And even looking at median income would still leave other things out -- like the much higher fraction of that household income which goes to medical expenses in the US than in, well... the entire EU for starters.
That's an average again. Also not sure what you mean by "No."
That data neither proves nor disproves what your parent comment said.
Additionally disposable income doesn't account for "optional" spending on healthcare etc. by the individual.
When you look at median disposable household income, the US still comes in somewhere at the top, but the top 15 countries all have about the same ballpark figure (~30k USD), with US being the only country among them that doesn't have unemployment benefits, affordable healthcare, etc.
Is there any particular point you're trying to make?
You keep responding to people with at best tangentially related data that is not relevant to the discussion.
Now suddenly we're looking at median gross income.
And this time I don't know at all how to respond to that in a manner that will somehow make it relevant to the discussion again.
Come now. Why would whether income is median or mean affect expenses?
My larger point is that, contrary to your and others' claims, income rankings that show the US at or near the top do not suddenly greatly change the US's position once healthcare expense is included. See mdorazio's comment elsewhere regarding median disposable income.
> My larger point is that, contrary to your and others' claims, income rankings that show the US at or near the top do not suddenly greatly change the US's position once healthcare expense is included.
Disposable income (except confusingly on some US tax forms) does not account for private healthcare expenses (the figure that is post other necessary expenses like health insurance is called discretionary income).
In countries where a huge chunk of insurance is private or people are paying out-of-pocket, subtracting such healthcare expenses from disposable income can drastically change the picture:
Your average American spent about $5000 of their disposable income on just private health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses in 2018[1]!
It's hard to reconcile averages with a median (I still refuse to use numbers that can be easily skewed by a handful of billionaires), but since healthcare costs should be more or less constant regardless of your income bracket, it would likely be a huge chunk of the median disposable income figure. Which was the point of the person you originally replied to.
>Where did you get the idea that the US doesn't have unemployment benefits?
I do not know why I wrote it that way, really. I am aware the US has some social security and unemployment benefits, but not much compared to many other rich western countries. It's pretty much at the bottom right next to Germany, which has a comically low (cash) benefits imho.
I realize those numbers may be skewed by stuff like:
- Food stamp programs (US)
- The state directly paying for apartments etc. in some cases (Germany)
- Whatever else infrastructure etc. you get to use for free as an unemployed person.
In any case "social security" is hard to quantify, and depending on how and who does it you'll see countries jumping all over the place in rankings. So I'm pretty much just going by what the general perception of social security is in various countries.