Re: how to compare living standards


"Jim Blair" <jeb@xxxxxxxx> wrote

You talk as if there was only so much income
and if A gets more, that leaves less for the rest.


No, I talk as if there are only so many _quintiles_, and if 17% of the
population is permanently encamped in one of them, there's that much less
"mobility" left for the other 83%.


You think economics is a Zero Sum game?


No. Do you think that just because there is a fixed number of quintiles,
then I must be saying that _population_ remains constant? There -- now we
have _each_ asked a stupid question.


My guess is that most who leave the top quintile do so
by dying.

And if their replacements in that top quintile are
mostly their own children, that's just more evidence
of "income mobility", right?

It would be if their children started with a low income
and then moved up over the time period of measurement.


Yes, if. And not even then, necessarily. Two kids fresh out of school may
well both start off in the middle quintile, as new hires at the bottom of
some corporate ladder. What do you want to bet that the CEO's son is more
likely than the janitor's son to move into the top quintile eventually?


But that raises some interesting questions.
Would it be BAD if the children of the top
income quintile were to also occupy that quintile?
And would it be unexpected?


It _would_ be unexpected, if you have a naive view of "income mobility". I
don't, myself.


If you believe in bio-sociology (that behavior characteristics
are inherited as well as physical ones like eye color),
and that high incomes result from behaviors, then
it would be expected that the children would end up
where their parents did even in the absence of any other
help from them than the genes they received.


Wealth is more heritable than eye color or behavior patterns. Do you think
maybe _that_ figures into it somewhere?

-- TP


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Decline of the Middle Class
    ... > in income by quintiles during the postwar Golden Age in the ... > the staircase pattern we have now: ... > Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danziger, "Family Income ... > quintile of the quintile in which their family started. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: LVT dustup over at AngryBear
    ... >>instead looking at the causes of the inflation in the '70s. ... >>investment that caused the economic slowdown, ... it appears to me that real income for the lowest ... quintile has done just fine in the past few decades. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: NBC: Goldilocks Needs Tax-Reform, Not Populism; by Larry Kudlow
    ... the rich pay less taxes than the average ... Tax rates: Current vs Historical averages ... A new CBO report gives the effective federal tax rate by income group. ... Second quintile: 9.9 ...
    (rec.music.artists.springsteen)
  • Re: how to compare living standards
    ... And if their replacements in that top quintile are ... Sorry for the extra spaces in my last reply. ... a top 20% income they would not show up ... I see some irony in my Liberal friends objecting to the US wage gap but ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: how to compare living standards
    ... ever harder to make it into the top income quintile. ... necessarily increase income mobility. ... Wealth is more heritable than eye color or behavior patterns. ...
    (sci.econ)