Capitalism Rules, Socialism and Communism Suck Thread

[BananaStand]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve

Edit: Just to be sure you understand the significance and purpose of the link. What you posted is like really cool and impressive. The numbers you quoted just happen to be worse than in many other countries, such as the nordic countries which I used as an example.

Seems cloudy. It definitely doesn't show anything that compares to the numbers I posted in a way that would allow you to say that X country is Better/worse than the USA. Two totally different analyses.

The first murky thing I see, is that the Y axis shows "the likelihood that you inherit your parent's relative position of income level"

It doesn't show "the likelihood that you exceed your parent's relative position of income level", or "the likelihood that you achieve less than your parent's relative position of income level".

Second, the part about "rungs being farther apart" is HUGE. If everyone's relative income is clustered at a certain level, then it really doesn't take much to move up many percentiles. In other words, this chart could be telling me [hypothetical numbers] that 90% of Danish kids will achieve a relative income level that is 10 percentile higher than their parents, and that 65% of US kids will achieve a relative income level that is 30 percentile higher than their parents. Can you really tell me which is better?

It would be interesting if the they showed how large the increase/decrease is likely to be by country. 80% chance of a 20% increase, or a 60% chance of of a 50% increase. Which would you rather have poker players??

So I'm not convinced that this chart shows "superior" income mobility in Nordic countries. It just shows that it's more likely to occur. But we don't know by how much, or in which direction the mobility will take place. I kinda think that's important.

In the end though, the income-inequality drumbeat fails because you simply can't get around this fact...

In a healthy economy, investments grow faster than wages....so the rich will ALWAYS get richer.

Add to that the fact that most income inequality stats are bullshit to begin with because, as wuf pointed out, they tend to lump capital gains income along with labor income, and that really fucks things up. I'm pretty sure the Dow is crushing whatever Scandanavian exchanges exist out there. So I wonder what happens to the Gatsby Curve if we strip that part out of it??? Seems unfair to penalize the USA just because our companies are more innovative, efficient and profitable.