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Comment by unprepare | Hacker News Reader

1. the article you linked says they have an average income of 10k, not median.

2. they have significantly lower cost of living

3. fta:

>in both China and the U.S., the average family’s assets were about eight times its average income.

4. seems this was a study of 2000 urban chinese, not all chinese. a sample of 2000 urbanites probably doesnt scale to over a billion people....

5. china has undergone several decades of large economic growth. if you compared china today with theUS in the late 1950s theyd probably seem pretty similar...

6. only 12% of chinese (from the 2000 person sample) owned a car

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1) In higher inequality countries (which includes China) the median is usually lower than the average. So that only makes my point stronger.

2) The numbers provided are adjusted for PPP.

4) Whether urban or overall, it illustrates that far poorer people than Americans are able to save money. The savings rates across the country don't differ significantly. India also has a very high savings rate.

5) Yes, and it's still poor by US standards. So was 1950's USA. If 1950's Americans could save (did they), why can't vastly richer 2016 Americans?

6) As I noted, Chinese people save money by reducing consumption.

6. 'reducing consumption' by not owning a car is only even an option for a tiny minority of americans.

Imagine how horrible it would be to spend an hour commuting in the dollar vans with all those Chinese immigrants! See also Scott Sumner's article on this: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=31723

The fact is that Chinese people earn low wages and still save money in the United States.

[edit: removed the last sentence, apparently I misread.]

i've had commutes over an hour, and still had to have a car - without one itd be on the order of 4 hours.

I misread your comment. My apologies, it was just an error on my part.

Adjusted for inflation median household income in the US has grown by about 20% since 1950. Given massive increases in inequality since then the lower percentiles have seen close to zero growth since then. But TVs have gotten bigger, which is nice.

You are off by about 60% - prior to 1996 inflation was overstated by 1.6%/year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission

It's actually still overstated; for example, there is no hedonic adjustment to health care in CPI. In 1950, I'd be a cripple. In 2014 I had surgery and now I'm in great shape. Since surgery costs more than a doctor saying "you're fucked", the BLS treated it as inflation.

And really, this claim just doesn't pass the smell test. And by "smell", I mean the smell of an outhouse. In 1950 the bottom 16-32% (depending on which set of numbers you look at) lacked full indoor plumbing.

https://books.google.com/books?id=_nY9LFtlqygC&pg=PA180&lpg=...

I'm basing those numbers on this:

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2015/09/23...

I'm obviously not making an argument that technology hasn't advanced since the 1950s. Don't be silly.

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