[pembrook]

America blows past the rest of the developed world on disposable income per capita and it’s not even close: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...

And before someone chimes in “that’s because of the billionaires throwing off the average!” Look at the median disposable income chart. America is still at the top.

The median American is far wealthier than the median European person, even after accounting for things Americans normally complain about like healthcare, education costs, and retirement contributions.

This results in some crazy stats, like the fact the median Mississippi resident has more disposable income than the average UK resident (and that includes financial hub London). And again, this is AFTER accounting for healthcare, education, etc costs.

[jltsiren]

The median income on that page is the median disposable household income, divided by the square root of household size. Because American households are large for developed countries, measures like that overestimate the income of the median American relative to the median European.

There is an easy sanity check: Swiss GDP per capita is higher than in the US, both in absolute terms and in PPP terms. Their Gini coefficient is lower, meaning that the income distribution is more equal than in the US. If a comparison shows that the average/median disposable income is substantially higher in the US than in Switzerland, it is measuring something weird.

[pembrook]

I think you may have that backwards, if trying to disentangle the individual from the household, a larger household would make the median income per person lower not larger.

Also, I’d imagine Swiss housing costs could easily account for the difference in disposable income.

I’m totally open to the idea the economists at the OECD are dumb and put out bad numbers, but I’d argue GDP per capita (GDP being a flawed measure to begin with due to only including consumption incl. government spending) is a far worse measure of on the ground reality than something that accounts for actual household income and expenses.

[jltsiren]

Housing costs are paid from disposable income under the OECD definitions.

Larger households lead to larger reported incomes, because the total household income is divided by the square root of household size. If income is $50k/person and household size is 2, the reported income is $71k/person. If household size increases to 3, reported income increases to $87k/person.

On the average, Americans move out of their parents' home in their mid-20s. Swiss people typically do it a couple of years earlier. When people in their 20s live with their parents, it often indicates the lack of affordable housing. But if you combine this with normalizing household incomes by dividing by the square root of household size, higher housing costs lead to higher reported disposable incomes.

International comparisons are difficult, because pretty much every way to do them is wrong in some sense. But in general, it's better to collect data that is consistently wrong in the same way than to try to correct the issues you encounter. If your data is consistently wrong, you can at least make reasonable comparisons between a country today and the same country 10 or 20 years ago.

Subsidized services such as education and healthcare are tricky. You could try to calculate the subsidies based on the actual costs of providing the services, or as the difference between the nominal price and the subsidized price. These can lead to very different amounts, and it's not always possible to use the same approach with every service.

If the degree of subsidies varies between countries, you could try to normalize the situation by either adding the subsidies to disposable incomes or subtracting the costs the individual has to pay. In a country where the services are more expensive to produce (and maybe also less efficient), the former leads to higher and the latter lower disposable incomes relative to other countries.

Retirement contributions are another tricky question. Voluntary savings are often included in disposable income, while mandatory pension contributions often count as taxes. But you can't always tell the difference between voluntary retirement savings and other savings. But if you then count retirement income based on voluntary contributions as disposable income, you have to be careful to avoid counting the same income twice.

[klipt]

> larger household would make the median income per person lower not larger.

Depends whether the household is larger due to children, or due to more adults, no?

That is, if a bunch of single adults pair up into households, income divided by household size will go up.

[jorvi]

> When taxes and mandatory contributions are subtracted from household income, the result is called net or disposable household income

I don’t understand why Americans always have such a fetish about bragging about their disposable income. Once you allocate for payments into the welfare state, the difference becomes a lot smaller.

And that’s not even mentioning the stark difference in quality of life, beyond “quality of life” graphs. Those graphs don’t account for having to wait 25+ minutes for the store to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case. Or for mass tent camps in cities. Or Mmss drug deaths. Uncertainty of potable water. Access to and education on safe sex, abortion, etc. Walkability of cities.

Whenever I meet Americans traveling Europe, they virtually always rave about how much better life seems over here.

[bpt3]

Maybe we bring it up because non-Americans (and low income Americans with a lot of free time, i.e. young people) do nothing but describe America as a hellscape online, and it's hard data that demonstrates the benefit of our economic system instead of just debating about a wildly inaccurate caricature.

You don't probably meet many Americans raving about the quality of life in rural Romania, and they may not be so enthralled with the European lifestyle once they saw their paycheck and the living situation it would provide.

[jorvi]

> and it's hard data that demonstrates the benefit of our economic system instead of just debating about a wildly inaccurate caricature.

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/11/retail-theft-cvs-walgreens-...

Literally locking up $9 worth of fruit juice.

As far as non-walkability goes, just watch the top three videos of the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes: https://youtube.com/@notjustbikes

As far as tent camps / drug streets go, I can post videos from San Francisco, Philadelphia, LA, Oakwood, etc. but you’ll bring up it’s “only a Pacific problem”, despite Californian (together with New England) cities often being brought up as the examples for well done cities that compare well to “European”-style cities.

So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

[aidenn0]

The article you link is hardly a slam dunk; it contains, for example, this:

> Yes, but: There is some debate about how deep the problem is and if retailers are using theft as a scapegoat for other challenges.

Things being locked up are very regional. Long Beach: seems like 50% of all things are locked up. Santa Barbara: hardly anything locked up.

[jorvi]

It just blows my mind that anything below, say, $75 is locked up at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen food items locked up in Europe, aside from genuine Parmesan, Iberico or expensive alcohol, and even then not consistently. Usually even the lower priced non-food stuff (think a $50 space heater) isn’t locked up.

Don’t get me wrong, we have smash and dash thieves here too, but usually they go for jewelry stores, fashion stores or Apple / electronic stores.

[aidenn0]

Thieves go for things that are easy to fence. For a while Tide-brand laundry detergent was famously easy to fence in some cities[1], so places had to lock up Tide.

[edit]

Teenagers who shoplift also go for things that are embarrassing or illegal for them to buy (condoms and alcohol respectively). So those are likely to be locked up as well.

1: My understanding is that drug-dealers &c. would accept payment in Tide and then sell that to organized crime, that would wholesale it to mom+pop corner stores.

[lotsoweiners]

I’ve lived my entire life in America (over 40 years) and I’ve never seen any food item “locked up”. I think that would be an indication that you are in a shitty area. Similar to the pictures I’ve seen of Burger King employees working behind bulletproof glass.

[Dalewyn]

>So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

You're flaunting your ignorance (or naivety) of America for all to see, though.

Most stores, even in internet-stereotype "hellscapes" like San Francisco, don't lock up bottles of fruit juice among other sundries. Anyone who actually lives here would know that, like me.

>As far as tent camps / drug streets go

Only a problem in the real megalopolises like the cities you just named. The vast majority of cities (and there are countless many in this literally vast country) are generally fine (some level of crime and homelessness will always exist as a matter of nature). Again, anyone living here would know that.

Internet memes are fun, but if you're going to passionately argue about something you would be wise to actually do your homework first.

[bpt3]

> Literally locking up $9 worth of fruit juice.

Yes, in a high crime area. It's article-worthy because it's an anomaly. The only thing locked up in stores in my area is drugs.

> As far as non-walkability goes, just watch the top three videos of the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes: https://youtube.com/@notjustbikes

lol ok, am I supposed to take this as an unbiased source?

> As far as tent camps / drug streets go, I can post videos from San Francisco, Philadelphia, LA, Oakwood, etc. but you’ll bring up it’s “only a Pacific problem”, despite Californian (together with New England) cities often being brought up as the examples for well done cities that compare well to “European”-style cities.

See above. You continue to cherry pick examples that no one is denying exist and pretend they are ubiquitous.

Maybe I should go take some videos of homeless in central London or Paris and claim that's representative of the entire EU?

> So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

Thanks for proving my point.

[jghn]

> do nothing but describe America as a hellscape online

To be fair, the largest news network in the US spends a lot of time doing the exact same thing

[aidenn0]

> You don't probably meet many Americans raving about the quality of life in rural Romania

Actually you probably do, but such raving is about as valuable as residents of NYC raving about the quality of life in upstate New York -- it's a case of stated preferences vs. revealed preferences.

[otikik]

It's the gofundmes of people with cancer that paints the negative picture to me, not the young americans.

[jncfhnb]

I’m googling at it seems that this locked up steak thing is coming from a single Walmart in Florida

Fear not, Europe has isolated incidents too

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tesco-locking-steaks-a...

[nightski]

I mean I live in America and I have never experienced a store needing to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case, seen a mass tent camp, or lived near many drug deaths. Our water is top quality, I took sex ed in high school (back in late 90s/early 2000s), and my wife and I walk or bike almost every day in our neighborhood. We don't live anywhere rich or fancy either, quite the opposite. Just a normal city of around 200,000 people in a lower population state.

[jorvi]

Could you name a similar-sized city that has the same qualities as yours?*

I’d love to learn, because I’ve mostly gotten the impression that the smaller an American city is, paradoxically the less walkable/bikable it gets due to lack of public transit, sidewalks, bike lanes etc.

*or your own city, but I understand the hesitation on geolocating yourself

[nightski]

I never said it was walkable per se, in the sense that is commonly used to mean everything you need in life is a few blocks away :) I'm not sure the large appeal with that anyways.

I work from home so no commute, but my wife does drive to work. However the grocery stores are less than a mile away and her work is a 5 minute drive (the nice thing about small cities / towns is that if you have to drive, it usually isn't very far).

That said, we do indeed walk or bike almost every day for exercise and to get outside. Myself I only use the car once or twice a week really when we go to stores or out to eat. But even if I lived in a "walkable" city I'd probably do that anyways because we'd want to try something new.

[GiorgioG]

Hey feel free to stay in Europe, seriously we don’t care what you think of the way we live. If Europe was so awesome my parents would have stayed there, but thankfully they moved here for a more prosperous future for their kids.

[jorvi]

> my parents would have stayed there, but thankfully they moved here for a more prosperous future for their kids.

Social mobility in the US has dropped from 90% to 50%, so good luck with the coin flip.

[GiorgioG]

You keep making statements from things you've read online about the US, but you've never lived here as far as I can tell. I've lived in Europe, and it's not for me. The difference is I'm not shitting on Europe. In my firsthand experience, some (not all) Europeans have a superiority complex towards the US. To those and you, get over yourselves.

[bdangubic]

“europe” is not awesome. case in point - whatever shithole your parents lived at forced to leave and come to US of all places :)

but many _parts_ of europe are really, really nice :)

[GiorgioG]

You know, it's possible for both Europe and the US to be really, really nice - to different people. But some people need to feel superior. I have lived in both places, and I prefer the US.

[autoexec]

It doesn't matter how many sunny stats people throw around the reality is visible on the ground. Homelessness has soared over the last 10 years and is at record breaking highs. Utility disconnections for non-payment have gone up significantly in the last decade as well. Even clean healthy tap water is unavailable to hundreds of millions of Americans and that's only counting the heavy metals, not PFAS.

People are struggling in ways their parents and grandparents never had to, and they often feel they are unable to obtain the same standard of living. Healthcare spending has gone way up too as prices keep going up at a rate above inflation and more people having been getting sicker.

There's a very real reason for the disconnect between the "soaring economy" and how the majority are feeling about it.

[lovich]

>hundreds of millions of Americans

Given that only two hundred million Americans would be more than half, I’d need to see some data that the majority of the US doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.

Are there parts that don’t or even a disturbingly high percentage, I could believe, but the majority of Americans not having clean drinking water is a high claim

[autoexec]

Here's one: https://abcnews.go.com/US/tap-water-millions-americans-erin-...

For lead alone there's a lot of variation in how many homes are impacted. The white house recently said 10 million are connected to lead service lines (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...)

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Once you allocate for payments into the welfare state, the difference becomes a lot smaller.

Yep, I think this stat adjusts for welfare payments: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=t...

>And that’s not even mentioning the stark difference in quality of life, beyond “quality of life” graphs. Those graphs don’t account for having to wait 25+ minutes for the store to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case. Or for mass tent camps in cities. Or Mmss drug deaths. Uncertainty of potable water. Access to and education on safe sex, abortion, etc. Walkability of cities.

As an American in an unremarkable medium-sized city, this sounds like a caricature based on unrepresentative viral anecdotes.

* I've never had to wait long for something to be unlocked. Most things are not locked. Maybe a bit more stuff is locked up post-BLM.

* I can't recall ever seeing a tent camp in my current city. I can't recall ever seeing more than, say, 10 homeless tents in the same place. Big camps probably exist somewhere, but not where I see them.

* I don't know anyone addicted to drugs, but that probably says more about my social network than anything.

* I've never lived somewhere without potable water. If you offered me $1000 to find you some non-potable tap water, I wouldn't know where to go. Flint maybe? Googling suggests that Flint's water was fixed years ago. EDIT: I did find this map; my guess would be that a violation is not equivalent to the water being 'non-potable': https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data-portal/physical/map?age=0...

* Was taught about safe sex as a teen.

* In my 30s, I still have no driver's license (should really get one some time). Walkability is acceptable, could be better depending on the area.

>Whenever I meet Americans traveling Europe, they virtually always rave about how much better life seems over here.

There might be a selection effect, where Americans traveling in Europe tend to be dissatisfied. Europe did not seem notably better when I visited, but my visit was not extensive.

[pembrook]

OECD disposable income per capita numbers already account for the benefits of the European welfare state vs. self funded ones in the US.

[jorvi]

> over the dominant anecdotal narrative

> updating priors is hard

[Upthread commenter edited his comment removing some stuff]

It’s trivial to find complaints on the epidemic of security cases in American stores, and especially the fact that there’s not enough personnel in stores leading to long waiting times.

In a similar vein, are you really going to claim with a straight face that America isn’t extremely car-centric anymore?

> As someone who actually moved there, I can tell you the numbers are also anecdotally felt on the ground if you go outside of wealthy tourist capitals.

Then you should travel more. I got these remarks even in smaller Croatian towns. I live in The Netherlands myself, and I’ve heard similar things said in mid-sized cities in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Gdansk, Poland, Denmark, Sweden Bulgaria, hell even in Italy in a place like Naples.

And if you’re gonna claim that wasn’t small town / countryside enough, do you really think quality of life is going to be higher in a hick town in Mississippi rather than a countryside town in Portugal?

Not to mention the sliver of vacation days Americans have.

Money isn’t life.

[lotsoweiners]

> Not to mention the sliver of vacation days Americans have.

You are generalizing here for sure. I get almost 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick, 11 holidays, and occasional personal and administrative leave. These also roll over. The people making 45k at my job get the same leave as the hire paid people.

[insane_dreamer]

That's because there's much more that Americans have to pay out of their disposable income, especially college (their own debt or their kids), and medical care.