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Comment by mseidl | Hacker News Reader

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mseidl·

America has a really high income inequality, they are 66th, they are literally up there with African countries.

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And the higher the inequality is (per Gini), the more immobility tends to occur:

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

* https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/business/wef-social-mobility-...

The average Portuguese has a much lower income than the average black American. The EU income inequality is much higher if you you don't look within countries but across countries. This actually makes the EU more unstable than the US. Poor countries keep threatening they will leave and rich countries feel that poor countries are dragging them down. You don't have this dynamic in the States.

You don't have this dynamic in the States.

You do, there is a huge disparity between coastal states and the rest of America. You can see that in the political map. This leads to problems like we saw last week.

Protests are nasty but there is no problem of secession like in the EU. Remember that Britain already left.

You could argue that is a useful safety valve (although I think it was a mistake on our part).

> The average Portuguese has a much lower income than the average black American.

Doubt this. Especially if you consider PPP and their monthly expenses/how much they can save by month.

Income inequality isn't the same as social mobility.

I think it's a much bigger problem but many people disagree with me on that.

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