It’s the median, but I shouldn’t call people “stupid”

The low standard of living in Europe hasn’t affected the demand for life any there and, at the same time, it’s worth pointing out Americans who die after accumulating a lot of stuff stay dead anyway.

Where does the EIU get its information? Its figures for US median household income are quite different from the Census Bureau. The Economist is reporting the US median to be $57,936.

Is there a convenient source for the various quintiles? A troll late in Maria’s French referendum thread was making some, uh, interesting comparisons about life at the low end of the respective scales…

John, come on. Your broader critique of Brooks is correct, but why would you use the EIU number for France but not the EIU number for the US? Let’s keep the apples and oranges separate.

So, the next obvious question…where does Australia fit into this picture?

The major difference between the U.S. and social-democracies is the support for non-market provision. Accordingly, comparisons founded on market-focused measurements, such as household income, gloss over economic welfare.

“It is happier to live in a poor country that is moving forward – where expectations are high – than it is to live in an affluent country that is looking back” – Brooks

What a clown. I expect he will be moving to India with Friedman any day now.

> That will teach me to be more careful.

Everyone makes mistakes, and correcting them quickly is what’s important.

But sneering and condescending headlines that call your opponent “Stupid” are a different issue.

So home ownership rates are lower, taxes are higher, the EIU has the US median income almost a third higher, starting new businesses is harder, economic mobility is lower, and protectionism is the word of day. Some “workers paradise”. I’m thinking if that’s the price of government provided health care and 35 hour weeks, I’m out.

Chris Baldwin,
We’re all justice types, just some of us are shortsighted and some of us aren’t.

Or rather some of us have little problem with injustice, provided our paychecks clear the bank.

Very clever bi, that the number of successful new startups is in no way connected to the overall health of an economy. Very clever indeed. With insight like that, I’ll jump right on your advice about my purchase priorities.

And to think here I was believing that the smaller a company the higher its incentives to become more efficient and productive.

But thanks for the comment, you kind of refuted yourself on that one.

I would pay money for a premium version of Crooked Timber, whose only feature was that it contained no comments by “jet”.

Economic mobility would be another extremely interesting study. Do the poor in the US remain so for long, what about in Europe?

The UK’s Sutton Trust recently published a study on economic mobility in eight developed nations. According to the report:

International comparisons indicate that intergenerational mobility in Britain is of
the same order of magnitude as in the US, but that these countries are substantially less mobile than Canada and the Nordic countries. Germany also looks to be more mobile than the UK and US, but a small sample size prevents us drawing a firm conclusion. Intergenerational mobility fell markedly over time in Britain, with there being less mobility for a cohort of people born in 1970 compared to a cohort born in 1958. No similar change is observed in the US.

If the report is accurate (I’m no expert, so won’t weigh in), it’s a pretty terrible indictment of both the UK and the US, at least as far as social mobility goes.

To pick up another of your points, Jet, I’m an economically middle class American who has lived and worked in both the US and the UK. I’m happier in the UK, but I know that

Did you notice the other curious Instapundit factoid that adjusted for cost of living, Nordics have lower disposable incomes per head that the Spanish and Portuguese? This is so peculiar that it should have led anyone with sense to question the methodology. (I have just moved to Spain and have a reasonable personal impression of the Spanish standard of living).

1. Nordics wil tend to have lower disposable incomes compared to Iberians partly because they pay much higher taxes, for much better public services (education, health, transport, environment,income security, etc. etc.). It’s absurd to leave out these services when comparing welfare internationally.

2. Brooks and his ilk use comparisons with western Europe – especially France and Germany – to make political points against Europe as a whole. But of course the idea that these two countries are the heart of Europe is less and less true, and the effect of the French “non” is to marginalise French influence even more. One reason for the “non” is precisely that there is now a majority of countries for liberal economic reforms, the Nordics, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Iberia, and Eastern Europe; all doing better economically. The Rconomist published a calculation last year that if you remove just Germany, the EU’s growth over recent years had matched that of the US.

Ack – my kingdom for a bit of preview action. Among other things, it prevents accidentally hitting the wrong key and posting prematurely.

Anyway, the Sutton Trust study is here: http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf

And here’s what I was trying to write when I accidentally posted:

To pick up another of your points, Jet, I’m an economically middle class American who has lived and worked in both the US and the UK. I’m happier in the UK, but I know that much of that is down to personal predilection; you sound like you’re much happier in the US. Luckily, we’re both where we want to be.

As a bit of a man in the middle, one thing I’ve noticed is that while some Europeans (I’m including Brits here) are instictively critical of the US, it’s actually extremely rare. What’s even more rare is for Europeans to go on about how Europe is a better place to live than the US, even when they really believe it is.

My countrymen back in the states, however, seem to have a very unfortunate habit of needing to bash the European quality of life at every turn, much as you’ve just done. I really don’t understand this aggressive defensiveness. What makes so many of my fellow Americans so thin skinned? You’d think that, as good as we have it, we wouldn’t be quite so defensive.

I don’t mean to pick on you in particular; indeed, what I’m talking about isn’t so much something I’ve seen in your posts just here as a kind of aggregate feeling from a year of reading posts on this issue.

Reuben,
Thanks for your interesting post. And just shooting from my personal take on why Americans tend to bash European economies is that there is obviously a debate in the US over how the economy should be modeled. One side of the debate holds up Europe as the example, thus the other side attacks Europe to disprove the example. I’d would presume that issues like social justice would preclude either side of the debate in Europe from ever holding up the US as an example ;)

Walt Pohl,
I’d be happy to give you a script that publishes CrookedTimber RSS feeds minus whomever you want ;)

John B,
What makes you think that absolute GDP and the number of startups are connected? I certainly never postulated such. Or perhaps you measure health in absolute GDP? So the French economy is healthier than Australia’s?

The big problem with Brooks is not that he doesn’t know his means from his medians; it is that he thinks he can draw sensible conclusions about the very complicated process of economic development just by pulling out a few summary statistics. If it was that easy, why would we need the likes of Amartya Sen? (But if we must rely on simple comparisons, I’m with Alison: life expectancy and infant mortality matter more than GDP.)

Plus, Brooks writes tripe like this: “Over the last few decades, American liberals have lauded the German model or the Swedish model or the European model. But these models are not flexible enough for the modern world. They encourage people to cling fiercely to entitlements their nation cannot afford.”

So Krugman’s essays, Why Germany Kant Kompete and Unmitigated Gauls are lauding the German and French models? And slow growth relative to China and India diminishes what Europeans can afford? This is what might be called the Red Queen fallacy: the notion that if others are going faster, we are going backwards.

One side of the debate holds up Europe as the example, thus the other side attacks Europe to disprove the example.

Maybe, the actual debate isn’t all so ridiculously simplistic, but some really love to pretend it is, so they can engage in the usual stereotypes and bragging competitions about the size of the gdp like it was, oh nevermind.

Usually, when people want to look for specific areas that can be improved, they do go and look at other places in which those areas work better, and how and if certain policies can be imitated or taken as example and integrated in another context that is different. What’s the point of arguing that living in the US is better than in Europe or viceversa as a whole? It depends on who you are, what you do, where you live, and yes, ultimately, even totally personal preferences. It also depends on specific aspects and areas of work, life, politics, social policies, laws, etc.; trying to draw an overall winner of biggest, best, coolest country (or union of countries) as if it was a contest is pointless. Amusing, but pointless.
Besides, Europe is just as diverse as the US in fact even more because it’s 25 countries, not one. At best, a comparison even on standards of living is more useful and interesting when made between smaller restricted areas, such as regions and states or even cities, for instance.

I’m not sure which number is more comparable to the EU figures, but 43,000 sounds about right for median household income in the US. $58,000 sounds about right for what the Census Bureau misleadingly calls “median family income.” Median family income excludes “non-families,” which is to say, single people.

And no, I don’t think that’s because people in these nations think the US or some other nation than their own is better; it’s as if they don’t think in terms of “X nations is the best”.

Reuben, if you think about it, that kind of discourse is very much present in Europe too, but perhaps more in respect to cultural aspects or leisure activities or sports, football, food, nightlife, etc. Or the climate, even… as if it was an achievement!
Seriously I don’t think it’s quite common for people from different EU countries to argue about the respective GDP or unemployment rate in a serious ‘we’re better than you’ fashion.
Even when comparisons are done between certain laws or policies, the “x nation is doign better than us *at this* so we should try and do like them in that respect” is more common and accepted as a neutral statement of fact (for instance, on issues like health policies). Whereas I get the impression that argument is not as popular on the other side of the pond. I don’t know if it’s for the reason you say, or perhaps even simply to do with the size of the country. And its military power, I guess. I think that inevitably influences perceptions even when the topic is nothing to do with military policies.

Anyway, for fans of national rankings, here’s the Mercer survey of quality of life and the UN development index.

Agree with ragout, every thing I’ve seen puts household income in the US in the mid 40’s.

58K is quite an outlier.

“Agree with ragout, every thing I’ve seen puts household income in the US in the mid 40’s.

58K is quite an outlier.”

Posted by luci phyrr

ISTR $43K US being used somewhere a few years ago (late 1990’s).

Does the fact that the U.S. is seemingly far more successful with its immigrants have anything to do with the fact that here they tend to be gainfully employed? And, through this employment, tend to interact with those outside their immigrant communities? Does these issues factor at all into your sense of social justice?

Is this based on anything tangible, slocum?

Personally, I think there is something extremely silly about comparing, say, the Netherlands or Sweden to the U.S. — or France or Germany – without a sense of the historic paths travelled by each country. The story of the latter half of the twentieth century seems to me to be composed of two things: the amazing growth of the U.S. from the late nineteenth century up to 1929 slowed down relative to the growth of European economies up to the eighties. That makes some sense — until Europe came out of the the (self inflicted) wounds of total combat, the U.S. growth was going to be increasingly in a vacuum. The other part was the unexpected slowing of European growth after the eighties. Now, I can’t imagine that France or the U.K. or any European country would catch up with the U.S., save by some catastrophe. And comparing the EU to the U.S. is to exaggerate the political unity of the EU.

But given those paths, the thing that stands out is that Europe and Japan have to solve the problem of keeping the fruits of opulence (obviously, the Europeans CAN afford their system more, now, than they could when it started, because they are much richer than when it started) while starting growth again. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the slowdown is during the same period during which the various liberalizing treaties that created the EU came into effect — in combination with the inflation scared policies of the central banks. Those were killers. The lesson the EU should learn from the U.S. is to use the state to create a much stronger consumer credit market. Inflation isn’t an automatic bogeyman — it can be an indicator of growth. The U.S. has sublimated its inflation into debt per household and the cost of social services, and made up for stagnation of single worker household incomes by turning women into the workforce. This has worked — although I’d bet that we are coming to the limit of its total usefulness. The lesson the Europeans shouldn’t learn is to create American style inequality. It won’t help the average European, any more than it helps the average worker in any of the LDCs that have tried the most radical free enterprise medicines.

…the US keeps its middle class just as well off or better than Europe while allowing more of its hard workers or lucky into the covetted realm of the upper class.

No, it doesn’t. The US is allowing fewer hard workers into the upper class, but those few supermen who do make it there (they actually belong to a different, better species) find themselves in a totally different realm.

>and both appear to be happy with their choices.

Ah, “revealed preference” again. Those guys in line for Powerball tickets must just be there for the camaraderie, as they would never give up their 49 weeks of work…

Uh, an antelope is happy with its choice to run away from the lion, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t rather the lion not be lurking at all.

The real middle class, not the 20-something childless libertarians over-represented on the ‘net and here by “jet” would like not to have to worry about affording health care and good primary and secondary education for their kids. We don’t mind working so much, but we do mind the gun at our head.

Thomas @ 34 — THANK YOU!! I always freaking wondered why every place I went in Yurp I seemed to meet the owners. I wrote it off as “touristy places” and was well aware that there were corps like Siemens that were so mind-bogglingly big that they probably have entries in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

Rueben, the term “defensive” is an oddity of the English language. People are really “offensive” in this sense. See, they know there is some hole in their “US uber alles” logic, but they don’t know where it is. So when you have a weakness in your line of defense, but don’t know where it is – you go on offense.

Then the second line of attack is always the conservatives who have to bash Europe to deflect the masses from their own discontent. You don’t have to look at *any* economic figures to see how the US economy is going – just watch the right wing. When a number of RW pundits suddenly seem concerned, for no discernable reason, with how Europe has structured itself, then you know they’re worried about the US masses.

It’s a distracting circus for the working class, and the Europeans are painted as the clowns.

You know bad things are coming – the lousy jobs report, the postponed Army recruitment report – when people who haven’t said boo about Europe for years are suddenly wanging away on their word processors.

I expect the next “objective” measure of economic wealth will be “number of citizens who are as rich as Bill Gates, never mind all the poor people around”. Or “number of people who are too fat to fly.” Or “amount of wealth owned by the President.” Etc. etc. etc.

does _anything_ of the textiel formatting work?

# I mean, is this
# a list?

“Chris, 2004 was the second biggest year for largest number of millionaires created since 1999. And 1999 was itself a record year.”

Posted by jet

Jet, PLEASE take a stat course.

I think have huge incentives for being smarter and harder working than the average bear are just plain common sense

Why?