Talk:Affluence in the United States/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Not yet finished

I just started the article today and am nowhere near finished yet. Regards, SignaturebrendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 18:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE: Article is almost finished with only few more considerable additions in the works. Regards, SignaturebrendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 23:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE: Article nominated for GA. All sections are now present and complete. SignaturebrendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 21:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a question that might help this article be graded, what's the lack of worldview template doing below the notes? Homestarmy 01:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Someone added it to the Social class template, so it showed up everywhere that template was used. Regards, Signaturebrendel 02:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

GA

This isn't a subject matter I know much about, so I may be missing something, but it seems as if everything is in order to me. The use of images is interesting, and they look like the kind of graphs one sees in newspapers and such. I have a few minor things to mention though:

  • The red and blue used in Image:American Income.png makes it look like election results.
  • Image:Class Thompson Hickey copy.jpg doesn't work well as a thumb, and is rather unsightly compared to the other graphs.
  • The lines in Image:Income 1967.jpg could stand to be a little thicker or clearer in some way.
  • Reference #44 is screwed up. It says "Error on call to Template:cite web: Parameters url and title must be specified. Retrieved on January 2, 2007."

Otherwise, all is good. nice work.--SeizureDog 11:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll work on your recommendations! As for "The use of images is interesting, and they look like the kind of graphs one sees in newspapers and such"- that's excately what I intended! Regards, Signaturebrendel 19:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Can't read graph

I can't read the labels for the X-axis of the Personal Income Age25 graph, even at full-size. --JHP 04:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed it is hard to read. Thanks for your feedback, I will upload a n, easier to read version of the greaph within the next couple of days (perhaps tomorrow afternoon, pacific time). Best Regards, Signaturebrendel 06:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Relation of six-figure income and United States?

Uh, sorry, I think somethings amiss. Six-figure income redirects here, don't know why a global topic has anything to do with something exclusively american. --Wafflemou 16:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Income ditribution by age

It seems to me that this would be more interesting if it showed how income rises as new skills are obtained which tends to be a consequence of the number of years one is in the workforce. I would fully expect that the lower quintiles are not permanent, but just a way station until ones skill set increases.

Further, even those at the top end of the income scales are not permanent members of that "club" as income in the U.S.A is highly variable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.217.164.134 (talk) 13:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

WP Economics rating

I've just rated this for WikiProject Economics. I rated it of Low importance partly because it overlaps with other material such as income inequality, but mostly because it's U.S.-specific. I rated it B-class instead of A-class for two reasons. Primarily, because it covers income but not wealth. That's either a large gap, or indicates the article should be renamed to indicate it's only about income. Secondarily (probably far second) is that there's a good number of POV statements throughout the article. Most of these are pretty mainstream in their POV and are referenced, so it's probably not a huge deal even though it should be addressed.

Anyway, I'm putting this note here to draw the attention of anyone who disagrees with those assessments. CRETOG8(t/c) 20:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Affluence narrowly defined?

Excuse me for being contrarian, but it seems two-thirds of the definition of "affluence" (Merriam-Webster) is missing here.

An "abundant flow or supply" does not necessarily refer to money, nor does "a flowing to or toward a point."

There are people who own their own shelter, grow their own food, and produce their own energy, and yet live quite comfortably below the poverty level, when it comes to taxable income. The continuum at the bottom of the article, charting the line from the super-rich to those living entirely on public assistance totally misses this group, the "sustainably affluent."

I would take a stab at adding a section on non-financial affluence, but not if it's going to end up in some revert war!

--Bytesmiths (talk) 23:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I follow you. You could either be talking about an unusual view or mainstream. One big gap in this article is that it covers income but not wealth. If that's what you're saying I agree with you. If you're talking about "affluence" that isn't connected to money, then that's a much trickier idea, and I'd say it's pretty far from the standard meaning. For instance, a person who owns their own shelter may well be affluent in the standard sense because many houses are worth a lot of money. A person who owns their own 2-room trailer on a cheap plot of land and is quite content with that arrangement would not be affluent in the normal sense. CRETOG8(t/c) 20:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Race and Affluence

When the article speaks of the White pop., does that count the White Hispanic pop. as well? The article says White's make up around 75% of Americans.... Yet Non-Hispanics are in reality about 66% of Americans. Could this be carried over into income? Thus taking wealth from the Hispanic category and adding it in addition to wealth from Non-Hispanic Whites... inflating the White affluence a bit? Should we add "White of Non-Hispanic and Hispanic Origin"? Cali567 (talk) 07:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Over time

Graphs at "over time" are interesting, however they don't display the Minimum Wage level, which in real terms has been going DOWN since decades. (see http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=405) I think this is important to explain the financial crisis, which at least partly was triggered by banks offering suprime credits to these hopeless people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.142.3 (talk) 19:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Update

This article really needs an update to cover changes since 2007. Some graphs reference later data, but this is not covered in the text. Also recommend this article be merged with Wealth in the United States. The followup book to Richistan could be helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwilkait (talk • contribs) 21:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Hispanics can be of any race

Please make that clear in this article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.94.55.222 (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Extreme affluence

I'm as liberal as they come. Nevertheless, the engineer portion of me takes issue with the slant given in the Extreme affluence section. The reason for this is that outliers are what they are -- not very statistically relevant. That's why statisticians created things like medians: to look at a dataset without it being overly skewed by the ends of the curve. Should that section perhaps be re-worded and or deleted entirely? Ravenpi (talk) 23:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


the cited article says that 400 americans have more wealth than the bottom 50% of americans, not that they have more than 50% of america's wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.10.131.218 (talk) 07:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Refocus this article

(1) Remove the income data from this article. Income in the United States is the proper article for such data.
(2) Refocus this article onto "affluence in the United States" as a sociological concept; link where appropriate to Income in the United States and Wealth in the United States when supporting data is required.

--G41rn8 (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Good article review request

The changes in July and August of 2014 are significant additions of at best tangentially relevant material (at worse, synthesis of mostly irrelevant material). Most of the edits are by Drbogdan, while I reverted some of the worst of the excesses. I agree that some of the 2005 statistics could be updated if data is available, but they should be trimmed. I think another WP:good article review is needed. The WP:COATRACK has gotten worse, as it this article is being used to clone Income inequality in the United States and Wealth inequality in the United States, which are also expanding to include anything that has been said recently about either topic.

Even in May 2013, the lead was much too long, but that could be resolved by summarizing the lead and moving it to an overview section, and may not actually be necessary.

I decline to open a WP:GAR as I might be considered biased.

I will notify Wikipedia:Wikiproject Economics and Wikipedia:Wikiproject United States, but will not notify the inactive (here) major contributors, which is another reason why I don't want to open a GAR. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Arthur Rubin - FWIW - Thank you *very much* for your comments - and edits - for my part atm, your suggestions seem *entirely* ok with me - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Looking at this I do see the issues according to WP:GA?, it fails 1b, and 5; therefore it should be de-listed unless those issues are resolved.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 11:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Pretax/aftertax ?

The lead throws in number after number, but for those not familiar with U.S. tradition, please make clear if these are pretax or aftertax, and in case of pretax, what's the actual disposable income left after the gov takes its slice. P.S. $77,500 pretax = upper middle? Lucky bastards ... or just dated info? NVO (talk) 07:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your luck bastards comment, and considering that middle class wages are fairly stagnate these figures don't date very quickly. If anything the middle class in the US, if anything, are unlucky considering that adjusting for inflation their wages have been falling for decades (inflation as determined by the consumer price index in the US). Note that upper middle class is most certainly not the same thing as upper class, and many would argue that the separation between the upper middle class and the upper class is growing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.121.187.138 (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

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merged

Maybe this should be merged with Wealth in the United States? Benjamin (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Removed section misrepresenting Heritage Foundation figures.

I just removed a section claiming that American poor have larger living areas than middle class people in Europe. Both references were to similar articles from the Heritage Foundation, and I believe the relevant section was this one (identical in both articles):

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20100312170900/http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm

https://web.archive.org/web/20100313053958/http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/bg1713.cfm

It's ridiculous to compare average home size for a country with population density 85/sq mi (32.8/km2), to major cities with population densities hundreds of times higher (e.g. Paris: 54,000/sq mi, 21,000/km2, London: 14,500/sq mi, 5,590/km2, Vienna: 11,205/sq mi, 4,326.1/km2). The countries' population densities are also multiples of the US's.

The remaining assertion, that house sizes are larger than other rich countries, is unsupported by the references, and the US is between the averages of Australia and Canada, anyway, which points to population density being more important than wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goaded (talk • contribs) 11:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Heritage is biased, but reliable. Perhaps it could be reworded, but it certainly should not be removed completely. Benjamin (talk) 23:51, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm not doubting the accuracy of the Heritage figures, just of the misrepresentation by Wikipedia of what they say. I would be very surprised if the statement "The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in New York" was incorrect. People in New York aren't representative of all Americans, any more than people living in large European cities are representative of all Europeans. I see it is back in, verbatim: "even those in the lowest income percentiles enjoy more living space than the middle classes in most European nations". This is not shown by the documents referenced, and should be removed, or backed up by a reputable source (even the Heritage Foundation). I'm going to add a citation-needed, because the ones that are there do not back up the claim made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goaded (talk • contribs) 20:08, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
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