Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Real, fair income comparison

One of my biggest beefs about income and income inequality comparisons between the United States and other countries is they compare apples and oranges. For example, comparing Swedish income distribution to the US ignores the fact that 95% of those in Sweden are ethnic Swedes that were born and raised in that culture speaking Swedish. It stands to reason that Sweden would have a flatter income distribution than a country filled with the detrius from every nation in the world. The only way to honestly compare the productivity and 'fairness' of the US to Sweden is to look at how well those of Swedish descent do in the US vs. in Sweden. Here's the first good data on that that I've seen from Super Economy.

The median is 42% higher for the Americans compared to the Swedes. Overall, the middle 60% of the population earn 46% more in the American Super-Economy versus welfare state Sweden.

Now compare this to the new "poverty measure" being proposed by the Obama Administration - 'relative' rather than 'absolute' poverty will be measured. Robert Rector has the tale.

After reading Super Economy above and Rector, why would anyone pursue the class warfare stupidity that the Obama administration proposes. I mean if they want more peace and prosperity that is?

Note: there is one other way to compare: look at the fate of a given ethnic group immigrating to each country. For example Minneapolis and Sweden both have lots of Somali immigrants (and coincidentally both places are swarming with people of Scandianavian descent). Guess which country the Somali immigrants do better in? Guess which country they achieve 'income equality' faster in?

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:35 PM

    "Guess which country they achieve 'income equality' faster in?"

    Neither.

    ReplyDelete