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Comment by cwbuilds | Hacker News Reader

Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account:

US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).

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Citation? Median earnings is less than that. And median household income is only marginally more.

the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $51,370; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $63,360.

According to the CPS, the median household income was $70,784 in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

That's income, not disposable income. It's also median, instead of mean. It's also wrong. Median income in the UK is £39,039 which is about $49,500.. You linked to the US Wikipedia page twice.

OECD is the source for disposable income.

US: https://oecd-better-life-index.truth-and-beauty.net/countrie...

UK: https://oecd-better-life-index.truth-and-beauty.net/countrie...

Yeah, OECD is saying the mean disposable income is the US is almost the same as median household income.

Either some of the numbers are wrong, or your (OECD’s) use of mean is misleading… the mean of Bezos’ and my disposable incomes is a very large and mostly useless figure.

Mean personal disposable income being comparable to median household income isn't too surprising and doesn't necessarily indicate any error. Mean is much higher than median, individual is much lower than household, disposable is much lower than total. You are comparing numbers that are different in all three axes (in ways which do not point in the same direction), so really any relationship between them would be plausible without detailed knowledge of the exact distribution of all the relevant components.

They're completely different metrics. If you want to compare median income:

UK - $49,500 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...)

US - $83,750 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N)

I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to prove other than that you don't understand statistics.

Point is the median person earns about the same as the mean disposable income. So the mean disposable income isn’t telling us too much about the quality of life, or financial state, of a typical American. From what I’m seeing, it’s just reflective of our increasing income disparity.

Taken to an absurd degree… the mean of my income and Jeff Bezos’ income tells is nothing about my income beyond “much less than Jeff”.

Okay, well the ratio of mean disposable income for the US to the UK is 1.59:1, while the ratio of median income is 1.69:1

So your preferred metric for quality of life actually shows a greater disparity between the two countries..

The UK is still better a lot of ways but there's a reason it's called "the America of Europe"

Depends who you are. 16% of the UK is in absolute poverty (20% if you account for housing costs), while only 10% are in absolute poverty in the US.

I'd rather be an American on an average salary paying for healthcare than in the UK on a much lower average salary. Property costs/rents are much higher and our public services like healthcare are crumbling (my dad nearly died in a hospital corridor because there were no beds left).

I know that last bit is anecdotal, but it's a country-wide problem.

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