Its true.........US revenues can't keep up with spending.
That doesn't mean that out taxes are too low. The problem is that our spending is too high.
That's an average........it doesn't begin to address how the money is distributed per individual nor address the issue that the rich are getting richer in this country.
Not just the average, but the median is higher than most countries in Europe.
As for the rich getting richer, that's a good thing not a bad thing. And they aren't the only ones getting richer.
Is it that our disposable income is lower? It turns out that Americans enjoy a huge advantage in this measure.
On the surface that's true but after you pay for rent, car insurance, health insurance.........the advantage is all gone.
No we have more disposable income. That's after paying the fixed or near fixed monthly bills.
Is our economy not keeping pace? Interesting thought, but America’s been out-performing Europe for a long time.
Not in the last 5 years.
5 years has more to do with shorter term fluctuations than long terms trends, but we have outperformed much of Europe for the past 5 years, and the countries that have outperformed us tend to be the ones who have liberalized their tax and regulatory structures, not made them more expensive and controlling.
Huh? After six months, people in the US fall off the unemployment rolls.
Not true.
"Because unemployment insurance records, which many people think are the source of total unemployment data, relate only to persons who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to actually count every unemployed person each month, the Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940 when it began as a Work Projects Administration project. It has been expanded and modified several times since then. As explained later, the CPS estimates, beginning in 1994, reflect the results of a major redesign of the survey."
bls.gov
How are the unemployed counted in other countries?
The sample survey system of counting the unemployed in the United States is also used by many foreign countries, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Economic Community...
bls.gov
The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of households conducted by the Bureau of Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It provides a comprehensive body of data on the labor force, employment, unemployment, and persons not in the labor force.
bls.gov
Chapter 1.
Labor Force Data Derived from the Current Population Survey
Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analyzes and publishes statistics on the labor force, employment, and unemployment, classified by a variety of demographic, social, and economic characteristics. These statistics are derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is conducted by the Census Bureau for BLS. This monthly survey of the population uses a sample of households that is designed to represent the civilian noninstitutional population of the United States.
bls.gov
Chapter 1.
Labor Force Data Derived from the Current Population Survey
Collection Methods
Each month, during the calendar week containing the 19th day, interviewers contact a “responsible” person in each of the sample households in the CPS. At the time of the first enumeration of a household, the interviewer visits the household and prepares a roster of the household members, including their personal characteristics (date of birth, sex, race, ethnic origin, marital status, educational attainment, veteran status, and so on) and their relationship to the person maintaining the household. The interviewers enter this information into laptop computers. This roster is then checked for accuracy and brought up to date at each subsequent interview to take account of new or departed residents, changes in marital status, and similar items. The information on personal characteristics is thus available each month for identification purposes and for cross-classification with economic characteristics of the sample population.
Personal visits are preferred in the first month in which the household is in the sample. In other months, the interview generally is conducted by telephone. Approximately 70 percent of the households in any given month are interviewed by telephone. A portion of the households (10 percent) is interviewed via computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), from three centralized telephone centers (located in Hagerstown, MD; Jeffersonville, IN; and Tucson, AZ) by interviewers who also use a computerized questionnaire.
At each monthly visit, a series of standard questions on labor market activity during the preceding week is asked about each household member 15 years of age and older. (As previously mentioned, the official labor force estimates pertain to those aged 16 and older.) The primary purpose of these questions is to classify the sample population into the three basic economic groups: The employed, the unemployed, and those not in the labor force.
At the end of each day’s interviewing, the data collected are transmitted to the Census Bureau’s central computer in Washington, DC. Once files are transmitted to the main computer, they are deleted from the laptops.
Because of the crucial role interviewers have in the household survey, a great amount of time and effort is spent maintaining the quality of their work. Interviewers are given intensive training, including classroom lectures, discussion, practice, observation, home-study materials, and on-the-job training. At least once a year, they convene for daylong training and review sessions, and, also at least once a year, they are accompanied by a supervisor during a full day of interviewing to determine how well they carry out their assignments.
A selected number of households are reinterviewed each month to determine whether the information obtained in the first interview was correct. The information gained from these interviews is used to improve the entire training program.
bls.gov
The chart is so fukked who can figure out what its saying.
The chart isn't that complex, and its fully described in the text.
The 100% mark equals the US median wage. The percentages numbers on the left is the percentage of that wage recieved by people at the 10% percentile in each country (people who are richer than 10% of the people of that country and poorer than 90%), the numbers on the right are the percentages of US median wage recieved by people at the 90% (richer than 90% of the residents of that country)
The people in the 10th percentile in the US earn more than the people in the 10th percentile in Finland, Sweden, Austalia or the UK, and almost as much as the 10th percentile in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark or France. That's including recent immigrants. In Canada the 10th percentile does modestly better, only in Norway and Switzerland is there a large difference, and even in compared to Switzerland (the country that does best on this measure) the difference isn't as large as you seem to think it is (people at the 10% in the US make about 71% as much as people in the 10% in Switzerland).
To put it another way the 10th percentile in the US does better, as good, or almost as good as the then percentile in any large country in the world. (Large by population, maybe 50mil or more)
We are less equal not because our poor are poorer but because our rich are richer. If the poor are about the same, and the rich do better I consider that a good thing not a bad thing.
Exclude recent immigrants and the 10th percentile in the US would almost certainly do even better but I don't have hard data on that.
--
Also as a commenter to that post pointed out
Both Switzerland and Norway have older populations than the U.S.:
median age
Switzerland.....40.4
Norway..........38.7
U.S. ...........36.6
Source: CIA World Factbook
Where a larger share of the population is younger, we should expect greater inequality of household incomes, all else being equal. As Warren pointed out, though, all things are not equal. A significant portion of the younger U.S. population consists of low-skilled immigrants. Estimates for median age of illegal immigrants in the U.S. I've seen have ranged from 25 to 28.
It is not surprising to me if the poor of Switzerland and Norway earn a higher percentage of median income.
Posted by: John Dewey | Oct 25, 2007 3:15:24 PM
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