"Trickle Down Economics" isn't real, it never was actual serious economic theory (let alone consensus), but rather used as a political strawman.

When people accuse economists of promoting TDE, it is usually a mischaracterization of actual theories.

Probably because the Kosovo was a part of Serbia, instead of being a Yugoslav republic.

I wonder if the poll was actually conducted on the street. In which case, a large portion of them were probably out shopping for gifts. Likely people at home would be the ones to admit they were crappy/lazy gift givers - and the ones out shopping would rate themselves higher 😂

Its because the old fucked up the system

Definitely. Since scientific papers are released internationally and every country is able to benefit from the discoveries, it doesn't make sense for differences in scientific output to be driving differences in economic development.

Stay dumb my friend. It suits you.

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Yes there is. Do you think countries can just print infinite money? Do you think the world has infinite resources?

Stop getting your opinions from garbage econ propaganda

So you only have that energy when you don't think you're part of the privileged group, got it

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> More people working that weren’t previously, are going to feature in the bottom percentiles.

True, if they used to be counted as earning 0$, they are positively counting towards the bottom percentile no matter their new earnings. Since they are not, their low wage could contribute negatively to the bottom percentile, but the question is, how many people are affected by this. Overall, since the unemployment rate has lowered since the 1970s, there is probably a measurable effect, but those people are also affected by low (entry) wage growths on average. Additionally, in the 1970s, many households required only one earning parent, while it has become more common for both to be working (and possibly part time, thus lower wages). However, this might also be a cause of low wage growth for medium to low incomes. This is not entirely clear from the article, it is debatable how much this is relevant though.

> Nobody comes out of long term unemployment, or starts a first job in the top 1%.

You sure about that? You know how inheritance and nepotism work?

> Conversely, as economies grow and innovation thrives, people have the opportunity to elevate through the top percentiles. At the same time, people that were in the top 1% drop back as their circumstances change.

That metric is called social mobility and does not necessarily correlate with either economic growth (e.g., natural resource exploitation causes growth but generally lowers social mobility) nor innovation. And assuming if people elevated to a higher percentile under a constant number of people, someone else automatically drops from the higher percentile to the lower one and subsequently raises the average income of that percentile while doing nothing for the wage of the remaining people in the lower percentile who did not elevate. In that sense, a raise in lower percentile wages does not imply any positive effect for the majority of people, if raises are very selective.

> It’s not like there’s a room of 1%ers that are sitting around for 40 years getting richer and richer.

Yes there is, possessing large amounts of wealth lead to large incomes due to appreciation of assets (which also outpaced employment wage growth for the past 40 years). Taxation loopholes amplified this effect.

> Further, what are the wages in each percentile and how do they relate to standard of living?

The exact numbers are in the article. The standard of living is difficult to measure, since the effect of inflation is different for each percentile (due to different consumption), but generally wage growth often did not outpace inflation for the bottom 90% (avg wage growths of 0.6% yearly). Here is the section in the article:

"This upward distribution of wages over the long term has meant slow wage growth for those in the bottom 90% of the wage distribution—alternatingly slow and stagnant increases in living standards for much of the last 40 years."

The even bigger problem that income inequality is wealth inequality since wealth is providing income, is inheritable and vast societal and political powers and freedoms are linked to personal wealth.

> It’s not just as simple as rich = bad and they got there at the expense of the poor.

No, it does not mean rich=bad, but it is a bad sign for the economic situation of medium to poor income level people. However, there is an argument that this is at the expense of the poor, since the government could raise wage growth for the bottom percentile at the expense of the rich to at least even out the growth of difference in wages, however it does not, which is effectively bad for the poor. Wealth inequality would still grow regardless.

Most of the income of the richest 1 percent is not earned. A larger percentage of income is going to people who haven't earned it.

That is a complete straw man. I said nothing about any of that. He was commenting that the population would be higher if you included the rest of the historically larger region. This is accurate. There is absolutely no reason to try and one up anyone. His comment was accurate.

Maybe not the top 1% but certainly the top 10%.

But I agree with you. It’s also funny when you hear all the outrage about rich people polluting the planet.

Most of reddit is (comparatively) rich people who live in democratic countries and could easily and safely encourage change.

Why would it have to be normally distributed?

In my eyes a non-biased relative comparison could end up with a whole host of distributions. A relative measure only means that you'll translate and perhaps rescale the original distribution.

Do you have a theorem or specific result to refer to?

I should also point out that the Lake Wobegon effect is at its most relevant when the underlying distribution is symmetric. Meaning that the average and the median are equivalent. This does hold for e.g. normal distributions. But if we allow for distributions with long smaller-than-mean tails, it would be possible that a majority are better than the mean.

Looking at this it's funny to hear Slovenia sometimes being accused of being selfish to leave Yugoslavia, prospering while others were held back by the war ... when in fact it was constantly way ahead, in the 70s and 80s just as it is now.

Then let’s not talk about Calvin Johnson, when Charlie Hennigan averaged 125.

Comparing raw yardage amassed during a 17 game season to a record set during a 16 game season is unfair. Calvin Johnson averaged 122 yards per game. Justin Jefferson is below that mark.

Cant be a bad gift giver if youre too broke to ever give anyone gifts.

I wonder if people keep this energy when they find out that globally, almost every person on Reddit is in the Top 1%.

Or does this outrage only apply when it's people who aren't you?

In other words, everything is going exactly to plan.

This is nee or news. Per capita cities and suburbs have the least crime.

Big number = bad. You expect MAGA heads to understand per capita?

Yeah it's a bloody fucking Nobel Prize.