this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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US Authoritarianism

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Hello, I am researching American crimes against humanity. . This space so far has been most strongly for memes, and that's fine.

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[–] [email protected] 218 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

That can't be right though... 1000 people isn't nearly enough to drag the average income down 5k BELOW the median income in a nation of over 300 million. It should still be higher due to the long tail on the high side of incomes.

Proof: Average income in top 1% is 819k https://www.unbiased.com/discover/banking/how-much-income-puts-you-in-the-top-1-5-or-10#:~:text=To%20be%20in%20the%20top%201%25%20of%20earners%2C%20you',earn%20an%20average%20of%20%243%2C312%2C693.

Solve the weighted average:

819 * 0.01 + x*0.99 = 74.5

Where x is the remaining average. X≈66.3k, and that's excluding the ENTIRE 1% which is over a MILLION people at least, depending on how you count it. America is big.

[–] [email protected] 131 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I guess the lesson here is don't trust unsourced factual claims in political memes because they are probably just made up

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anime girls will never lie to you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wrong, they will always lie to you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Wrong, there are two of them. One always lies and the other always tells the truth.

[–] Socsa 15 points 2 months ago

You mean information on an obvious anti-US propaganda community might not be particularly high quality?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

86% of statistics quoted on the internet are made up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Yep. And never trust information embedded in a jpeg if it doesn't include a source!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, these numbers don't make sense.

To explain the first panel alone, by removing the top ten earners from the data set, you'd move the median to.the lower end by 5 "slots". I'm confident that there are more than 100 people in the USA who make between $65k and $75k (I know at least 25).

If they mean the average/mean, that still doesn't add up. Assuming that the US population is about 350 million and that 350,000,000 - 10 ~= 350 million.

NGL, formatting the equations and walking then out step by step is a pain, esp on mobile, but the answer I came to is by multiplying the difference in mean values (~$10,000) by the US Population (350 million), which yields $300,000,000,000 or about 10 billion per person once evenly distributed.

Elon Musk (2nd richest man in the world at time of writing) has a net worth of less than $5 billion rn, but the numbers here imply that the top earners in the US made at least 60x that amount.

TL;DR: I'mma need some sources on this.

Edit: on my app (Voyager/Wefwef) I can't save draft comments to go look at the meme while commenting, so definitely have some things off from.what the meme was saying, but they're close enough I'm leaving as it.

Also, spelling/grammar

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Your slot argument only makes sense for median, when the picture is about means. I still think it's off though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I def misread the original meme, but was too committed to the comment when I wanted to.double check somethings.

I use Voyager/WefWef or browsing Lemmy and (to the beat of my knowledge) don't have a way to save draft comments while double checking the content I'm commenting on. I suppose I should probably make an edit addressing this....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When that would happen to me while using rif to browse Reddit, I would use copy/paste to "save" what I had written while I reread the post.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ugh, yeah, but it just gets so tedious.

Besides, I figure it doesn't matter since we're all just bots talking to bots. /s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Is that supposed to be a net annual income for Elon rather than a net worth? His net worth 270 billion.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I thought that seemed a little far fetched

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But I think this is only about wages right? It doesn’t take into account growth in net worth based on shares, does it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

“Income” is understood to mean wages in measurements like this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Not sure about this. However if this was the case, income would be a pretty useless term in terms of describing financial inequality, as a lot of wealth gained would be excluded by this definition.

[–] Lucidlethargy 2 points 2 months ago

You might be underestimating the wealth of the top 10.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly my first thoughts but then I remembered it's Lemmy. These morons operate on the "trust me, bro" system 🤣

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Given the comments in this very thread, that doesn't appear to be accurate. I only opened this thread because I suspected inaccurate data.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Judging by their recent comments, no no they are not

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yeesh. They've got a struggling mind.