How much Americans make in wages • Hacker News Board

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#211

Post by sumedh » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #179

sascha_sl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median Asian income is easily explained - only educated/relatively rich Asians can afford to immigrate. Most immigration is relatively recent (60s to present) so their status hasn't really had time to change a lot.

Citation? There are certainly rich Asians who immigrate, but I know plenty of people who immigrated and are absolutely not rich at all. Many Asians who immigrate have little to nothing except an education, some don't even have that. We brought many over during the time frame of the Vietnam war who had nothing at all.

> Many Asians who immigrate have little to nothing except an education

Are Indians included in Asians?

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#212

Post by cxseven » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:48 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #167

danans wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more robust and decentralized system than us all being atomized and being cared for by the state. Decentralized, sure. Robust? No way. Unless they are wealthy and economically independent, your family are a small number of failures away from not being able to support you. A locally correlated failure ( i.e a plant or industry that employs many of them folds) can knock out the support system. Not to mention that unl…

Here's some robustness for you: our ancestors have been depending on their respective families since humans were a species. Whereas the oldest extant government are only several hundred years old. And many aren't even as old as my grandparents.

You'd probably find that ancient humans, just like many animals, formed cooperative groups that weren't limited to family, with children not infrequently cared for by nonfamily. A social safety net is nearly as ancient as life itself and seems to be contributing to the robustness of many lifeforms.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#213

Post by HarryHirsch » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

extra88 wrote: post #99

HarryHirsch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at the salary data for full-time-employed white men of prime working age the statistics aren't much rosier: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0253204200A Median salary: USD 34270.

Did you mean to link to something else? That y axis is the quantity of persons who are white men and working full time, not their median salaries.

That's embarrassing.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#214

Post by Izkata » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

lorax wrote: post #9

> 48% of wager earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage I'm surprised. I expected that 50% of wage earners would make less or equal to the median wage. If for no other reason than the definition of median.

Someone further up made a similar comment, and got a non-pedantic response: wages don't include bonuses, but net compensation does. That's why it's not 50%.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#215

Post by JDiculous » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 11:00 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #95

JDiculous wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government debt denominated in one's own currency is not really a serious issue because governments can print their own currency to pay it off. Yes this can result in inflation, but the inflationary effects are vastly overstated. Most of the inflation happens at the point of spending. I recommend reading up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-dollars-...

MMT says that printing money has no effect if you give it to certain people. I’ve yet to hear of a real-world example where a major economy doubles or triples their monetary supply with no negative effect, which is what MMT will have you believe (“don’t give it to the banks - give it to poor people in Idaho!”). If it sounds too good to be true then it is.

The Fed increased the monetary base by 5x during the Great Recession. Where's the hyperinflation?

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#216

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #208

badpun wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> greater share of opportunities than any other group in this nation, which is shown by things like overall increased income, increased job opportunities, increased representation in government, increased representation on corporate boards, increased representation in the media and entertainment, etc. Money, i.e. resources, is the ultimate score. Ultimately, power (politics, corporate management) is primarily about m…

> given that Asians are doing better as a group than white people They're not. They have higher median household income. Median household income does not determine whether one ethnic group does better than another ethnic group. It only determines if their median household income is doing better. And if you think money is the end-all-be-all, white people are the tops. "96.1 percent of the 1.2 million households in the…

Or maybe it just takes a while for families to establish themselves? Over half of Asians in the U.S. are foreign born. With most of the remainder being the second generation.

That said, Asians are starting to get elected to political office. There are three Asians in the U.S. Senate (making 3% of all senators) and there are 14 Asian members of the House of Representatives (making 2.6%). That might seem low, given that Asians make up about 7% of the U.S. population, but over half of Asian Americans are foreign-born. I think the fairer comparison is to American-born Asian Americans (after all, it's hard to get elected when you're not a native speaker of English and you're missing shared cultural references). And that shows an attainment of political office in line with their representation in the population at large.

I can't find decent stats on Asians in the 1% of income, but if you have a source you like, I'm happy to dig in. The link you provided just has an "Other" category at 1.6%.

My stats are from these wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_Americans_and_Pa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_American...

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#217

Post by zswinton » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

I used to work om many of those undertable gigs in order to get something to eat in the evening. Later I figured out more about taxable gigs and 1099-MISC here: https://1099-misc-form.pdffiller.com/ (actually a copypaste from the IRS website) and was puzzled about how some young people actually supposed to live a decent life and pay that amount of their wages to a government as well

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#218

Post by sameerds » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

wintermutesGhst wrote: post #150

sameerds wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my language (Marathi), we have a phrase for this which can be translated as "from the bowl into the plate". The intention is to expand the meaning of "me" to include people that matter. Then you no longer think of the money that you give out as a loan or a gift; you're merely spending it on your extended self. I was afforded the "luxury" of doing a PhD instead of getting a job out of college because my older broth…

This idea really resonates with me, and is a notion I've been working through without really having words that express it. Could you share the untranslated phrase if I wanted to read more about it?

The original phrase is "वटीतून ताटात", pronounced as "vaatitun tatat", but with two different sounds for the "t". A "vaati" or "katori" is a small bowl, several of which are placed inside the plate in a meal. The idea is that you are the bowl and your family is the plate; irrespective of whether food is served in the bowl or the plate, finally you are the one who enjoys it.

Re: How much Americans make in wages

#219

Post by rhacker » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

JDiculous wrote: post #86

skilled wrote: post #65

I honestly wonder are people that delusional that they overlook the ridiculous debt that the country is in? Don't get me wrong, I am not from America myself but I have a lot of friends from there, and I generally don't hear anything good about the 'American dream'. If you take a hard step back, like way back. And take a moment to look at the "situation" with an outside perspective, don't you think it's a little ridic…

Government debt denominated in one's own currency is not really a serious issue because governments can print their own currency to pay it off. Yes this can result in inflation, but the inflationary effects are vastly overstated. Most of the inflation happens at the point of spending. I recommend reading up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/diagrams-dollars-...

Is it really not serious? Is there a possible chance that countries that we get our debt resolved from can just start buying US land and US businesses? Isn't there a reason more and more US companies are re-incorporating in the bahamas or other locations? The net effect of the last 20 years of economic policy will likely be felt... suddenly - when a decision is made by the new owner.