Median Household Wealth in America Is Going Nowhere
Median Household Wealth in America Is Going Nowhere
By Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute
September 21, 2018
Median Household Wealth in America Is Going Nowhere
Today’s headline at The Wall Street Journal looks wonderful: “U.S. Household Net Worth Neared $107 Trillion in Second Quarter.” The journal is reporting on a new report from the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, the fact that the aggregate national net worth is up doesn’t tell us much about…
Trump's Big Defense-Spending Plans Aren't Enough for this Beltway Think Tank
Trump’s Big Defense-Spending Plans Aren’t Enough for this Beltway Think Tank
By Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute
May 22, 2018
Trump’s Big Defense Spending Plans Aren’t Enough for this Beltway Think Tank
Earlier this month, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) which monitors global military spending, released its latest report. To no one’s surprise, the US topped the list, with more spending than the next seven biggest spenders combined.
Cómo el dólar se convirtió en la divisa global más importante del mundo
Por: Ryan McMaken Tomado del: Instituto Mises
En marzo de 2009, en plena recesión, el entonces secretario del Tesoro, Timothy Geithner, fue presionado para que respondiera a la pregunta de si otra moneda —posiblemente los derechos especiales de giro (DEG) del FMI— podría desplazar al dólar de EEUU como moneda de reserva global dominante. Geithner respondió que está abierto a un mayor uso de los…
Much of the political thinking about violence in the United States comes from unfavorable comparisons between the United States and a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. We’ve all seen it many times.
Much of the political thinking about violence in the United States comes from unfavorable comparisons between the United States and a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. We’ve all seen it many times. The United States, with a murder rate of approximately 5 per 100,000 is compared to a variety of Western and Central European countries (also sometimes Japan) with murder rates often below 1 per 100,000. This is, in turn, supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate.
Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, they are frequently very small countries (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.
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But these are the only countries the US shall be compared to, we are told, because the US shall only be compared to “developed” countries when analyzing its murder rate and gun ownership.And yet, no reason for this is ever given. What is the criteria for deciding that the United States shall be compared to Luxembourg but not to Mexico, which has far more in common with the US than Luxembourg in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and geography?
Much of this stems from outdated preconceived and evidence-free notions about the "third world." As Hans Rosling has shown, there is this idea of "we" vs. "them." "We" are the special "developed" countries where people are happy healthy, and live long lives. "Them" is the third world where people live in war-torn squalor and lives there are nasty, brutish, and short. In this mode of thinking there is a bright shiny line between the "developed" world and everyone else, who might as well be considered as a different species.
In truth, there is no dividing line between the alleged "developed" world and everyone else. There is, in fact, only gradual change that takes place as one looks at Belgium, then the US, then Chile, and Turkey, and China, and Mexico. Most countries, as Rosling illustrates here, are in the middle, and this is freely exhibited by a variety of metrics including the UN's human development index.
Once we understand these facts, and do not cling to bizarre xenophobic views about how everyone outside the "developed" world is too dysfunctional and/or subhuman (although few gun control advocates would ever admit to the thought) to bear comparison to the US, we immediately see that the mantra "worst in the developed world" offers an immensely skewed, unrealistic, and even bigoted view of the world and how countries compare to each other.
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But, we are never allowed to compare the US to middle income countries like Uruguay, Russia, or Mexico because that would show that the US is actually a remarkably safe place in global terms on top of having many more legally owned guns than those countries.
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Few people who repeat this mantra have any standard in their heads of what exactly is the "developed" world. They just repeat the phrase because they have learned to do so. They never acknowledge that when factors beyond per capita GDP are considered, it makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina. Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense.
But for an illustration of where this sort of thinking leads, let's look at this Washington Post article titled “The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.” After mistakenly using the "gun related" killings rate instead of the murder rate (see below) the author, Max Fisher, carefully constructs his comparisons so as to emphasize the gun deaths rate (which is implied to be as good as the murder rate) in the US.
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Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:
Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.
But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph? Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US.
But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”
Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list. But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisher really means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.”
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Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”
So, let’s do that. Here we see that the OECD’s list contains Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Chile. So, if we're honest with ourselves, that must mean that other countries with similar human development rankings are also suitable for comparisons to the US.
Well, Turkey and Mexico have HDI numbers at .75. So, let’s include other countries with HDI numbers either similar or higher. That means we should include The Bahamas, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia.
You can see where this is going. If we include countries that have HDI numbers similar to — or at least as high as — OECD members Turkey and Mexico, we find that the picture for the United States murder rate looks very different (correctly using murder rates and not gun-deaths rates):
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And why not include data from individual states? It has always been extremely imprecise and lazy to talk about the “US murder rate” The US is an immense country with a lot of variety in laws and demographics. (Mexico deserves the same analysis, by the way.) Many states have murder rates that place them on the short list of low-crime places in the world. Why do we conveniently ignore them? The US murder rate is being driven up by a few high-murder states such as Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Delaware, and Tennessee. In the spirit of selective use of data, let's just leave those states out of it, and look at some of the low-crime ones:
We see that OECD members Chile and Turkey have murder rates higher than Colorado. Perhaps they should try adopting Colorado’s laws and allow sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to all non-felon adults. That might help them bring their murder rates down a little.
But you know that’s not the conclusion we're supposed to come to. Comparisons can never work in that direction. The comparisons should only be used to compare the US to countries with restrictive gun laws and low murder rates. Comparisons with countries that have restrictive gun laws (and/or few private guns) and murder rates similar to or higher than US rates (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean and the Baltic States.)
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But before we wrap up, let’s look at the murder rates in all these countries alongside the number of civilian guns per 100 residents. (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents, and the y axis is murder rates in x per 100,000.)
Here’s the scatter plot:
Obviously, the US is big outlier in terms of guns per capita. But in terms of murder rate, it’s very much in the middle of these countries.
Things look even better for some areas of the US. If I include low-crime states, we get this (The x axis is civilian guns per 100 residents and y axis is murder rate in x per 100,000):
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But as no reason has ever been given as to why we should only compare to Western Europe,. Let’s compare the US to the rest of the Americas for a more realistic picture of the world beyond the OECD. When we do that, we get:
By comparison, the US look downright pacific. And why should not this comparison be made?Indeed, it makes more sense to compare the US to other states in the Americas than to Europe or Japan. The US and most Latin American countries were settled in similar time periods. They are frontier countries settled mostly by European immigrants that displaced a native population (to varying degrees), and most of them gained independence from European imperial nations in a similar time period. They tend to have ethnically diverse populations, and many have been impacted by the slave trade that ended in the 19th century.
European countries share very few of these qualities in common with the US.
So, it would seem that the old diktat of “thou shalt only compare US murder rates to the approved 'developed' countries" is based on really no objective standard at all. And we should stop doing it.
If we’re honestly trying to evaluate the nature of crime and violence in a comparative atmosphere, we cannot limit ourselves to a handful of countries that have very little in common with the US beyond a handful of economic indicators.
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Now, let's address the bait-and-switch of using "gun-related killings" versus homicides, that is often used. These numbers include accidents and suicides. But of course, the reason most people are concerned about gun violence is because of homicides. Many people commit suicides with ropes and cars, but we don't talk about banning ropes and cars. Moreover, many people die from accidents involving power tools, ladders, and other items. Again, we don't talk about banning those things. The other statistic often used is "gun-related deaths." This also ignores the fact that the whole point of gun control (in the minds of most of the public) is to bring down the murder rate. It would be irresponsible to bring down gun murders and then ignore the overall murder rate. After all, if the "gun murder" rate goes down, but the murder rate remains unchanged, then we find that little has been accomplished. It stands to reason that few murdered people think in their last moments "gee, at least I wasn't murdered with a gun."
Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one.
Like nearly all US states, Georgia imposed a stay-at-home order in March 2020 in response to demands from public health officials claiming a stay-at-home order would lessen total deaths from covid-19.
The United Kingdom's Supreme Court ruled "illegal" a parliamentary tactic used by PM Boris Johnson to ensure Brexit would be carried out on October 31, more than six m
The United Kingdom's Supreme Court ruled "illegal" a parliamentary tactic used by PM Boris Johnson to ensure Brexit would be carried out on October 31, more than six months after Brexit was supposed to take effect.
While the court wasn't ruling on Brexit, per se, the context of the situation makes it clear the ruling is really just the latest move from the UK's political class designed to postpone Brexit yet again.
Given the history of EU-related referenda in Europe, we can already guess how the situation will play out. British voters will either be asked to vote again on Brexit — so that this time, they can get it "right" — or the Brexit agreement will be constructed in such a way that Brexit will be a British exit in name only.
At the same time, bizarrely, Johnson's moves in parliament have been credited as being "undemocratic" or even a "coup." This charge comes even though Johnson had attempted to call an early election, but was denied.
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By now, this is a tried and true tactic in European politics. Only votes that help the pro-EU position are allowed. Everything else is declared "undemocratic" or is simply ignored.
In 2001, Irish voters rejected the Nice Treaty in a referendum (or, to be more accurate, rejected proposed amendments to the Irish Constitution, that would have made ratification of the Nice Treaty possible).
Ireland's political class quickly went to work declaring that the Irish voters had made a mistake and didn't really understand the importance of ratifying the treaty.
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The second time, the majority voted "correctly" and demands for additional referenda, of course, ended.
Another tactic was used on the continent when the French and the Dutch were allowed to vote on the ratification of a new EU constitution. The voters rejected it.
But it naturally didn't end there. French and Dutch politicians simply ignored the results of the referenda and devised an alternative strategy. They slightly revised the text of the constitution, called it the "Lisbon Treaty" and then ratified that without asking the voters.
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Here, O'Neill gets it slightly wrong. The "upper echelons of the EU" know exactly how democracy works. It is only to be tolerated if it leads to the outcomes preferred by the ruling classes. If not, then something must be done to correct the situation.
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In the US, of course, we don't bother having additional elections out of the usual schedule. We just have judges overrule the voters whenever the voters get uppity.
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In more recent years, the courts have wised up and no longer allow the voters to even have a say. In 2018, a measure to split California into three smaller states was successfully placed on the ballot after gaining the required number of signatures from voters and jumping through the usual hoops required of such measures.
But before a vote could occur, the California Supreme Court deleted the measure from the ballot, ruling:
"We conclude that the potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election," the justices wrote.
In other words, allowing the voters to have a say on the matter is too risky. Thus, a tiny number of wealthy California judges instead decided for the voters that the only acceptable vote is "no."
And who needs voting when you have government judges, anyway? Once upon a time, it was widely accepted that significant changes to the federal constitution required a vote, in the manner prescribed by the Constitution itself.
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By the 1960s, however, voting on constitutional amendments was passé. It became far more convenient to go to federal judges instead, and have them simply invent a new version of the constitution.
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Want to declare a war on drugs? An amednment is no longer required, as it was in the days of Prohibition. Now, federal judges can grant us feds any power we want!
Meanwhile, politicians never tire of lecturing us about the sanctity of democracy. But it's clearly only sacred when the Important People agree with the outcome.
Having abandoned the "protect" part of "to serve and protect," the police have retreated to the claim that their real role is simply to "enforce the law." This "enforcement" presumably would include investigation of crimes and arrests of suspects. So how is that going for them?
According to the Vera Institute of Justice, "fewer than five percent" of arrests,
are for serious violent crimes. Instead, the bulk of police work is in response to incidents that are not criminal in nature and the majority of arrests involve non-serious offenses like “drug abuse violations”—arrests for which increased more than 170 percent between 1980 and 2016—disorderly conduct, and a nondescript low-level offense category known as “all other non-traffic offenses.”
These offenses are behind 80 percent of all arrests.
Put a little differently: criminologist Victor Kappeler concludes that per capita, police make 14 arrests per year. But,
less than one of these arrests would have been for a violent crime and fewer than two arrests would have been for property crimes. In fact, 12 of the arrests made by our “average” police officer would have been for petty crimes like minor drug or alcohol possession, disorderly conduct, and vandalism.
This should not be shocking when we consider how police departments work. From a professional standpoint, spending long hours on a small number of violent offenses is not a good way to move up in the ranks. Police departments often base promotions and pay on number of arrests made and other metrics which drive personnel toward making easy arrests for easily-observed offenses.
As noted by William Waegel in an article on police procedures, police personnel were driven by expectations for "production of investigative reports" and "two or more arrests per week." Thus, cases unlikely to lead to quick arrests were "skimmed" in which hard-to-solve cases were deemed "routine cases" and "given little attention."
From this perspective, busting a ring of skilled burglars, or hunting down a gangland killer, brings few advantages. Moreover, making a small number of homicide arrests doesn't help departmental revenues as do drug busts that can bring with them lucrative seizures through asset forfeiture laws.
This helps explain why—as shown by this analysis at mises.org—many police agencies spend enormous amounts of time tracking down suburban pot smokers while thieves and thugs go un-investigated.
