are leading with their social facilities and family support. Salary alone will not conjure good infrastructure

Yes, at the lower end of those salaries, you have to do things (and this is one single example btw) like have roommates, which drastically increases your housing instability. Why? Because you have to rely on your roommates' ability to pay rent. If they don't, what happens? You lose your PrIvIlIgE to live there! Most places in the US do not have protections for this. So you can try really hard to find another roommate…

You do realize just about everyone in the whole world is complaining about rent and how expensive things are, and the consequences of not being able to afford them. Based on what you've said here, Brussels is probably worse than that (the 1-3-6-9 rule on rent is extremely surprising to people here)

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#218

Post by Arnt »

microtonal wrote: post #167
Arnt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read that? I can get either in a day or two if I need it, they want much longer-term planning though. For a vaccination I'll call several weeks in advance. If I want an appointment before/after work I'll call well in advance, if I want something tomorrow they may say "11:30, take it out leave it", which isn't great for my work. Don't trust whoever wrote what you read there. FUD scaremongers.

For vaccinations like the flu shot [1], I call them or send them an e-mail and then I can usually come by any morning I like without an appointment (they'll just administer the shot between appointments, since it does not take much time). When we lived in Germany, we got TBE shots (area with a lot of ticks that carried it). IIRC we could also get an appointment in a few days. (Though I think with vaccinations it's si…

Weird what people will believe.

In this case GP probably knows that e.g. Italy has a life expectancy well above that of the US. Still, when he read that well-off people in the US have much better health coverage and it takes months to see a doctor in Italy, he believed it. How is it even possible to believe such a thing when you know the numbers?

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#219

Post by rjrjrjrj »

anonym29 wrote: post #212
rjrjrjrj wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often from a gun

Extremely rarely from a gun. And even when it is from a gun, it's not your kid dying from a gun, it's hundreds to thousands of "kids" (young teenagers) in places like Detroit and Chicago who have chosen an early career in armed carjacking and gang warfare, that skew the statistics for the entire nation. If you remove shootings committed by African Americans (which are overwhelmingly against other African Americans),…

“in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group” [1-19]

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#220

Post by anonym29 »

rjrjrjrj wrote: post #219
anonym29 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely rarely from a gun. And even when it is from a gun, it's not your kid dying from a gun, it's hundreds to thousands of "kids" (young teenagers) in places like Detroit and Chicago who have chosen an early career in armed carjacking and gang warfare, that skew the statistics for the entire nation. If you remove shootings committed by African Americans (which are overwhelmingly against other African Americans),…

“in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group” [1-19] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

Sure, but 5.5 per 100,000 is still extremely rare, and even that number obscures a highly bimodal distribution that largely tracks race. In Massachusetts, the rate drops to 0.7 per 100,000, while in Mississippi and Louisiana it's over 8 per 100,000.

From ages 1-19, that means the cumulative risk varies by about an order of magnitude even just at the state level before diving into specific cities or communities - there's cumulatively about a 1/750 chance of a kid dying from firearm violence in Louisiana or Mississippi from 1-19, or about a 1/7500 chance of a kid dying from firearm violence in Massachusetts.

The national figure might look scary (even though it's still a tiny, remote risk that most people never have to seriously worry about), but that's only because it blends a high-incidence minority with a low-incidence majority.

Looking at the national figure alone as representative of the whole country is like looking at the number of people who are imprisoned across Europe for being LGBT and being shocked at how much higher that figure is than in the USA - it's really all just Russia, a minority of Europe as a whole, responsible for a majority of the mortifying criminalization. It's disingenuous to insinuate that Europe as a whole is anti-LGBT because of Russian criminalization, just as it's disingenuous to insinuate that America as a whole is a dangerous place filled with gun violence, largely because of one demographic subset that is itself concentrated across a few small areas.

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