"Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6Wn19.62$dn3.25537 at news20.bellglobal.com...
> > In 1965, American family incomes were five times that of Japan, but now
> > they're a half to a third of Japan's. If you want a REAL standard, use
> the
> > yen rather than the "consumer price index" (though they'll produce the
> same
> > results, since Japan uses the gold standard).
>> But you posted that Japanese family income was 1/3 of American family
> income. Were you mistaken there?
>>
WHAT? Read that post again. Better yet, here are the exact figures:
A) Japan's median household income for the month of December 1999, at the
height of the "Asian economic crisis", was $9,819
http://christianparty.net/japan1999income.htm
B) The US median household income per month in 1996 was $2,931
http://christianparty.net/familyincomes.htm or
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/mednhhld/ta2.html
Please tell us how you "interpreted" this to mean "Japanese family income
was 1/3 of American family income". It's the other way around. To be
precise, $9,819 / $2,931 = 3.35, which means that Japan's household incomes
are more than THREE TIMES higher than ours.
AND--they spent only 9% for government, while we spent 42%.
AND--they SAVED 43% of that, whereas we saved NOTHING, and in fact had to
dip into whatever is left of "personal savings" in order to pay the interest
on the debts.
This doesn't require algbra or probability and statistics to comprehend, you
know. ALL you need to know is addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division!
Can you handle it?
John Knight
