Comments on: Affluence grows, poverty shrinks

By: jimmythespiv

jimmythespiv — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:26:35 +0000

just proves economic growth eventually gets fed to everybody

By: jc

jc — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:52:53 +0000

He’s certainly a legend, isn’t he, Ragat?

Parkos shouldn’t leave people in suspense though. I’m sure Andrew would make an exception this time.

By: Rajat Sood

Rajat Sood — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:17:26 +0000

parkos, you’re hilarious and should turn your hand to writing fiction if you haven’t already.

By: parkos

parkos — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:23:38 +0000

Last week in booming Warsaw, where you can still get 6 cans of formaldehyde lager for a pound from a supermarket, I had one Swedish brunette on each arm, one a vegan model, the other a belly dancer. You can keep 90% of my paycheck and ban me from the US and its flabby waistlines for life if you like. It was a hot morning when we woke up.. I will leave it there given the comments policy..

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:17:28 +0000

Brendan -
Chacun a son gout. You couldn’t pay me enough to live in NY or (especially) Las Vegas.

Of course a sizeable increase in top incomes isn’t going to shift the Gini much - one of the mathematical properties of that measure is that it is pretty insensitive to movements at the extremes of the distribution. It’s one of a number of such properties that lead lots of income distribution specialists prefer other measures (the biggest one, though, is its lack of linearity and hence additive decomposability).

On the big picture, though, its hard to deny these are salad days for most Australians.

By: Brendan Halfweeg

Brendan Halfweeg — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:46:13 +0000

I was out drinking with a bunch of Swedes in London over the weekend. They actually though that paying £3.50 (AU$8) a pint is cheap. Poor bastards.
I feel sorry for all the America haters. How can you visit places like Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York and think anything but “F*^$ me, this is what humans were destined to live like, wow!”.

By: JC

JC — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:57:45 +0000

Brendan

They would choose the US in a flash and how could one blame them?

Imagine life in Sweden! Getting your pay check twice a month and seeing 62% lopped off the top. No wonder they have a high suicide rate! That would send the sane over the top. I would have choked down a few pills by now too with that sort of tax rate and having a 24 hour winter.

Want to suicide? Go work in Sweden in the winter.

By: Brendan Halfweeg

Brendan Halfweeg — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:26:27 +0000

The US has one immediate neighbour that is a developing neighbour, but much of the non-Hispanic immigrants come from South and East Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Getting to Stockholm from Bangalore would be just as easy as getting to Silicon Valley, but guess where the Indian migrants are going and the Nigerian taxi drivers?

People are choosing with their feet where they think they have the most opportunity, and it is places like th United States that is overwhelming the first choice destination for the world’s poor. Must suck for all the America haters that if you asked an Iraqi or an Afghani if there was any place they’d rather live, they’d probably still answer America.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:34:04 +0000

BG - There are datacubes on the ABS website that allow you to do more detailed analysis of where household types sit in the income distribution. Couples with kids are ‘over-represented’ in the middle three quintiles, and ‘under-represented’ in the bottom and top quintiles. Lone person households are under-represented in all quintiles except the bottom one, where they are massively over-represented. But that will be due in significant part to elderly widows and widowers.

By: backroom girl

backroom girl — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:09:34 +0000

Andrew - I agree about the group households, the main difference being that they have slightly fewer earners on average (1.7 compared with 1.9 for the couples), and possibly more part-time workers.

The numbers I was quoting are of course for the ‘average’ family in each type, so it doesn’t really tell you anything about the ones who are doing it tough. But I can’t help thinking that it is the number of earners that is the key in many ways, as well as the intensity of employment (ie full-time or part-time).