Gotham’s one percent earns a third of the entire city’s personal income. That’s almost twice the proportion for the rest of the country. But such class disparity is becoming the norm; in the tech haven of San Francisco, which has the worst levels of inequality in California, the top 5% of households earn an average of $808,105 annually, compared with $16,184 for the lowest 20%.
Where will immigrants settle? The stereotypical pattern was that hard-working immigrants would come to the major metro areas, live in tenements, and then climb the economic ladder. It seems as though that might be more difficult today.
The lowest 20% in San Fran make $16,000 a year? California has a $12 an hour minimum wage so the bottom 1/5th of the population averages 1,300 work hours then (less since that is the minimum wage)? Clearly this is once again ignoring transfers which always exacerbates the gap, pay Jim $100 and then take $20 and give it to John and then claim that Jim made $100 and John made zero or tax income and capital and transfer the gains while saying that the top 1% own all the capital and the bottom 10% own none while the bottom 10% enjoy the benefits of ownership (without the risk).
Not to go Steve Sailer here but the bottom 20% in income aren’t immigrants moving to cities for work and anecdotally that dream is still alive, last week we showed our rental to an immigrant who was living with his two brothers. With actual pay stubs to prove his income we could see he was working 2 jobs and was averaging 60 hours a week and ~$75,000 a year- during a pandemic with 12 million people out of work there are still signs of that old ethic.
Interesting data, I’d like to spread it, where does San Francisco data come from?
The stereotypical pattern was that hard-working immigrants would come to the major metro areas, live in tenements, and then climb the economic ladder. It seems as though that might be more difficult today.
There are many metro areas where that works just fine. Going to San Francisco or a handful of other grossly overpriced cities is probably not the best bet though. And, as the article points out, some of the highest income earners seem to be bailing out of those cities already–which I assume will accelerate if Joe Biden’s proposed tax increases are passed (a 12% CA income tax rate pinches a lot harder when your marginal rate is already over 50% just with federal income and FICA/Medicare taxes).
“a 12% CA income tax rate pinches a lot harder.”
12% of a high income is a lot of money. Obviously it creates a strong incentive for big earners people to move out. That generates selection pressure. Those big earners who stay in California are doing the kind of work that can only earn that much when being done in California – the most dependent on physical proximity to sectoral centers of gravity and economies of agglomeration.
One would expect the gradual disappearance of any industry in which the product can be shipped far away and which doesn’t require highly talented people working and networking together in close proximity. Maybe not so gradual.
Do these various income-inequality stats include asset gains? What about unrealized asset gains? If not, they are essentially useless.
Reminder that Pareto distributions are normal. Wealth, along with anything else significant you care to measure, will always have this highly unequal power law distribution. Likewise it’s something like one county uses 50% of America’s fresh water. Even if you went all extreme and banned water use in specifically that county, the next one would make up something like 40% of the remainder.
Relatedly, marginal tax rates of 90% have already been tried. It causes the rich to appear poorer for tax reasons. They don’t become poor in reality. The problems of the poor aren’t caused by lack of money, but rather the reverse. Their problems cause, among other things, poverty. Giving them money. e.g. via a lottery win, does not cause them to stop being fundamentally poor.
I expect non-poor immigrants to not migrate in the first place. They succeed just fine in their own countries and don’t see any need to start over in a new one. If you’re a successful type of person, the deal America offers is more money in exchange for lower social status, and as far as I know there is nobody who wants that deal. The typical immigrant is a failure in their own country for whatever reason and has nothing to lose.
Due to the laws of property and control, some specific individual is in control of American immigration. Neither of us has ever heard of their name, but they must exist in the same way a triangle must have corners.
This person is well aware the median immigrant is a failure, and that’s why they support open borders. Failures vote blue, and they want more blue voters. If the situation somehow changed and immigrants started voting red, the borders would be shut down so fast your change blindness would kick in.
Your generalization that immigrants to America are failures in their native lands is false. I would bet that, if immigrants from Central America are excluded, the average immigrant is above the average in status in his native country. This is true for Hindus, Chinese, Jamaicans, Haitians, sub-Saharan Africans, Egyptians, and probably many other groups. Note that Hindus, who have one of the highest incomes of any American sub-population, vote Blue even more consistently than that other affluent group, the Jews. They’re elite in India; they quickly become elite in America, which has a richer, more powerful elite. India’s average IQ is ~82; our Indians are not average Indians. Why do smart Indians come to America? Come on, $$$. Why they vote 90% Blue I don’t fully understand, but it is so. Also: our above average Jamaicans or Haitians are still below average relative to Americans–and therefore vote Blue.
“If we exclude over half of all immigrants, your hypothesis is false.”
Yeah okay buddy.
I hope this was insecurity about your ingroup bona fides, and not an insult to my intelligence.
Though it can also be funny. “If we exclude over half of the temperature, fire is not hot.” Heehee. What other amusing things can we prove with this epistemic technique?
Maybe you wanted to talk about how a sub-one-page comment can’t capture every nuance of a global phenomenon? I mean, sure. That’s true. Brahmin something something ocean filter something? It’s less than 1/20th of the total immigration population, so I don’t particularly care.
It seems overdetermined to me that immigrant Brahmin vote left.
1: they will be the lower half of Brahmindom at the highest.
2: it is the pragmatic political move. Cozy up to your new government.
3: They already consider themselves Americans and follow American culture. You can tell because they assimilate; they have already assimilated. World empire is disgustingly monotonous.
4: East Asians are much more conformist, and conformism in America is leftism.