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  1. 31 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    I saw him cut 10k off of Japan's actual data.  I also see that Japan has a much lower crime rate than we have.  You rely entirely on a poll that asked whether people feel safe while walking alone at night in order to say that the USA is safer than Japan. No, the USA just "feels safer" which means nothing.  I also see that people in Japan live longer.  You again rely on a useless poll.  This time self-reported health. 

    And laughably, 88% of Americans self-reported that they were healthy.  Right, so you believe that only 12% of Americans are unhealthy?  Again, actual stats say over 30% of Americans are obese.  Nearly 10% have diabetes.  30% have high blood pressure.  Who were they even polling when they asked that question?

    No doubt you can always rely on Americans to say they're the best.

    LOL. Its 20K because it says, PPP. How many times am I going to have to ask you read shit before you spout shit. 

    Next time, more reading, less talking. 

  2. Just now, FondrenRoad said:

    No, again.  Ryan falsified data.  You can admit that and then use actual OECD data while ignoring OECD polls to come to a conclusion.  Yet here you still are, pretending as if that article is sound, Mr. Trump.

    Nah, you refuse to see what you don't want to see. Like you did with Japan. 

    You're worse than Trump, you're a Trumpkin. 

  3. 1 minute ago, FondrenRoad said:

    What the fuck are you talking about?  Ryan used fake data.  You can toss out his entire bullshit article because of that.  As for "feelings" polls, who gives a shit? The violent crime rate is much higher in the US than in Japan.

    Its good that we have a higher median household income than other countries.  We will be able to build even better social safety nets than other OECD countries did.

    I get it.  You don't give a fuck whether poor people eat, have a roof over their head, or have access to healthcare, so it would be a lot easier if you just manned up and said that.  Yes, if you're actually a high income earner, you are going to take home less so that we can lessen our income inequality.  So you're gonna have to deal with it.

    No, you're pushing a false narrative on your feels instead of the data. You know the people you(and I) hate called Trumpkins that just run with whatever their lord and saviour says despite it being factually incorrect. You're the left's version of it. 

     

  4. 4 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    No, shitwipe.  I'm not comparing us to only Japan.  What I said is that Ryan faked the numbers.  He didn't provide actual data.  Japan was only one example, but all his numbers are falsified.

    And we don't come close to beating Japan on health in spite of being a younger population that should be healthier.  Quit being ridiculous.  Japan is number 1 in life expectancy.  We are 27th.

    And in spite of us "feeling safer," we aren't.  How about you look at the actual crime statistics in the US and Japan?  It is true that Japan is one of the few OECD countries that has a worse work-life balance than us, so we have that going for us.

    Riiight, we only look at OECD data until it agrees with Fondren. 

    These things don't work in a vacuum you dumbfuck. If you initiate a change in one, it impacts the other. Now GTFO with your toddler logic. 

  5. 40 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    They push pretty far-right culture views, including stuff about race. Known idiot Walter Block is a senior fellow there, someone who said that women and blacks were paid less because they are "less productive."

    Fair enough and you and I both disagree with them there. It doesn't mean we discount everything they have to say. 

  6. 24 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Nice, a bullshit editorial that massages the fuck out of the numbers so it can come to its preconceived biased conclusion.  The actual OECD data already factors in PPP, taxes, and welfare payments.  It also has Japan at just over $31,000.  Yet old Ryan's graph here has Japan at $20,000 after he, I guess, adds additional taxes to the numbers.  He also throws several non-OECD countries in there for good measure.  Hard to believe, but he may very well be more disingenuous than you.

    A lot of other great headlines there too like "Tax Evasion Is Not the Crime, Taxation Is"

    Unlike you however, he provides data and backs it up with a methodology. You on the other hand is all opinion. You went from it sucks for all of us to it sucks for the bottom half(and you're wrong there as well). 

    24 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

     It also has Japan at just over $31,000.  Yet old Ryan's graph here has Japan at $20,000 after he, I guess, adds additional taxes to the numbers. 

    You want to compare us to Japan? Here you go: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/japan/

    We win on almost every measure, especially on income, housing, HEALTH(LOL), environment and safety. 

    Speaking of disingenuous maybe start looking inward because your opinions are backed up by more of your opinions. 

  7. 9 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    Holy shit at citing the Mises institute. Just full deep throating libertarianism

    Well, need I remind you we are in a thread that is celebrating AOC a full blown DSA? 

    Besides, tell me where you disagree with the Mises institute. 

  8. 2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Yeah okay. Russia has less wealth inequality than the United States.

    Explain that one.

    Why does it matter? When everyone is wealthier than rest of the world? 

    Other than, you just want the other guy to have less because you just dont like his fancy car or house godddamnit! 

  9. 12 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Because we have a poorer lower class than those countries.  But sure, its fantastic that rich people are rich.  And everyone in the USA is doing awesome if we pretend that the bottom half of income earners in our country don't exist.

    By bottom half, I assume you mean the bottom third. Because AGAIN, middle class is doing better. 

    Glad we have at least that concession from you. Now, allow me to enlighten you on the American poor vs. European poor. 

    The Poor in the US Are Richer than the Middle Class in Much of Europe

    10/16/2015Ryan McMaken

    In this week's debate, Bernie Sanders claimed that the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty. CBS reports that Sanders said: "We should not be the country that has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country and more wealth and income inequality than any other country,"

    As even CBS notes, according to UNICEF, which is probably the source of Sanders's factoid, the US has lower childhood poverty rates than Greece, Spain, Mexico, Latvia, and Israel, all of which are OECD countries or regarded as peer countries. The US rate (32.2 percent) is also more or less equal to the rate in Turkey, Romania, Lithuania, and Iceland. See page 8 of this report.

    So, while Sanders probably doesn't even know what he means by "major country" it's clear that the US is not an outlier among OECD-type countries, even by UNICEF's own analysis.

    We get much more insight, though, once we have a look at what UNICEF means by "poverty rate." In this case, UNICEF (and many other organizations) measure the poverty rate as a percentage of the national median household income. UNICEF uses 60% of median as the cut off. So, if you're in Portugal, and your household earns under 60% of the median income in Portugal, you are poor. If you are in the US and you earn under 60% of the US median income, then you are also poor.

    The problem here, of course, is that median household incomes — and what they can buy — differs greatly between the US and Portugal. In relation to the cost of living, the median income in the US is much higher than the median income in much of Europe. So, even someone who earns under 60% of the median income in the US will, in many cases, have higher income than someone who earns the median income in, say, Portugal.

    [RELATED: "If Sweden and Germany Became US States, They Would be Among the Poorest States"]

    Here are all the median incomes (according to the OECD's household income comparison statistic called "median disposable income.") When adjusted for purchasing power parity, the statistic allows us to make incomes comparable across countries that use different currencies and have different costs of living. This takes into account taxes, and social benefits paid to households. So, let's use it to compare (the Y axis is in "international dollars"):

    oecd_median.png


    We see immediately that income is higher for US households than most of the other countries. What about that high poverty rate, though? Well, we find that the poverty level in the US is still higher than numerous countries' median income level:

    poverty_income_2_2014.JPG


    The green bar is the US income at poverty levels. So, this tells us that a person at 60% of median  income in the US still has a larger income than the median household in Chile, Czech Rep., Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and several others. And the poverty income in the US is very close to matching the median income in Italy, Japan, Spain, and the UK.

    Keep in mind that we're using median income here, and not GDP per capita, which means this isn't being skewed up by a small number of mega-wealthy households. So while the US may have a rather high poverty rate, we find that being poor in the US is similar to (at least in terms of income) being a median household in many other countries, including the UK and Japan.

    So, yes, the US has a higher poverty rate than many other countries, but the standard of living available to a person at poverty levels in the US is higher than it is to a person at poverty levels in places like the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, New Zealand, and others.  Here are all countries at the 60% of the national median:

    poverty_income_2014.png

    The relationships between the countries are the same as in the first graph, but the income levels are all lower. But again, here we see that the median incomes for people at poverty levels are higher in the US than in other countries.

    Thus, the fact that the US has higher poverty rates says very little about the actual living standards of the poor. The poor have higher incomes in the US in real terms in most cases. The countries that should really give us concern are the countries that have high levels of poverty and low median incomes. In this graph, we see childhood poverty levels (on y axis, according to the UNICEF report) compared with income levels for those below 60% of median (x axis, according to the OECD):

    scattor_poverty.png

     


    The countries in the top left side of graph — Greece, Mexico, Israel, Spain, Italy, Ireland, UK, and Portugal  — are the ones that have the least to offer the poor. These are countries with low median income and even lower incomes for the poor (of course). Those countries with high incomes — such as the US, Switzerland, Norway, and Australia — have much higher incomes. So while there are more poor in the US (relatively speaking) the incomes of those poor are much higher in the US, and even higher than the median income of other countries in many cases. In other words, even if the poverty rate in Greece were zero percent, all those non-poor median Greek households would be poorer than a US household at the poverty line.

    Also, given that the OECD's measure here attempts to take into account income from social benefits, we can't just say "well, those European incomes may be lower, but they get more in social benefits." That is not true for these numbers. Social benefits included, Americans have higher incomes at both the median level and at the poverty level, when compared to most other countries.

    This further illustrates the problem with speaking about poverty in terms of percentages of the median or as a percentage of total wealth. These comparisons are used to highlight inequality, but the fact is that the US (which has more inequality) offers higher incomes for those at poverty level. Is it better to be equal in Portugal or unequal in the US? One can be "equal" in Portugal, but it will mean a standard of living well below that which can be attained in the US at poverty levels.

    Note on the OECD numbers: the median disposable-income numbers are found here at the OECD stats web site.  They are then divided by the PPP conversion factor for private consumption found here. Wikipedia has also already done this calculation and listed the values here.

     It's difficult to find median income numbers that can be compared across different countries, but for a second source, we can consult the Gallup survey data. Gallup has compiled its own data on median incomes based on self-reported household income from all sources. So, theoretically, this would include social benefits payments as well. The numbers here are higher than the OECD numbers because they do not appear to take into account the impact of taxes. So, without taxes factored in, the high-tax Scandinavian countries, for example, look wealthier in this comparison than they do in the OECD comparison. Nevertheless, there are some similarities overall:

    gallup_median.png
     

    In this case, the US median income is still higher than most countries in the group, but while the US ranked 4th place in the OECD survey, it ranks 6th place here. (Switzerland, oddly, is not included in the Gallup survey.)

    If we reduce the US to 60% of its median level, and leave the rest alone, we find that the US, at poverty level, still comes in above or roughly equal to 15 other countries in the group. So, by this measure too, the poverty level in the US beats the median level in numerous European countries.

    gallup_poverty.png

    Photo source.

    Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

  10. Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Remarkable how many people are eager to defend the exploitive and small business crushing multi-billion dollar corporations and their overpaid CEOs. 

    Almost like there’s some built in auto-defense mechanism.

    No, what's remarkable is people cannot see what's in front of their eyes on a macro level researched and vetted through third party sources that are more likely to be biased towards your stance say otherwise. 

    Almost as if they are in denial based on their own anecdotal failures. 

    Wild.

  11. 8 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    You're arguing just to argue. You know that the United States lags in quality of life. That's why you have to fall back on one variable, income. You have to reduce your argument to wealth because you know there are a whole host of other indicators of well being where the United States isn't doing too well.

    LOL. You keep moving goal posts. Now it isn't about income? This is how our conversation has gone on this thread since page 12 or so...

    DD: People are unhappy because compared to Western Europe our middle class is struggling due to low wages.

    Me: But our middle class and upper middle class is making more money and have a better lifestyle than Western Europe, see attached link.

    DD: People in America believe that they have a worse quality of life

    Me: They can believe what they want, does not make it true. Pew research a liberal source disagrees with your stance.

    DD: You're arguing just to argue. Income is just one variable. We have it bad, and you know it! 

    Me: LOL

     

    • Like 1
  12. Just now, David Dennison said:

    I'm saying the people who live in a whole lot of western democracies believe their lives are better than Americans do. 

    People are free to believe what they want. Trumpkins believe Trump is the second coming of Buddha but it isn't necessarily accurate. Kyrie Irving believes that earth is flat, I guess it must be true for him then. 

    I just gave you hard facts and figures backed with research and methodology and you come back with "they believe". 

  13. 2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    Are you under the impression that the people in those western democracies aren't choosing to live in more generous welfare states?

    These are democracies we're talking about. 

    Are you talking about immigration now? Because US blows all of them out of water when it comes to the number of people that want to move here. Even from those countries. 

  14. 2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    So are government services. Those are a big reason why the United States lags in quality of life indexes. 

    Perceived quality of life indexes. We clearly just pay people more, even more than Norway and let them choose what THEY want as opposed to mandate what the government assumes would be a good quality of life. 

     

  15. 3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    The Pew piece was not about quality of life. It was about middle class income.

    You cannot offer someone a better life, just tools to make it better. Money is one of those things. 

  16. Just now, David Dennison said:

    Given its wealth, the United States fares poorly in quality of life surveys.

    That is exactly how this liberally slanted source measured, we were rated quite highly. 

    Sorry, your opinion < Pew research. 

  17. 1 minute ago, FondrenRoad said:

    But we arent. The average Western European has a much better quality of life. 

    And, the model of corporate governance that we were discussing is specifically German, not Italian, and not all of Western Europe. German workers are happier in the workplace and more equitably compensated. 

    Research shows exactly opposite of what you're stating, as usual your preference to believing your preconceived notions over reading well researched facts is doing you a disservice. US has higher middle class compensation when compared to Italy, Germany and even (here it comes.....) NORWAY. Not only that, US has a larger upper middle class than those countries and a wealthy class. 

    If we have a wealthier middle class, upper middle class and wealthier class than Norway much less Germany wtf are you complaining about?

  18. 6 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

    My jealousy? Lol. I'm jealous of nothing. I'd guess that I make at least 4 times your yearly income but that's irrelevant. I'm a producer and you're a cost center. And youre comparing us to fucking Italy? Lol. 

    The problem here is that you make 15 an hour while working your ass off for a guy pulling in 500 an hour and you think you're better than the guy at your office who sweeps the floors. But you arent better, and at the end of the day, if the guy who sweeps the floors cant feed his kids, he is going to take it out of your ass. 

    European economics is not a step down.  Theres a reason that all of America's biggest producers support it. But I guess it's really terrible that a non producing middle manager or salesperson like yourself cant get rich in Europe.

    How good a sales guy are you?  I can pay you better than Putin, but I'm not really liking what I see out of you so far.

    Again, a lot of words and chest thumping while I posted research by a liberal fucking slanted source that disagrees with your communist stance. It says we are better off than Western Europe not just Italy. 

    But like I said, continue being ignorant. 

  19. 9 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

    It works in Germany and, not surprisingly, Germany has a much smaller income gap.  

    And why is income gap a problem? Other than your jealousy, I mean. Especially when the middle class lifestyle in US will classify as upper middle class  or better in almost all countries in the world including your beloved Western Europe. Here's a liberal source that blows your assinine, stupid argument out of water: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-american-lens-western-europes-middle-classes-appear-smaller/

    While the U.S. middle class may be smaller than those in Western Europe, its standard of living – as measured by its median income – is higher. That raises a question: What shares of adults in Western European countries have the same standard of living as the American middle class? In other words, what would the middle-class share in Western European countries be if the middle class were defined as adults living in households with the same incomes as middle-class households in the U.S.?

    In 2010, middle-class households in the U.S. had incomes ranging from $35,294 to $105,881 – that is, two-thirds to double the overall median income of $52,941. This U.S. standard can be applied to any country in Western Europe after incomes are adjusted for cost-of-living differences across countries. (Incomes in this analysis are adjusted to reflect a household of three and are expressed in 2011 prices. They are also converted to purchasing power parity dollars, which adjusts for cost-of-living differences across countries. For more, see full methodology.)

    When the Western European countries the Center analyzed are viewed through the lens of middle-class incomes in the U.S., the share of adults who are middle class decreases in most of them. The greatest decline is in Italy, where the middle-class share in 2010 falls from 67% under that country’s national income standard to 44% under the U.S. income standard. In other words, 44% of Italians had the same standard of living as 59% of Americans who were in the middle class in 2010.

    Also Germany doesn't have the innovation, the capital markets or the consumer markets to fuel that gap which keeps their wealthiest uh, not so wealthy compared to the American wealthy. 

    And as if all of this wasn't enough, US also has a larger upper middle class than these bastion of economic heavens according to you Bernies. 

    In summation, European economics is something we DO NOT WANT. It is a step down. 

    But carry on with your ignorance. 

     

  20. 2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I just have one question: who is going to take him down?  In our system of law, who is going to take down our deranged criminal president?  Start by asking "who CAN take him down?", then go from there.

    Not gonna happen.

    You keep misspelling dictator, at least to Trumpkins. But yes, you have a point. 

  21. 5 hours ago, Anastasis said:

    There is no doubt that colonialism has had a negative impact on Africa. You can conflate that with Christianity if you wish. I will rather base my judgement of the impact on the charities I support that are building wells and schools. 

    LOL negative impact. Its like saying on 9/11, no doubt the planes had a negative impact on world trade center. 

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