Is the wealth disparity worse in America or Mexico?

[burritos]

Been feeling guilty of late. Been hearing a lot on the media and in the political arena how the top 1% is doing well while everywhere else is imploding. No one has insurance, everyone’s retirement account is closer to zero than to retirement ready, no one can afford a $400 emergency. Honestly I’ve been imagining pitchforks in the next few decades.

Anyways, was skiing in snowmass(too cheap and not skilled enough for aspen) and I rode up the lift with this Mexican citizen. He looked European spoke perfect English. Says his family goes either to aspen or whistler ever year. Used to go to vail but he says that there are too many Mexicans there, wtf?

Anyways, I figure if he masses aren’t in the streets south of the border, 1% USA is still pretty safe.

 

[Closed as generating more heat than light.]

[HikingDO]

Troll post? If not, then stop watching CNN and MSNBC.

[ACN]

Per wikipedia, Mexico has 2% higher Gini Index compared to the USA (43 vs 41%).

 

Gini: Gini index, a quantified representation of a nation's Lorenz curve. A Gini index of 0% expresses perfect equality, while index of 100% expresses maximal inequality.

[burritos]

I get my news feed through yahoo and npr. No social media for me though.

[Peds]

Guilty from......

[Anne]

I don't understand this post.  Yes there are rich people in Mexico.  Ever hear of Carlos Slim?

Also don't know what "looked European" means.  He didn't have perfectly straight teeth?  His scarf was fashionably knotted around his neck?

[ENT Doc]

burritos wrote:

Been hearing a lot on the media and in the political arena how the top 1% is doing well while everywhere else is imploding. No one has insurance, everyone’s retirement account is closer to zero than to retirement ready, no one can afford a $400 emergency.

Click to expand...

These concepts are over-stated.  Any statistics you see about not having emergency funds or retirement savings leaves out the thing largely responsible for those two things - individual decision making.  As for wage growth, there's a narrative that real wage growth has been stagnant for decades.  This is also nonsense.  Real median household income is rising:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

while at the same time single motherhood has increased dramatically (less potential income per household) and household size has decreased:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/18/the-unbelievable-rise-of-single-motherhood-in-america-over-the-last-50-years/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bfdc616f7bfb

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/

The wage data also don't take into account the natural ebbs and flows of wages during one's lifecycle and the age of the workforce:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-27/u-s-wage-growth-is-higher-than-we-think-fed-researchers-say

This is why "think tanks" like Pew can come out with papers like this saying "wage growth is stagnant" and that most of it's being taken by the high income earners:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

But they leave out hours worked and total income, which is reflected in median household income statistics.  They also leave out the fact that people go through different income brackets as they age and aren't "trapped" per se into a given bracket.  Fairly common to start off in the lower quartile when you're young and go into the highest quartile as you age.  So it's not like the same people are being tracked over the years here.  They rightly point out that benefits have increased markedly while their real wage growth stat is stable (again, this is not true when expressed on yearly income), which is another sizable component of compensation.

Sadly, the boogeyman here is the greatest system we've ever known for lifting people into better quality of life (capitalism), and where the solution is a version of democracy that consists of two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, all built on lies and jealousy and not on individual liberty or personal accountability.

[MSooner]

Ha lift tickets at Aspen and Snowmass are exactly the same you know...

[Kamban]

MSooner wrote:

Ha lift tickets at Aspen and Snowmass are exactly the same you know…

Click to expand...

I learn something every day - that snowmass is an actual place and not a generic term for a mountain filled with mass of snow. Shows my total ignorance of winter sports.