http://blogs.wsj.com/.../19/what-percent-are-you/

although you can always read:
http://www.businessinsider.com/...ent-2011-10#ixzz1bLaBGd6Y

keep in mind the first in household, the second in individual hence the discrepancy

WSJ does households which is often 2 people while business insider shows individuals. Hard to compare really.

Business insider shows $26k median, while WSJ shows $43k. I wonder if that 13k difference is solely due to households vs. individuals.

I am fairly skeptical of those numbers. I would really like to see their methodology on this - namely what groups they have included (part time, full time, students, unemployed, etc)

dunno. i kinda gave up trying to follow links on my PSP because it can't handle the advertisements.

part of the % that pays too much extra taxes for exercising my freedom in using legally sold products. such as alcohol and tobacco.

what's it matter anyway? it's just a baseline to determine how much money people are allowed to borrow.

you trust Wall Street Journal? it has long gone down the route of Fox News.

In canada it's easier to figure out (for individual income) since aggregate statistics from our tax agency are easy to obtain. Of course it doesn't take black/grey market dealings into account but it probably wouldn't be too far off the mark.

see: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/...x/75-202-x2009000-eng.htm

Dibs uses a PSP?

Suddenly things make so much sense.

I feel poor in our household income being 84% percentile. There are some 1%ers on here.

i don't understand the question. how much money do you want me to make?
considering that i'm pretty much happy just sitting around all day smoking and getting drunk?
i should probably quit teaching the computer to do the work for me.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/...2-x/2009000/hl-fs-eng.htm


love that stat! :p

i looked up the US version:
http://nccp.org/publications/pub_678.html



those are the more important numbers, IMO -- ending a cycle of poverty is important to move an economy forward.

i don't use a computer when i'm leeching unsecured internet. well, i don't really want to use a computer for play time. makes it feel like i'm working for free.

Raw income is such an arbitrary number, my salary is pretty good for rural east Texas, but if I lived in NY, Boston, San Fran etc., I'd be eating in a soup kitchen. Using national averages without factoring in COL is just silly and misleading.

cost of living is a bit misleading by itself. how much does it cost if you actually own the property?

what percentile you are at just gives you an idea of where you fit relative to everyone else. How you view that and others based on that is your choice. It does give you an idea of relative wealth.

The cost of living argument is misleading as you assume that living in a different location would require you to use the same goods and services in the same amounts which is untrue. If I live closer to work I drive less and hence have lower vehicle expenses for example. Also if you change locations would you want the equivalent property or would your behavior change due to location. "Quality of life" is too subjective as it depends on what values more.

In general though you need $K (adjusted for cost of living) + X (everything for all those nice extras).

The irony is that if you extend that cost of living argument, then poor people are poorer because they live in a more expensive area and should be sent to rural areas because it would be more affordable for them....

0.8% :-/

cost of living also goes into determing salary for a specific region. they don't pay as much if it's cheaper for you to live there.

Dibs: it depends. I think a bunch of other factors fall into it as well tbh. I actually would get a higher salary if I took an equivalent job in Missisippi yet the cost of living there is much lower than where I am.

there are always exceptions. but i've looked at salaries based on region in the past, and it tended to up along with the COL.

doesn't matter to me. pay me what i ask, or i don't work for ya.

@dibs well that's exactly it isn't it?:P
For me it's where I want to live and for how much. I"m sure if you through enough $$$ at me I would live in Antarctica but it's probably going to be a huge number:P

yah, well, it's still unimportant compared to a credit rating. it's not like people actually have to live off of what they earn.

the 1% possess more wealth than the bottom 150 million people combined. or another statistic that's being used, is that the 1% own 40% of the entire nations wealth. the bush tax cuts made that possible, cause they haven't held that much wealth in my life time and perhaps my parents as well. anyone that thinks the 1% hasn't had their bunghole licked the last 12 years by our government is blind cause it hasn't always been this way. and the way it's stacked up and if nothing changes, in a matter of time they will eventually control 50%, then 60%. what comes of things then? they'll own the government and pretty much everyone.

yet 40% of the 99% don't have a problem becoming mad fat cows that can afford to buy SUVs to get them to the drive-thru window.

I wonder how many children qualify as being in the "1%".

So we have no poor in rural areas? huh, who knew.

dibs watch the personal insults.. and yeah. credit rating and wealth are largely uncorrelated btw.
What always puzzled me about credit score is why people object to it being used for insurance purposes. It's the one thing you can change very easily and have considerable control over.

was technically a mass insult, since it involved the Occupy pepples.

isn't a credit score mostly composed of simply whether or not you can pay your bill on time? why would you need it for insurance purposes?

WE ARE THE 99%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!one111!!!!!!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...-movement/article2203026/
stats.

@dibs: it's predictive of other behavior. A tendancy not to pay bills on time is correlated with attention to other things and how well you look after your stuff. I've done studies where we looked at people who pay their insurance late vs claims and people who pay their insurance late claim more often and have larger claims. The difference is actually a lot larger than I thought it would be. We weren't allowed to rate based on that but we could charge a "late payment fee" to make up for it....


There is actually a very strong correlation between bad credit score and auto accident rate too.

I should note that the interest is in what is predictive of bad behavior, not why it seems to work.

might have something to do with the way insurance companies send out their bills. mine were showing up two weeks before they were due, but that might have been because i was paying the full amount instead of monthly.

meh, people who are having problems paying their bills, might just be a bit distracted.