Talk:United States/Archive 75

America is NOT U.S.
Both on WP and Google america redirects to U.S. can this be fixed?Pubserv (talk) 23:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * English language usage is that "America" (without any modifying prefix or adjective) refers to the U.S. --Khajidha (talk) 00:39, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't like the outcome, but it is how it is. This would probably be more debatable on the Spanish Wikipedia. Dustin  ( talk ) 01:06, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not change from a redirect-page like this, to a disambiguation-page like this, with a bunch of different next-hop-links to "United States of America" (first on the disambig page since it *is* the most common English-language-referent), then after that in whatever order makes the most sense, North America, The Americas, Amerigo Vespucci, and so on? And hey presto, look what we have here, such a disambiguation page already exists: America_(disambiguation).  We just need consensus... here on *this* article which is the current target of the America redirect-page... that instead of being a hard-redirect to United States, that America page should instead be a hard-redirect to America_(disambiguation), and from there the readership can click on United States if that was what they wanted, or one of the other available next-hop-links, if it was not what they wanted when they types in 'America' just previously.  Personally, I'm neutral about the correct place for America to be pointed, but I'm not opposed to such a change.  And there is no reason why people cannot bangvote in an informal poll, to see whether there is local consensus for such a move.  I will add such a section below.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:19, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Informal talkpage poll, please bangvote either Suppport or Oppose or Neutral under *each* of the options given. Leave a *brief* rationale for your bangvote (a sentence or two), if you need more space, create a new talkpage subsection then wikilink to your longer explanation from your summarized-bangvote-explanation. (Rationales backed by reasonably application of wiki-policy are better than those backed by emotion.)


 * The wikilink America should be a redirect, which points to United States. (This is the status quo, which is to say, the way things already are today.  Bangvote support if you like this setup, oppose if you dislike it, neutral if you will go along with consensus.)
 * Neutral, common English usage (including British English and American English and so on) is that unqualified "America" refers to the USA, and per WP:NATURALDIS that means America can be a hard-redirect to this article about the country. Conversion from a redirect to the country, to a redirect to the disambiuation page, is not required, because the country is the primary topic people search for under the name America.  This article already has a note at the top, "[f]or other uses, see America (disambiguation)" which is sufficient as a navigation-aid. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:19, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The wikilink America should be a redirect, which points to America (disambiguation), as long as the first sentence is "America is a short form name for the United States of America" on that disambiguation-page. (This is not an uncommon usage of wikipedia, when a 'search term' has multiple meanings.  Bangvote support if you like this setup, oppose if you dislike it, neutral if you will go along with consensus.)
 * Neutral, commonly the shorthand of "American" as a way of referring to "legal citizen of the United States" is seen as politically incorrect, see WP:NPOV and WP:RNEUTRAL. More pertinently, WP:R says that "[r]edirects aid navigation and searching by allowing a page to be reached under alternative titles," but only the United States can currently be reached via the America redirect; that hinders people searching for Americas, say. WP:NATURALDIS criteria#1 permits America to redirect to America (disambiguation), because this article is *actually* titled United States, rather than titled America.  Note at the top of United States is less helpful than a disambiguation-page when the reader searches for the inherently-ambiguous term 'America'.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 01:19, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Geography of the United States
I see that the lede of our Geography of the United States article defines the geographical United States as "the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands". In light of the main United States article's lede now defining the US as including "five major territories and various possessions", this seems inconsistent. Shall we amend the wording in the geography lede to jibe with the wording in the main article? ╠╣uw [ talk ] 10:16, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ with three references in the note and discussion at Talk. The previous narrative was a misreading of the State Department FAM historical section which omitted the Northern Mariana Islands included as of 1978. The article Contiguous United States already had states, territories and possessions mentioned as had Territories of the United States. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:52, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, THV. I've made a couple of further small tweaks as well.  When time permits I'll pore through the rest of the article and identify other areas that might need similar attention.  ╠╣uw [ talk ]  14:19, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Contingency resources
The Wall Street Journal reports, "household finances remain fragile: 47% said they wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency expense or would have to borrow money or sell something, and 31% said they went without some form of medical care in the last year because they couldn’t afford it." I propose including those facts. EllenCT (talk) 15:18, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTNEWS WP:RECENT This is not a newspaper. Capitalismojo (talk) 22:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * would it be better to use the same triennial Fed Survey of Consumer Finances to show the relative wealth of minority women over time? It looks bad for households but it is much worse when you look at the wealth of individual minority women. EllenCT (talk) 18:13, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you'd like to start a new section on what you'd like to add (different material not from this WSJ article). Capitalismojo (talk) 22:03, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, I will, but this is the last time I intend to let you avoid my questions. EllenCT (talk) 05:32, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: relative wealth of Americans
I propose including: 47% of Americans said they either would not be able to cover a $400 emergency expense, or would have to borrow money or sell something to do so. 31% of Americans said they could not afford medical care in the past year. White households had 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times in 2010. In 2010, the median wealth of American single black women was five dollars. EllenCT (talk) 13:29, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose as excessive detail for this article on a niche topic already given undue emphasis. Items like these belong on more topically focused articles, along, of course, with plenty of other material so the coverage is full, accurate, and devoid of POV soapboxing. VictorD7 (talk) 17:44, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The relative wealth of Americans is most certainly not a niche topic, having been reflected in this article before either of us started editing it. EllenCT (talk) 20:15, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It most certainly is a niche topic. The article covers many niche topics. The problem here is that you're wanting to pile more and more details relating to subtopics of that niche topic, and a niche topic that many editors have complained already receives undue emphasis here. Wikipedia is structured so that such extreme details can be presented and expounded on (accurately and neutrally) in subtopical articles. We're not supposed to be shoving everything into this broad country article. VictorD7 (talk) 00:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Why do you consider these headline points of three year Fed Survey of Consumer Finance studies "extreme details"? I would prefer knowing the median wealth of minority women from the most recent Survey instead of 2010's. Has that been published anywhere? EllenCT (talk) 02:47, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Because this isn't an article about the "wealth of minority women". It's the United States article. Measuring "wealth" is a tricky, controversial subject in itself (income is much easier, and even that's not without problems), though that's another discussion. VictorD7 (talk) 22:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

RFC on relative wealth of Americans
Should the article include these statements: ? 19:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) 47% of Americans said they either would not be able to cover a $400 emergency expense, or would have to borrow money or sell something to do so.
 * 2) 31% of Americans said they could not afford medical care in the past year.
 * 3) White households had 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times in 2010.
 * 4) In 2010, the median wealth of American single black women was five dollars.


 * Support including all as proposer, because these figures provide useful, informative, and important insights into the economic status of Americans of value far beyond the savings from omitting them. EllenCT (talk) 19:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support sensible addition. -  Cwobeel   (talk)  19:13, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose - These are random (or cherry-picked), extremely niche details that don't even come close to belonging in the United States article. Such materials belongs on sub topic articles where they can be fully and neutrally covered at the appropriate detail level. The first two are especially preposterous. As for the last two, a proposal breaking down median income for every ethnic group (not cherry-picked ones only focusing on two races) might be reasonable, but "net wealth" is a nebulous concept defined differently by different sources and prone to extreme fluctuations even when the definition is held constant. Since we don't currently even have a racial income breakdown, we shouldn't skip that more commonsense addition and leap to "net wealth" material of more dubious worth.


 * I'll add that the RFC initiator, EllenCT, still has another RFC up, currently being rejected by respondents, as part of her larger, sustained effort to soapbox on the "inequality" issue. I hope this isn't part of a "flood the zone" with RFCs strategy as this Talk Page is already insanely crowded, and that's not conducive to collaborative editing. VictorD7 (talk) 02:54, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose That type of information is ridiculous for this article. How about if I post a photo of some obese low income person eating a bag of chips and drinking a soft drink and label it "Low income in the U.S." alongside some bony starveling in a third world country. That's a true illustration of "relative wealth."Phmoreno (talk) 03:32, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, EllenCT needs to move all of this excessive POV crap to the respective main articles, not just in this article but in some of the other ones she's degraded with all of her garbage. People like her are destroying Wikipedia.Phmoreno (talk) 03:39, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose The first two seem to be hearsay and the last two are obscure as to how the numbers are arrived at or why they are meaningful, other than some people seem to have a lot more than others. The last, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is especially sensationalistic, singling out a most extreme number (married or co-habitating black women have a median net worth of $31,500) for their headline. Dhtwiki (talk) 11:41, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose Sparse data listed, no citations. If we're going to include the wealth disparity, a *lot* more information, with citations would have to be listed that would make an entire section absent for every other nation's article. Are we also going to add in the wealth distribution of Qatar as well as every other nation on the planet? I'd support a separate, linked in this article, article on income disparity within the United States - oh, wait, there is one. Add a link in the economics section in a way that doesn't disrupt the section or flow and add current data, with citations in Income inequality in the United States.Wzrd1 (talk) 01:05, 3 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Wzrd, and Victor. Weakly ref'd. Capitalismojo (talk) 01:34, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

This issue was dealt with in the history of economic thought. Classical economists recognized that people varied in propensity to consume versus save and invest. They also reasoned that if wealth were redistributed, after a while the same people who were wealthy would again be wealthy and the same people who were poor would eventually be poor again. This is not to say that people with no savings aren't typically low income, but articles with statistics on peoples savings generally do not analyze what people do with their money. Recommended reading Myths of Rich and Poor by Cox and Alm.Phmoreno (talk) 12:30, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

In a change of mind I'm proposing that we include some of this information, but only if we can show an international comparison. People should know that Chinese households, who have a fraction of the income of U.S. households, save 30% of their income.Phmoreno (talk) 17:02, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

The Oppose count is clearly the majority by a large margin. Time to close this discussion.Phmoreno (talk) 01:27, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No it is not. This RfC was only opened five days ago. I haven't personally taken a stance on this issue, but give other people time to respond. I'm not saying it will, but sometimes, consensus can dramatically shift from one side to the other. Dustin  ( talk ) 01:38, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The idea that someone reading a general article about a country wouldn't ordinarily want to learn about the relative wealth of minority women is absurd. It's the summary measure of the country's de facto racist and sexist outcomes. The idea that it is biased or cherry picked is manufactured to try to hide the bias of censoring it. EllenCT (talk) 12:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If people really wanted to learn about it, we would be seeing more IP edits that attempted to insert similar material. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:00, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be true if the article wasn't semi-protected. Can you give any examples of general tertiary source articles of about this length on countries which don't include detailed discussion of relative wealth of women and minorities? The CIA Factbook dwells on topics pertaining to severely disadvantaged minorities when they exist because they are so politically destabilizing. EllenCT (talk) 15:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Even with this article being semi-protected, which I hadn't taken into account, IP users can make requests on the Talk page (they can even edit here, in the not unusual case that their IP account has the requisite number of edits). Other Wikipedia country articles have data on wealth inequality, but which are not likely to focus so schematically on a particular race and gender as you have. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:12, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * One, blacks aren't the only "minority" group in the country. Two, black women are hardly representative of women in general. Three, different outcomes do not result from "racism" or "sexism", any more than Asians having higher incomes results from racism. Four, your assumption otherwise, and your assertion that it's important for this article to include an alleged gauge of "racism" and "sexism" shows your own bias and POV agenda, which violates WP:SOAPBOX policy. Five, I don't recall ever having seen a racial income or wealth breakdown in another Wikipedia country article. Certainly the major ones I've just resampled like United Kingdom, Canada, France, and others don't have them. So it would be bizarre indeed to assume readers were expecting to see such a breakdown on the US and only on the US page. VictorD7 (talk) 18:52, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Frankly, it seems a little undue in this article. Maybe put it in Poverty in the United States? NickCT (talk) 17:11, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Clearly chery-picked; why don't you also include there is one shark-attack fatality every two years while you're at it? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 23:37, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Summoned by bot. The relevant section does need additional information on the household income of the lower 50% of Americans to balance the claim that "Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD nations", which can be misleading to a reader without a background in economics or knowledge of income inequality in the United States. We can do far better than this information, however. Something like this would serve the article far better, which discusses BLS stats and other reliable numbers. ~ RobTalk 00:10, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The line you quote is immediately followed by a comparative median income stat (per the OECD; a snapshot of the "middle class"), and those items are already more than "balanced" by extensive discussion about inequality through most of the rest of the section, along with material on poverty. In fact numerous editors have expressed valid concerns that there's already an undue emphasis on inequality. As for the state of the middle class, I'm not sure the piece you link to (with its random anecdotes and unfocused style) has much useful to this article, but there is already some discussion in the section and elsewhere on the page about the economic downturn in recent years, and its impact on the entire population, so this seems to be a solution in search of a problem. VictorD7 (talk) 18:52, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I somehow managed to miss the median despite reading that twice. It's good as-is then. That source was as an example of types of stats to quote if it needed to swing that direction, not as an example of what to insert into the article. Irrelevant now, either way. ~ RobTalk 19:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Clarify This RFC is confusing. What section are we discussing here? Is it Income, poverty and wealth? If so, I think the whole section needs to be rewritten. The statements above will just confuse more. Irrelevant information blurs the main topics: income (current, trend etc.), poverty and wealth (current, trend, factors contributing to the trend). There is also no mention and no link to the major United States housing bubble. This was definitely one of the factors for the current poverty and wealth ratio. There are references such as Chain of Blame book or The Road to Collapse and some other articles Google search results. I support listing the statistics as in the statements under discussion but only after the main topics are clarified. Otherwise, the average reader will be confused. Gpeja (talk) 23:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose - those statements are not phrased to fit into an article, they are just loose factoid items. Also this article does not seem the right venue for that kind of material or blogs the place to cite.  Things like this might better fit as cites in articles on that topic such as Income inequality metrics or Economic inequality, and really I'd think it better if US states were part of a list of all nations rather than by-nation tidbits such as Income disparity in Malaysia.  Markbassett (talk) 15:34, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Markbassett and Gpeja, but a moral support. I don't fully understand where the proposer wants them included and as they stand they are just loose facts. I do believe that racially based income disparity is notable, particularly in the united states, however I don't think this proposal is fully formed enough to support inclusion, and there are other articles that could host the information, or a new article created if it's notable enough. Until the proposer can give a more concrete idea of where and how this information would be used in this article, I can't support. Wugapodes (talk) 12:29, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep Wouldn't omitting facts be cherry-picking? In reality aren't FoCuSandLeArN and VictorD7 the actual cherry-pickers because they prefer leaving certain facts out! MurderByDeadcopy"bang!" 21:54, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, because every article leaves facts out. No article contains the sum of human knowledge. The term "cherry-picking" is useful when there appears to be no consistency or legitimate rhyme or reason for including some facts but not others, particularly when a section's general detail level would being greatly exceeded with a couple of seemingly random items, often proposed for emotive impact to further a soapbox agenda. VictorD7 (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So, what you are saying is it's okay to cherry-pick as long as you're doing the cherry-picking? Neither the cherry-picking nor the WP:SOAPBOX accusation are good arguments here. What I'm saying is if you believe that strongly against adding these facts, pick better reasons, instead of using two of the laziest fallacies around. Fallacies that can be directly turned around back on the person using them. I understood that WP:PURPOSE should include the sum of all human knowledge, and not exclude certain races or genders. Explain exactly why one should exclude race and gender. MurderByDeadcopy"bang!" 16:15, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, that's not what I said at all. If you're too lazy to read the posts you respond to, I'm not sure why you bother responding. VictorD7 (talk) 20:54, 15 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose As said above, racially based income disparity is a notable topic which is probably significant enough to be included in some form, but some of these statistics are so obscure they don't deserve inclusion in a broad summary article like this one. For instance, the wealth of single black women is an extremely specific fact focusing on a demographic that is small and doesn't necessarily deserve special focus over other, equally important demographics. The third fact, for instance, might merit inclusion, given its broad applicability and evident importance, but this proposal seems overtly specific and of questionable relevance. Rwenonah (talk) 00:24, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose weakly referenced and too granular for such a high level article. They could be used in sub articles if there's more substantial sources.Mattnad (talk) 20:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC) Mattnad (talk) 20:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 August 2015
The type of governement for the US is A Federal Republic or Constitution based Federal Republic. This article also states that. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2128.html

Rklesla (talk) 02:32, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Infobox already says Federal presidential constitutional republic. The very first sentence of the lede says "The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic". What are you requesting be changed? Cannolis (talk) 12:12, 19 August 2015 (UTC)