Talk:Standard of living in the United States

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Archive/1

Graphs[edit]

Can we please get rid of those hidious graphs. They look like they were made in Excel. Some professional-looking graphs would go a long way to making this entry not look like it was written by a high-schooler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.140.99.203 (talk) 01:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving[edit]

As the last active discussion on this page dates back to September 2006 I have taken the liberty of archiving all past discussions. I have also re-written most of this article and removed nearly all unreferenced content. Please add only referenced content as this is a controversial article. Thank you, Signature ^brendel 00:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hit job on the US[edit]

The article was a hit job on the US, mention a brief blurb on our relative wealth, then a bunch of rambling paragraphs on how the US is relatively unequal. I've fixed it up a little more fairly.--Rotten 10:30, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see but please leave the quote in w/o just linking to it. Citing an authoritative source directly in the article builds a reader's confidence in what he or she is reading. Also the article is quite neutral- it gives the HDI (rank 8), nominal and GDP per capita ranks (3 & 8) and a comparison of median household income (rank 2)- in all these esteemed rankings the US is among the top 10, so this article is hardly a "hit job" on the US. Signature ^brendel 00:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something should be mentioned about home ownership and access to consumer goods, these are both important factors in standard of living.--Rotten 16:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And incidentally, you are confusing quality of life with standard of living, which are two very different measures.--Rotten 17:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Economist is measuring standard of living, dubbing it quality of life. Homeownership studies have been conducted and I'll include some stats ASAP. As for consumer goods, you need to be careful not to get trivial, as w/ TVs - if we include a bunch of frivolous bragging stats on "look how many things we own"- this article will turn into the same piece of POV-war crap it was two months ago. The paragraph you added is fine as it makes a general statement that "Americans have high rates of appliance ownership" and you merely use TV and radio ownership rates as quick one sentence examples. But overall, please, let's stick with income, homeownership and any authoritative studies we can find. Regards, Signature ^brendel 18:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop reverting my addition. The Wikipedia article defines SOL as "The standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people and the way these services and goods are distributed within a population." I think my paragraph is therefor relevant to the article and I'm putting it back in, although I will mention that these are only several "goods". Please don't revert without discussing it on here, you don't own Wikipedia.--Rotten 20:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies, I didn't see that you had moved it.--Rotten 21:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV issue?[edit]

I don't see why this articl has a POV disput, I've read through it and there doesnt seem to be any problem with its nutrality. F33bs (talk) 02:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you kidding me? The article starts off with "The standard of living in the United States is one of the top 20 in the world by the standards economists use as measures of standards of living." Yes, this may very well be true but that's just economic standard and then it gets into the inequality and injustice statistics later on in the paragraph. JessicaSideways (talk) 12:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Median wages on the decline?[edit]

"Median Wages have been on the decline in the United States since 1974. In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s was $35,010. Adjusted for inflation, that's 12 percent less than what men the same age were making in 1974. [18]"

but same link has an explanations of that: "One of those is that family incomes -- families with men in their 30s -- in the same period rose by 9 percent. … The picture may be gloomy for men but it's generally positive for families." since we are not interested especially in median wages for men in their 30s this should be removed! they don't represent whole nation. you could as well write that median wages are rising since NBA players are now getting 3 or 4(whatever) times bigger wages than in the 70-ies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.139.12.4 (talk) 05:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, this article could address this more directly--it's not just men in their 30s, it's individuals vs. households. Real wages have fallen fairly steadily for 30-40 years, but real household incomes have increased--because more household members have worked more hours during that time. That is, rise in standard of living is a function of working harder--which raises issues about the nature of the relationship between standard of living and quality of life. If anyone with economics chops wants to tackle that... 12.186.233.18 (talk) 19:56, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline[edit]

Any chance of adding a timeline showing some sort of relative Standard of Living say from 1900 or so? It would be particularly interesting to see where we are on this chart today.

Definition of "Household" varies by country. Reasons for table removal.[edit]

In the US, a household is "A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household." http://www.census.gov/cps/about/cpsdef.html

In Canada, the term used in the statistics is "family" which is defined as "A census couple family consists of a couple living together (married or common-law, including same-sex couples) living at the same address with or without children."

The huge difference here is the US figures includes a single person as "household" whereas the Canadian statistics does not. For the Canadian statistics a "family" only includes 2+ people. Other countries also have varying definitions of "household". Some of these countries also appear to be using average income rather than median as well. All this leads to incredibly misleading and inaccurate statistics and odd comparisons. The entire income table is a complete mess and it should not exist here in this form. BlackHades (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Outdated[edit]

This article is full of outdated data. A lot of the statistics used here are years old, some dating to before the Great Recession. This needs to be updated.--RM (Be my friend) 17:01, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]