NY Times Article, The Have's and Have's Not

[RikaKazak]

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...nots/?src=tptw

Brazil’s bottom ventile — that is, the poorest 5 percent of the Brazilian population, shown as the left-most point on the line — is about as poor as anyone in the entire world, registering a percentile in the single digits when compared to the income distribution worldwide. Meanwhile, Brazil also has some of the world’s richest, as you can see by how high up on the chart Brazil’s top ventile reaches. In other words, this one country covers a very broad span of income groups.

Now take a look at America.

Notice how the entire line for the United States resides in the top portion of the graph? That’s because the entire country is relatively rich. In fact, America’s bottom ventile is still richer than most of the world: That is, the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.

Now check out the line for India. India’s poorest ventile corresponds with the 4th poorest percentile worldwide. And its richest? The 68th percentile. Yes, that’s right: America’s poorest are, as a group, about as rich as India’s richest.

[Probability]

man, that's so crazy. no longer will the bum in front of the store get an auto dollar.

[mythrilfox]

like 10 years ago i remember watching this john stossel special on poverty in america, and he was interviewing people in line at the soup kitchen. and this one dude stossel asks why he's in line, and the guy's like "i got no job, i got no food, man. i need a helpin hand." stossel: "do you have cable tv?" guy looks at him like he just asked if he has a cock: "well of course man, i gots ta get mah cable on!"

yeah, we have it pretty well off. which is probably due in no small part to us stealing money from other countries year after year

[robbyd86]

It's also very expensive to live here though. Not taking away from this, obviously USA is probably the richest country. Just saying, you can live decently in other countries for a lot less.

[Probability]

lol at the soup kitchen cable guy.

[WhiskeyFish]

Originally Posted by mythrilfox

like 10 years ago i remember watching this john stossel special on poverty in america, and he was interviewing people in line at the soup kitchen. and this one dude stossel asks why he's in line, and the guy's like "i got no job, i got no food, man. i need a helpin hand." stossel: "do you have cable tv?" guy looks at him like he just asked if he has a cock: "well of course man, i gots ta get mah cable on!"

yeah, we have it pretty well off. which is probably due in no small part to us stealing money from other countries year after year

Reminds me of the last time I visited China. I was in some of the rural areas in the South. Lots of the houses were in awful shape, sometimes with one of the walls partially collapsed, but they still had their satellite dish.

[Laser Show]

There are certainly things from a graph like this that should offer Americans some newfound perspective (though I think there are better models for resource distribution than recently developed economies like China, Brazil, India for income distribution.

However, there is something intuitively WRONG w/ this claim:

Yes, that’s right: America’s poorest are, as a group, about as rich as India’s richest.

I'm not gonna do the googling or math on how that ends up being a wrong conclusion, but I would cold bet against it being a proper correlation. I would suspect it has something to do w/ multiplying something like 40M "poor" Americans at a poverty rate of 6-7k annually (which equals a huge amount of $s) and that being weighed against a small pool of rich Indians. However, there are Indian billionaires so it's kind of a ludicrous assessment.