Erm.

Societal well-being tends to be high in countries with with income.

High income strongly implies available spend for education and research.

Is this chart significantly different from just plotting wealth levels?

>You can’t be serious, that you think that the US has more differences than a whole continent made out of twice as many people living in 50 countries

You keep saying "countries" like it matters, like it's different to a "state" in any way other than legal. In the US states have their own laws, and are part of the federal US which has overbearing laws. In the EU, countries have their own laws and are part of the federal EU, which has overbearing laws.

Take this as an example - the Scandinavian countries are Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The West Coast states are California, Seattle and Oregon.

I'll tell you now that there is MASSIVELY more cultural diversity in those three US states than there is in the Scandinavian countries.

The differences between California and Mississipi, for example, are very large, just like the differences between France and Bulgaria.

You seem to be assuming that Europe has far more differences than the US, but you don't seem to state why. They all (well, most) have different languages, sure - but CULTURALLY they are very close together. And from a legal point of view and from a tax point of view, there is a LOT of congruence in Europe that does not exist in the US.

>I don’t even know why all people from the US really want to believe that their state is sooo different from the others

California -> Mississipi is truly, unbelievable different. California is about as good as it gets in the modern world, Mississipi is pretty much third world.

>the US, and it’s all more or less the same, the difference are minimal against differences between whole countries.

I'm sorry, I just can't agree with this. I've lived in the UK, the US, France and spent time working in Eastern Europe. Financially, culturally, legally there is a lot of uniformity across the EU.

I wouldn't want to say which (EU or US) has more disparity - but once you ignore language, those differences are very comparable.

>Didn't you guys get snow, too? That was insane

*Is insane.

I'm currently chatting to my buddy via text near Lake Arrowhead. They're under 8 feet of snow, the local grocery store just collapsed (not that anyone can get to it right now).

Was saying I hope they've stocked up, but he's a hunter and keeps sheep, his response was that they have enough meat for the neighbourhood for a week, longer if they're willing to let some sheep go early!

>But the EU obviously isn’t nearly as intertwined as the US

It is nearly as intertwined as the US and, since the addition of more recent states, has a similar level of income inequality across constituent states.

The US is FAR more like the US than it is unlike it.

>it would take decades or maybe even centuries to close the big cap between the rich and poor countries.

... a lot like the gaps between US states, today?

>The idea of one big european country is so young, that it simply doesn’t make sense to group the countries all together into one stat

Just like it doesn't make sense to group the US states together into one stat. The differences are of similar magnitudes.

In fact, the US states rights means that there are generally far MORE differences between US states than there are between EU countries. Take abortion as one example. There are many more.

>But the US has been a country for centuries, the regional differences aren’t as big

Disagree, the regional differences are VERY similar since the introduction of Eastern European states.

Before that, the US was actually MORE disparate and had more differences than Europe!

>The EU isn’t a country.

Having lived in the EU and the US, they are more alike than you might think.

Comparing the US as a whole to individual EU states is a joke. Comparing EU states to US states makes far more sense when you consider demographics.

It does, though, make it much harder to use statistics to mislead people, which is why people like to compare the way they do.

>Hi, things in california are very expensive compared to the US average. Goodbye

Yes, I live in California.

That doesn't take anything away from the fact that representing the US as one data point, while splitting out the European Union into many is somewhat disingenuous.

Indeed, it's already $15.50 in California.

The minimum wage in California - in the US - is $15.50 per hour.

This puts it at the top of this chart. Using the US as a single, averaged value hides a huge amount of information and context.

>It is a problem because there is no middle class housing.

Middle Class in a city in San Francisco simply has different income requirements to other cities. All cities are different.

>These laws and similar start with the assumption that the poor will always be poor and that no change is ever possible in someone’s life

The laws have nothing to do with changing circumstances, they simply force everyone else to subsidise people who don't earn a lot of money.

>When you install policies like this, you pull rungs from the ladder.

I agree, I don't like affordable housing policies because they've fucked me over for most of my life. I've been renting, and paying out of the ass to rent, because the properties I'm renting are in the band that's subsidising affordable housing.

I'm 44 and don't own a house. A friend of mine bought an affordable unit in a neighbourhood I lived in over 15 years ago. He's got his house bought and paid for, completely paid off, yet I don't own one despite subsidizing him with both my taxes and increased rent.

I notice you edited your post to remove the Denver reference.

80% of median is not upper middle class income in the area that this article is about. It sounds like a lot of money, but it is not in those areas. Not all areas are alike. Upper middle class income would be 200k or more.

Well, yes. And "low income" in Denver is "Arms dealer megawealthy" in Somalia, but that's not relevant at all because... wait for it... Denver isn't Somalia

>The non-low income units will all be “luxury” priced to make up for the low rents/sales for the low-income units.

Thats the entire point. The wealthier people will be subsidising the lower income units. That's literally the intention of the law, not a problem to be complained about.

You've posted this comment twice, but they are your only two comments in the thread. Furthermore "below" depends on what order someone is viewing the posts in. Try linking your comment.

>Dozens of countries have done it

Sure, but the people in the US aren't going to let it happen, so it's neither simple nor cheap.

>This is really interesting. I can see why the Super Bowl would be a spike, but the Monday after seems strange. If anything, I'd expect it to be even lower than an average Monday, because so many people just went out the night before?

You're assuming that people who went out the night before stopped partying to go to sleep. There are going to be a ton of people who party through Superbowl, get on the marching powder, and just carry on the next day. And all the people who choose to travel and make long weekends out of it.

>TIL... Also inappropriate that they are asking you that

I mean, I didn't ask it, but it's pretty relevant if you're talking about reasons why earnings might increase.

Those countries impacted are free to choose not to do business with the EU and yet... still... they do. It's almost like it's beneficial for them.

>I think by now we all agree that... society ... should resort to a wealth distribution instrument such as universal basic income

No, while I support it, it's a fairly minority view. We already have pretty huge wealthy redistribution going on, but I would agree a little more may be needed. Many people don't, though.

>People prefer to pour millions into state resources for companies, banks, or financial institutions bailouts, rather than implementing any type of social assistance plan for the common people.

Western society runs quite the gamut of political and economic positions, but all are basically well-or-weakly regulated free market capitalist economies. They all have pretty significant social assistance plans for most people.

>That's why I envision a scenario where resources are poured into the private sector, and companies are the ones who have a large number of employees on their payroll. Paying them just for being on their payroll. A kind of private UBI.

I'd love a pill or two of whatever you've been taking.

Human beings respond to incentives - your system won't work because you have created a system with incentives counter to what you wish the outcome to be. You've suggested providing funds to the private sector, and having them distribute money to people for nothing in return You're incentivizing the private sector to NOT have many employees on their payroll (because if they have fewer employees, they make more profit), whereas what you desire is more people on their payroll.

Lots of people talking about heating up spoons, that will work but can accidentally be quite painful - you can just blast the area with a hairdryer for a few minutes.

>We're going to have to shrink our car infrastructure, build denser cities, and construct serious public transportation to serve the core, not stroad-based big box stores and low density suburbs.

I would have agreed with you a few decades ago, but with the advent of all-electric self driving cars, many of the negatives associated with high levels of driving will not be of concern anymore. Being driven is more relaxing, less susceptible to whether, more productive (you can take calls, work or read while on the move) and more private.

America's poor choices for the latter part of last century and the early part of this century are about to be partially undone. There will still be heat islands and lack of biodiversity because of the larger amounts of concrete, but over time that can be reduced as cars don't need to park (like a taxi, they just move to the next job) and fewer lanes will be needed (because the cars themselves can safely travel more quickly, and in more dense road-trains)

That's smart thinking - when it floods every month at high tide, the bicycles can be dried off and ridden away, whereas cars would be ruined.

>so basically this is proof that the tax has done nothing other than convince companies to reduce soda sugar I guess

That was the intention of the tax... to reduce sugar in soda.

I heard that if we don't stop using paper towels to trap beard shavings, we might run out by March!

>Quibbling here

I love a good pedant.

Should have been "Accurately describe and model gravity's effects"

>If we don't start recycling that poop to fertilize crops, or learn how to cost-effectively extract P from seawater, we have at best a few centuries of global populations that number in the billions.

A few centuries? Like... four?

Technology marches on, progress gets ever faster. We're advancing our capabilities so much more rapidly today than we did in 1623.

Here were some things people didn't know, or didn't know how to do in 1623:

• Explain gravity
• Measure temperature or air pressure
• Pendulum clocks
• Design or build an engine
• Measure latitude with a sextant
• Fly in a hot air balloon. Or plane.
• Take photographs
• Make propellors

That gets us about halfway to the present.

Now, think of everything invented since then.

And consider progress is increasing.

Being worried about any problems that will occur multiple centuries from now (and are not growing/lagging issues like climate change) is literally crazy.

Will they work out how to cost-effectively harvest phosphorous from human poop before 2450? Yes. And if by some miracle they have not, they'll do it expensively.