Thanks! Seems I’d need a degree in economics to really understand this. My field is more computer science. And you oftend tend to get definite answers with that, not 10 studies with wildly different numbers, disagreeing on everything… 😒
The idea of the Gini coefficient itself is relatively simple. What I suspect is happening here is that different studies are using or weighting wealth numbers differently, most likely in regards to asset ownership (mostly housing) and thus come to different conclusions.
This is more obvious in the Europe comparison article where all the EU countries that have high rental housing rates or other severe restrictions on home ownership like Sweden are rated especially poorly.
In the US in comparison the home ownership rate is relatively high, but the quality of the housing stock is low (despite still inflated prices for them). So as others have said it is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison sadly.
Hmmh. I mean it’s complicated. Especially housing seems to work quite differently. And we often buy the whole kitchen and furniture ourselves even while renting. Plus the entire house is made of different material, like bricks and mortar. I’m not sure how that translates into cost and value of the house. But yeah, I’m not sure what my question is. These numbers all have their merit and use cases but there’s a lot of things involved. Maybe I just like to live a comfortable life rather than work my butt off for 80h a week to own a lot of assets to rent out. I’m not sure. I think my main thing is it needs to be sustainable. We can’t have a small minority “owning” the country. There needs to be a middle class, and the poor people need to be able to sustain a living without working several jobs without a perspective in life. That’d be great. I’m not super concerned with the numbers themselves, but more with the resulting effect they have on society and life. And I suppose that’s hard to quantify.
I often get the feeling that it’s far more accepted in the USA that rich people get to decide. And large companies are allowed to rip off the citizens, be it privacy, labor law, healthcare. And the atmosphere in Europe is a bit different and we do way more regulation to try to even out things in a more socialist(?) way. But that doesn’t mean it neccesarily turns out that way.
For a quick overview on the wealth inequality in Europe, this article is good.
I looked up their source, which is the UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2023.
On page 33 there is this table that compares Gini coefficient between major economies over the last 20 years including the US and Germany:
As you can see Germany even surpassed the US in the early 2000, but since then the US overtook, but the difference isn’t huge.
I have honestly no idea where the CIA gets their data from, but I don’t think they are a very trustworthy source.
Thanks! Seems I’d need a degree in economics to really understand this. My field is more computer science. And you oftend tend to get definite answers with that, not 10 studies with wildly different numbers, disagreeing on everything… 😒
The idea of the Gini coefficient itself is relatively simple. What I suspect is happening here is that different studies are using or weighting wealth numbers differently, most likely in regards to asset ownership (mostly housing) and thus come to different conclusions.
This is more obvious in the Europe comparison article where all the EU countries that have high rental housing rates or other severe restrictions on home ownership like Sweden are rated especially poorly.
In the US in comparison the home ownership rate is relatively high, but the quality of the housing stock is low (despite still inflated prices for them). So as others have said it is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison sadly.
Hmmh. I mean it’s complicated. Especially housing seems to work quite differently. And we often buy the whole kitchen and furniture ourselves even while renting. Plus the entire house is made of different material, like bricks and mortar. I’m not sure how that translates into cost and value of the house. But yeah, I’m not sure what my question is. These numbers all have their merit and use cases but there’s a lot of things involved. Maybe I just like to live a comfortable life rather than work my butt off for 80h a week to own a lot of assets to rent out. I’m not sure. I think my main thing is it needs to be sustainable. We can’t have a small minority “owning” the country. There needs to be a middle class, and the poor people need to be able to sustain a living without working several jobs without a perspective in life. That’d be great. I’m not super concerned with the numbers themselves, but more with the resulting effect they have on society and life. And I suppose that’s hard to quantify.
I often get the feeling that it’s far more accepted in the USA that rich people get to decide. And large companies are allowed to rip off the citizens, be it privacy, labor law, healthcare. And the atmosphere in Europe is a bit different and we do way more regulation to try to even out things in a more socialist(?) way. But that doesn’t mean it neccesarily turns out that way.