271
votes
Accepted
Are people of Nordic Nations "happier, healthier" with "a higher standard of living overall than Americans"?
These statements are absolutely supported by studies.
In the World Happiness Report ranks countries according to various life measures. It is by far the most widely used and widely reported measure ...
- 57.7k
238
votes
Accepted
Are there 96 million workers in the US who want a job and can't get one?
Short Answer
No, this is not accurate. While there are about 96 million people not in the labor force, this includes
retirees who say they do not want a job,
stay at home moms and dads who say they ...
- 10.2k
195
votes
Accepted
In the American west—the world of cowboys and cowhands—was ammunition traded for alcoholic “shots” of a drink?
The answer seems to be no on all accounts.
In general, Snopes says:
Although the meme is of recent origin, Internet mentions of this alleged historical fact date to at least 2003. Significantly, ...
- 32k
181
votes
Accepted
Did Amazon pay $0 in US taxes in 2018?
When Bernie Sanders claimed Amazon didn't pay federal income taxes in 2017, Snopes wrote a helpful article:
In regards to U.S. federal income taxes, the claim that Amazon paid none in 2017 is almost ...
- 32k
161
votes
Are people of Nordic Nations "happier, healthier" with "a higher standard of living overall than Americans"?
DJClayworth's answer is right, but I would like to add on one remark in the question that that answer didn't address: "especially those at the bottom of the economic scale".
As DJClayworth's argued, ...
- 1,485
135
votes
Accepted
Did Germany produce so much renewable electricity on May 8th 2016 that their power prices went negative?
This is pretty much true, and has happened multiple times in the past. In fact, they were introduced in the German intraday market in 2007.
For example, the same situation occurred in May 2014, when ...
- 18.7k
116
votes
Do the 26 richest billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people?
Short Answer: True.
Every year, in time for Davos (i.e. the Annual Meeting for the World Economic Forum), Oxfam releases a report about the state of inequality. Here's a link to their latest. ...
- 1,176
115
votes
Accepted
How accurate are these nine charts of the economy under the Obama Administration?
Note that the date ranges of the graphs seem to be cherry-picked, possibly in order to create the appearance of a trend, hide a continuing trend, or make trends seem much more dramatic than they ...
- 10.2k
102
votes
Accepted
Do airlines in North America make around $10 profit per customer?
TL:DR
United makes about $9.50 per passenger.
Detailed:
United Airlines Q4 and full year 2016 performance results offer a great starting point for these calculations.
We can see that United ...
- 2,091
101
votes
Accepted
Does fossil fuels use since 1990 account for half of all the fossil fuels used in history?
True
More detailed data confirm the claim.
This chart is taken from https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels ; most data there comes from the published paper:
Vaclav Smil (2017). Energy Transitions: ...
- 2,001
99
votes
Accepted
As of February 2019, were US wages rising at the "fastest pace in decades"?
No.
As vague as the claim is, there does not appear to be any angle to take in which it is true.
Looking at the decades:
Wages in the United States increased 4.20 percent in November of 2018 over ...
- 44.1k
99
votes
Accepted
Were a large fraction of US Dollars in existence printed since 2020?
The sensationalist claims you are seeing are from people who are either ignorant of economics (even at a fairly basic level) or are deliberately trying to mislead you.
Let's consider some of the wide ...
- 57.7k
90
votes
Accepted
Did Donald Trump get America's GDP growth to 4.2%?
The second-quarter GDP growth at the annualized rate is indeed at 4.2% (up from 2.2% for the first quarter of 2018), according to CNBC, based on stats from the US department of commerce.
CNBC ...
tim♦
- 52k
85
votes
Was there no tax before 1913 in the United States?
The plain meaning is false: there was taxation before 1913. However if you want to play games with words then you can define "earnings" as "income after all expenses and taxes other ...
- 16.6k
79
votes
Accepted
Is the presidential family net worth growth/loss portrayed in this infographic true?
Yes, but it is an unfair comparison.
According to Snopes, the figures are close to the official estimates, but it makes no sense to compare former two-term presidents like Clinton and Obama to Trump, ...
- 1,821
79
votes
Accepted
Do 643,000 Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills?
Snopes has already tackled this.
Using some very specific analyses, one could make the case that (at least within the last several years) about 643,000 Americans declared bankruptcy annually due to ...
- 57.7k
78
votes
As of February 2019, were US wages rising at the "fastest pace in decades"?
It's a vague claim because it doesn't specify over what interval (monthly or yearly), real versus nominal, hourly wages or weekly wages.
However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 11 January ...
- 108k
69
votes
Accepted
Did the UK slip to sixth largest world economy from fifth, less than 24 hours after the EU referendum vote?
It's impossible to definitively prove: GDP is calculated annually, and compared based on purchasing power, rather than currency fluctuations - countries can't officially change position like this ...
- 8,930
65
votes
Does China control 85% of the supply of rare metals used in lithium batteries?
...but China only has 37% of the world's reserves
Michael Karnerfors has provided evidence that China produces 95% of the world's rare earth elements. However, China does not hold that much of the ...
- 1,103
65
votes
Do 643,000 Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills?
But more striking is the fact that all of these other countries
supposedly have no one going bankrupt from medical bills. Are these
claims true?
Not for Canada.
There's a claim on this site -- ...
- 3,021
61
votes
Has the distribution of income and wealth in the USA got much more skewed towards the rich in the last 4 decades?
According to Pew Research, the difference in median income classed by income strata, expressed in 2018 dollars, from 1970 to 2018, has skewed hard toward the rich, with both the middle and the poor ...
- 678
58
votes
Does Hamas divert humanitarian aid donations towards the military budget?
Yes, Hamas uses donations that are meant for civilian and humanitarian aid toward military use. We don't have the exact amounts, and we will likely never have, but there are clear evidence that it did ...
- 33.3k
57
votes
Accepted
Would the median household income in the USA be $140K and mean net worth $800K if wealth were evenly distributed
In the 4th quarter of 2020 the net worth of US households was $122,886,624 million.
The number of US households was 128.451 million.
Therefore, the mean net wealth was $956,681
Total personal income ...
- 108k
55
votes
Is austerity in the UK responsible for "120,000" extra deaths?
That new report (Effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in England: a time trend analysis) is absolutely in line of prior research. The mortality rises across the board ...
- 44.1k
55
votes
Did the USA increase oil imports from Russia after the Ukraine invasion?
[...]is it true that USA is increasing it's crude oil imports from Russia year-over-year
No.
Before we get to the technical answer, first let's point out the lies by omission.
The US imports very ...
- 20.4k
54
votes
Is the UK lorry driver shortage unrelated to Brexit? Do EU countries have equal or greater shortages?
As of today, it doesn't appear to be the case that Germany is suffering from a similar fuel shortage as the UK, and it's not affected by a "driver crisis" as severe as the one in the UK. ...
- 9,508
53
votes
Did only one banker in the US go to prison for the Financial Crisis of 2007-08?
Only one Wall Street banker (a trader) went to jail. Other people, who could be considered bankers, were also jailed. No Wall Street CEOs were jailed.
Financial Times, August 9, 2017:
In the US ...
- 144k
52
votes
Accepted
Did the US spend 7 trillion in the Middle East?
The statement is rather vague. Spending since when? Which expenditures count (cost for wars, cost for foreign aid, ...)? What counts as the middle east? And of course it doesn't factor in any ...
tim♦
- 52k
49
votes
Did only one banker in the US go to prison for the Financial Crisis of 2007-08?
90 bankers were convicted, of which 62 went to prison:
Edward Woodard (conspiracy to commit bank fraud, false entry in a bank record, unlawful participation in loans, false statements to a ...
- 108k
49
votes
Do the 26 richest billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people?
That statistic is at least plausible, and likely true. Children have essentially no wealth, so to start out the richest are already ahead of about 25% of the world (about 1.9 billion people) simply by ...
- 1,671
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible