Doesn't comparing income <i>after tax</i> make it a bit of an apples and oranges comparison to begin with? Those taxes don't disappear. Those taxes buy services (national healthcare and free education comes to mind) that US middle class citizens would have to pay for with their net income. Would be interesting to see a quality of life comparison (if such a thing can be reliably quantified)
According to the graphs, the US middle class is actually still doing pretty good. I was expecting it to do a lot worse than that of many European countries, but there's only a few countries that have overtaken the US middle class, and then just barely.<p>Puts all those articles about the weak US middle class in perspective.<p>The real travesty is at the bottom. The worst 10% are actually doing worse now than 30 years ago. The few groups above that didn't benefit at all from the enormous economic growth of the past decades. The extreme growth of the wealthiest 10% is simply outrageous by comparison. But the middle class isn't doing quite as badly as I expected.
I think the article should have compared the US with the Australian middle class, as it would be more relatable to Americans. Australia has the lowest tax burden amongst developed countries, a fair, means-tested welfare system that targets those who actually need it, and a highly innovative, effective government that remains smaller than the US government. Australia strikes a good balance between capitalism and social welfare, IMO. Link to sources below[1].<p>And Americans, especially if they live in the northeast or California, pay very high income taxes, and get almost nothing in return compared to other developed nations. We have to pay high university tuition in cash, and don't get healthcare, either. So keep in mind while an American will use that after-tax income to pay back student loans and purchase expensive health insurance (self-employed, anyone?), the Australians and Europeans et al aren't.<p>[1] How Australia's Low Tax Egalitarianism Confounds the World : <a href="http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-magazine/2010-summer/26-4-10-david-alexander.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-magazine/2010-su...</a>
Comparing income after taxes doesn't seem very useful to me: In many countries, especially in Europe, things like health insurance, schooling and universities, pension and many more are "included" in the taxes you pay, so even if the available income in USD is lower, the effective purchasing power will probably be on par or even higher in my opinion.<p>Also, these income comparisons don't take into account that Europeans usually work much less than Americans: In Germany and France most employees only work 30-40 hours per week, and have usually at least 30 days of paid vacation per year.<p>I wonder if there are studies that try to take these things into account.
and why should it be the richest? anything special about it being "American"?<p>i would wager the the stats aren't the full truth. it lists german middle class below, which is hilarious - income alone doesn't mean shit in countries with top notch public infrastructure and well organised health care. that US middle class family needs to pay health insurance on top, if their kids want to go to college an ever increasing tuition, pretty likely need multiple cars to get anywhere and have less vacation time.<p>if more US citizens would travel their view on how much they're getting ripped off would change drastically. US immigrants from india, china, africa still get an improvement, but for northern Europeans, incl the Swiss, Austrians, moving here is a step down in a lot of factors.<p>"world's richest" - haha.
Wait until the divide between thee rich-middle/poor class becomes
so great we turn into Mexico; where the rich are kidnapped
while sipping coffee, and the police could care less.<p>The rich take so much for granted. By the way a lot of you tech guys are considered middle class now; but with the low barrier to entry of this world--I see a vast shift to the
poverty level in just a few years.
Canada's more liberal immigration policy, which is attracting educated and highly skilled immigrants, may have something to do with their doing so well. Over time the average education level and IQ of Canadians should end up higher than Americans.<p>Thankfully the US still attracts the very best immigrant entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk.
I see many comments pointing out that European nations spend more on public benefits like healthcare. This is demonstrably false. The US gov't spends more on healthcare - per taxpayer - than do European nations.<p>The US government is simply extremely inefficient and wasteful. But the money is spent.<p>Here's a chart. Note that in the US, public health spending accounts for 45% of total health spending:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_per_capita,_US_Dollars_PPP.png" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_health_expenditure_p...</a>
The gap between the US and the rest of the West is clearly (if you look at the charts) closing due to rapid catch-up growth from the others, not decline in the US.<p>Wouldn't it be kind of odd if the rest of the developed world did not catch up to US lifestyle standards with the spread of technology and capital?
It would be interesting to see these graphs for discretionary income, or at least income compared to cost of living. I moved to Europe and part of that means I no longer need to own a car, saving a good deal. I also find I spend less on energy and rent (but perhaps that's because I lived in very expensive places in the US before; the bay area and Santa Monica). I _feel_ much wealthier than I was before, but I wonder how much of that is due to lower overhead? Would the average person experience the same?
I think it would be better to break up the data into a per state comparison with Europe countries. I think of the states as vastly different from state to state. NY vs Florida for example.
How much of this can be explained by exchange rates, i.e. the falling US dollar vs other major world currencies in the last 10-15 years? Those plots are all in US dollars, so I would expect if all else is equal that non-US salaries would go up just from that.<p>I'm not an expert on this stuff, is the falling exchange rate in any way a symptom of the underlying issue, a cause, both, neither? Everytime I try to reason through exchange rates and the world economy I get a headache.
I had no idea that the bar for middle class was so low. Most of us here are nowhere near middle class status. Not that it matters, but before now I would've considered myself and most of us to be.
I think measuring income using the <i>median</i> income is too blunt.<p>So if the distribution for the US looks like this:<p>$10K, $20K, $30K, $50K, $100K<p>And another country looks like this:<p>$10K, $20K, $40K, $50K, $60K<p>We're going to say the US is "poorer"?
"Median per capita income was $18,700 in the United States in 2010 (which translates to about $75,000 for a family of four after taxes), up 20 percent since 1980 but virtually unchanged since 2000, after adjusting for inflation. "<p>This is incredible. Since 2000, there is no increase in median per capita income after adjusting for inflation ? Statistics like this bring in the 1% question at times and the comparison between the really rich and the rest of the population.
It's interesting that the graphs there exclude a few countries with higher GDP per capita than the US, such as Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore. I imagine the numbers for the US would look less favourable if such comparisons were made.
I'm not sure why being #1 is so important. Who cares where our position is in the ranks as long as we are happy with our state. If we aren't happy we can make improvements, but again it's not a race so how we compare to others doesn't really seem significant unless we are far behind. I suppose the real significance is the trends, but I guess that doesn't strike at the heart strings of the common person as losing at some newspaper editor's arbitrary rules for a game nobody knew we were playing.
I urge people to check out Sweden once in their lives, it's such an open and fair place in comparison to most countries in the world. Even though I'm reading a lot of anarcho-capitalist theory recently (yes, because I like Bitcoin) I still believe all of the liberals miss (or subconsciously omit?) some fundamental social truths which the Swedes seem to recognize pretty consciously.
The result here is pretty interesting, but the characterization ol of being about the middle class is wrong. Median income doesn't define middle class, middle class is generally defined as elite workers (professionals and executives) that are still primarily workers rather than capitalists. Median income workers are generally working-class, not middle class.
I'd love to see a comparison between the U.S. and all of Europe. In a way Greece and Spain are the European version of our lower income brackets. There's no real equivalent of our upper 1% in Europe but I think Americans would be complaining a lot less if the distribution at the bottom was fairer.
If this is truly the case, then we in technology must take much of the blame.<p>Over the past 30 years--even the past 15--automation of tasks which were once done by people in the lower-to-mid tiers of the middle class. Word processors have replaced secretarial pools. Robots have replace assembly line workers. Self-service web-sites have replaced data entry clerks. "On-line" (web, e-mail,etc) have replaced tellers, postal workers, etc.<p>I know I'm personally responsible (due to proposing and implementing automation projects) for replacing over 1500 people since 1995. Is this a good thing or a bad? I don't know. The Industrial Revolution killed off craftsmen, but created millions of other jobs. The question is, what will the Technology Revolution leave in its wake?<p>So before we start pontificating on taxes, social welfare programs, and ever increasing calls for "wealth distribution"--remember to look in the mirror and ask how many people's jobs have you eliminated today?
The graph/animation of inflation-adjusted after-tax income over time by percentile is one of the nicest data visualizations I've ever seen. Simple, pretty, descriptive.