freedquaker said:
I actually did not forget to mention that. The US has of course many advantages, not everything is worse, many pros and cons. As you point out, many goods and services in US are way cheaper. However, you cannot just argue the quality of life with cheaper iphones, groceries and gas. There are many more vital things, which easily drag people to poverty. What's more expensive or worse in US? Healthcare, pre-college education, insurance, transportation, safety, freedom etc. The US lags most of the development in all of these. What is also even more important is that even US is still better than half of the OECD in many aspects, things are GETTING WORSE, at least relatively. I am healthcare economist, so let's give an example about it. Life Expectancy at birth... Year 2000 : US : 76.7 years, OECD : 77.1 Year 2011 : US : 78.7 years, OECD : 80.1
Now we are talking about the OECD AVERAGE, not the best of OECD, so it includes the likes of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. The US was worse than this average, and the gap got bigger in 11 years; this is with 3 times the expenditure per person.
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The point is that even though income inequality increased, so did the income mobility. When one considers the large racial and ethnic component involved in these income distributions, it makes sense that the diversity found in the U.S versus other countries will affect the statistics. Especially when you realize that the income mobility in similarly diverse countries, such as the UK is lower than in the U.S. Additonally there are more gains to be made in other countries than there are in the U.S, which was already ahead for so long and had to reach a point of lower increases in income.
Again you are comparing apples to oranges. The U.S is a much more diverse country than most European ones. Higher crime rates for example, tend to be isolated to large cities and the southern states where this diversity is more pronounced. The same is true for life-expectancy, and income inequality in general. If, we were to say compare the income inequality in each state, rather than among them, then it would more closely compare to European inequalities. It makes very little sense to compare the income of a person in New Hampshire to that of a person in Mississippi, because the costs of living are quite large. Furthermore, in a country of 315 million you are going to have many billionaires just because the population is so large. I buy groceries, pay rent, etc daily. I go to the doctors once in every three to four years. I think I would rather cheaper daily living expenses than health-care.
So I want to bring up the point that it is more important to look at marginal changes within the context of the U.S rather than to compare it with countries that are quite homogenous in their population distributions, in all ways. There has been more mobility in the U.S between 1990 and 2010 than between 1970 and 1990. There has also been declining crime rates since the 80's.
Also that comparison with life expectancy tells me that other countries have been making progress (particularly the lower end ones that you mentioned) more than anything else. It makes sense when you just build infrastructure. The U.S is an unhealthy country by habits. It is quite telling that despite being overweight at the prevelance that we are, we are able to keep up within +/- 2 years of the OECD average.
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