Welcome to USA the richest country in the world

Gizzard

And the brilliant thing about it is, that 50% of the average US household income, adjusting for currency exchange rates and cost of living, works out to about 32120 EUR.

With the average household income in Ireland given by 15,953 EUR ( x2, I presume), that means that the lower 17th percentile of earners in the US has a spending power that is actually 0.7% greater than the Irish national average!! Not bad for the bottom 17th percentile, not bad at all.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/4person.html
http://www.oanda.com/products/bigmac/bigmac.shtml (dated, but the newest I could find)
http://www.xe.com

Evidently the average wage in ESB is 61k?, wtf is that about?

tba

Originally posted by Gizzard
Evidently the average wage in ESB is 61k?, wtf is that about?

thats skewed statistics for you again, I bet a couple of people are getting paid ridiculous wages thus pushing up the average.

DadaKopf

Originally posted by BattleBoar
Sure. Multiply the ~15Eur number by two. Then to the US avg number divide by 2 to get the 50% figure then multiply by PPP adjustment value then run that number through the currency converter then take a ratio.

BTW - The point isn't that I'm trying to say that the US is better or anything like that, as in Ireland much is provided that you'd have to pay for in the US. Its more like I'm saying that you shouldn't just throw statistics out there without context because you can skew them a lot of ways depending on the metrics you choose, or don't choose, to use.

Sure, context is everything. So here's a little context from the United Nations Human Development Report 2004...

US GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity in US dollars (PPP$), is $35,750. Comparing that with EU member countries, the highest GDP per capita (PPP$) is Luxembourg with $61,190, while the lowest is Latvia at $9,210. (Switzerland is $30,010.)

But there are two major problems with this measurement: the first is it doesn't tell you exactly what people are earning or how much of that money actually remains within the national economy compared with GNP or GNI, just total output and, secondly, it says nothing about distribution and human welfare. As far as the former goes, comparing the GDP (PPP$) figures in the UNDP HDR with GNI (PPP$) in this table shows that there can be big discrepancies between a country's GDP and GNI; the US's GDP is roughly equal to its GNI, but for Ireland there is a $6,000 (PPP$) difference between our GDP and GNI figures. Anyway...

The US's Human Development Index (HDI) rank is #8, two places above Ireland, and below the top spot held by Norway. It's doing OK on a number of very limited indicators.

However, its Human Poverty Index (HPI-2; a different set of indicators are used for OECD countries than are for developing countries) is 15.8, the highest of all the advanced (richest) industrialised European countries and 0.3% worse than Ireland (the best performing is Sweden with 6.5). (I'll refer to the advanced industrialised European countries because they are more directly comparable) We could make the excuse for us in Ireland that we're rapidly developing, still, and some increase in social exclusion is tolerable so long as it can be said to be temporary. The same, surely, couldn't be said about the USA, since this is a longer term phenomenon.

So, although its HDI rank is 8, its HPI-2 rank is 17!

On top of that, the USA is also the most unequal of the advanced (richest) industrial countries with a Gini inequality measure of 40.1. For context, the best are Belgium and Sweden, both at 25.0, and the next worst is the UK at 36.0 and Ireland is 38.9. 50.0 is officially considered to be "extremely unequal". So, with the exception of the developed Antipodean and South-East Asian countries and city-states, the US is one of the most unequal societies in the developed world.

In terms of inequality of income, the richest 20% consumes 45.8% of the wealth, the poorest 20% consumes 5.4%. The figures are more startling when broken down into deciles - the poorest 10% consumes 1.9%, the richest 29.9%.

So when you consider that income and wealth in the US are incredibly unequally distributed, that $11 (PPP$) a day and percentage of people living below 50% of median income looks all the more worrying, doesn't it?

ionapaul

I don't think that economic equality is possible in a capitalist system.
Should the business owner who poured blood, sweat, tears and 80 hour weeks into his company for 20 years earn more than his employees who work 40, 50 and 60 hour weeks? I think he should, and earn a good deal more as well.
No-one needs to be paid over 1 million a year (much less 5, 10 or 20 million) - but in the capitalist system if that is what the market decides they are worth, well then thats what they'll get.
In the most capitalist country in the world (they claim), arguably the best country you can move to if you want to start with nothing and become weathy through hard work and dedication (the American dream), does it surprise anyone that there is such massive inequality? They certainly don't claim to be a socialist country like we do in Europe. I also would feel very confident in saying a majority of Americans would reject any moves to put in place a welfare state like those of the Scandinavian countries.
Like I've always said, I wouldn't like to be poor in America and see such wealth around me (though Ireland isn't much better on that point right now) - but it certainly is a place that can reward those with an entrepreneurial spirit.

DadaKopf

They certainly don't claim to be a socialist country like we do in Europe.

They certainly don't. The state continues to exercise corporate welfare to the detriment of social welfare and has done so for decades.

arcadegame2004

So what's the difference between 'compulsory private-health-insurance' and taxation?

The difference is that those insured with private health insurance are getting treated quicker than those who aren't insured. Hence compulsory health-insurance would end the two-tier health-service.

My proposals would give the hospitals an incentive to treat people sooner. We are already paying for the Health-Service through our taxes so saying that the HS is currently free is a lie. We could arguably be paying less through health-insurance for the health-service than we do through taxes because Less taxation would be needed since my proposals envisage the State only paying the premiums of those who cannot afford private health-insurance.

The absence of sufficient profit-motive in the Health-Service means that a doubling in Health spending in the past 7 years has yielded little return for the taxpayer. A new approach is required.

Compulsory private health insurance seems to me like a fig-leaf to cover up the deficiences of ultra-dogmatic Rabid Righties who cannot believe in public services and will not believe that their own philosophy has any shortcomings at all.

Really? Then why did Labour propose compulsory health-insurance in the 2002 General Election campaign. I believe it is still their policy.

I am not a "rabid rightie".

The terms "Left" and "Right" are probably outdated nowadays. I believe in economic and social liberalism. That means that I am in favour of gay-marriage, the separation of religion from the State, liberal divorce laws etc. You could call a liberal attitude to social-policies (as distinct from economic/industrial policies/big/small government questions) a "leftwing" perspective. Yet my economic/industrial/small government outlook would be considered rightwing. The term "liberal" (in both the economic neoliberal context and social context) is a term I would prefer for describing my outlook.

I understand the attraction to some of central state-planning of industry and healthcare/education etc., and I even supported those things before I studied economics. In recent years, there has been abundance of evidence to show that the road to hell is paved with good intentions in regard to the absence of an improvement in the Health-Service in spite of a doubling of health-spending to 10 billion euro, among other things.

The Left would advocate we continue throwing money at the Health-Service regardless of whether that money is being used as it should. That is just throwing good money after bad and assumes that money grows on trees. A marker-oriented approach is an alternative I am proposing, and comes after witnessing the failure of traditional socialist orthodoxy.

sovtek

Originally posted by ionapaul
Harvard assured me that about 50% of students there were on differing levels of financial aid. Plus you would never be denied a loan if you were accepted to Harvard - you would never look long for a high paying job in the States with that name on your CV!

If you were accepted to Harvard...you more than likely don't need a loan and your name is Bush or Kerry.
As for loans...yes you can always get loans....from someone, somewhere.
Doesn't mean you can pay them back...

You don't have to repay your loans while you are unemployed.

But if you get a low level position right out of college...you sure as hell better pay them back...even if you have to eat Ramen noodles and toilet paper every day.

BattleBoar

Originally posted by DadaKopf
So when you consider that income and wealth in the US are incredibly unequally distributed, that $11 (PPP$) a day and percentage of people living below 50% of median income looks all the more worrying, doesn't it?

Doesn't bother me one bit. I am in the US and came from what would be considered a poor family (in the lowest 25th percentile of income). My parents divorced. My mom did what she could to raise us on next to nothing. I went to one of the poorest secondary schools in the area. But I worked my A$$ off in school, got summer jobs, did well and made it through to get an advanced degree in a very technical field from one of the top universities in the country. Sure, I have a lot of student loans, but I also have a house and a $65,000 salary...not bad for someone in their mid-20's, and something I almost certainly would not have been able to accomplish anywhere else given my upbringing. Do I feel bad for people that are not so fortunate, yes. But I also know that fortune, at least in this country, is by and large one's own making...as it should be IMO.

The unequal distribution of wealth bothers me not one bit. Wealth SHOULD NOT BE equally distributed. It should be distributed based on contribution. The unequal distribution of opportunity bothers me much more. In that, I will admit that the US has a long way to go in terms of quality of education, but it's still quite good. You can make it here. It can be done. I know it can be done because I did it. But before you look at the inequality of opportunity in the US, I suggest you look at the number of children in Ireland who are unable to secure secondary school places, almost all of which come from poor families. There's at least a decent chance that had I grown up in Ireland, I would have been one of those kids. I might be on the street right now with no education and no opportunity rather than an educated, productive, tax-paying member of society.

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2004/03/06/story305370225.asp

Victor

Originally posted by sceptre
And Bush is the current devil though to be honest, he's hardly playing with a full deck[1] now is he?

[1]Except for that most wanted deck. He's probably got a few packs of those

Timeline in an alternative universe:

15 March 2003 Saddam Hussein dies of a heart attack.

16 March 2003 New Iraqi leadership say "Saddam was a bad man and disgraced Iraq" and invites UN and USA to conduct any inspections they want.

17 March 2003 Donald Rumsfeld flogs 250,000 decks of cards to discount store at 2 cents a pack.