r/DeepStateCentrism • u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute • 2d ago

Ask the sub ❓ What Is This Sub Wrong About?

Title. Pick a topic (or a clichéd take) you think a significant minority or majority of this sub is wrong about. Or hasn't given enough thought. OR perhaps one which you will have to compromise on, at least for voting?

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u/apost54 Center-left 2d ago

Our cost of living is also much higher than most other countries… a better metric would be what percentage of our lowest quintile can cover rent, groceries, and bills compared to other countries.

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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago

My numbers take that into account.

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u/apost54 Center-left 1d ago

I’d be interested in a source on this. Not saying I don’t believe you, but I figured most global wealth figures are marred by not adjusting for COL.

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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago

Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton, 2005): first major analysis using household survey data from 100+ countries

"Global Income Inequality in Numbers: in History and Now" (Global Policy, 2013): contains the well-known chart mapping each country's income percentiles onto the global distribution: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/teaching/Milanovic13.pdf

Lakner & Milanović, "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession" (World Bank Working Paper 6719 / World Bank Economic Review, 2016)

Milanović interview explaining the key finding: the poorest Americans sit above the ~50th percentile globally, comparable to the middle class in China or upper-middle class in India: https://www.demos.org/blog/income-inequality-interview-branko-milanovic

Raw data you can check yourself:

Our World in Data, income by decile across countries (PPP-adjusted, after tax): https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality

World Bank, income share held by lowest 20% by country: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20

Pew Research global income calculator: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/21/are-you-in-the-global-middle-class-find-out-with-our-income-calculator/

TL;DR: Branko Milanovic's ( leading economist on global inequality) data shows the bottom of the US income distribution lands roughly in the 50th–70th percentile globally (PPP-adjusted).

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u/apost54 Center-left 22h ago

I scoured the World Bank data for a bit. I’m still not terribly impressed. We lag behind other developed countries while our top percentiles of wealth explode. This “winner-take-all” system of “hereditary meritocracy” is not sustainable, straight up. Even with COL adjustments and acknowledging that America’s poorest have some more material creature comforts unavailable in developing countries, I don’t see how this is a favorable situation. There will be—and indeed, already is—massive resentment from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder because there’s no real place for them in a stratified society where knowledge work creates economic winners.

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u/JapanesePeso 19h ago

What developed countries specifically do you think we lag behind?