Posted on 06/09/2005 8:35:15 PM PDT by neverdem
Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.
But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.
Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.
Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.
But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.
Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.
Since 1980...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Should the headline be "Bizzarorama?
Not only is he a very poor writer, he's an extremely poor student of history.
L
It must be all that LSD.
"Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973."
Adjusted for inflation, the intelligence of Krugamanic is now 14 points below that of the guy making pencils at the sheltered workshop.
No, it's a takeoff on medicalese, as in carcinoma, aka cancer. Sometimes an unusual, rare, bizarre diagnosis, are informally called a bizarroma by docs.
That's why I ask. LOL
When Krugman writes a loser of a column like this, does he increase or decrease the net number of people who agree with him? Or does he just like to give us indigestion??
fool
Based on what he's written here, I'd say he is a drug-addled, narcoleptic, ignoramus who is lucky not to get confused, misdirected, and lost on his way to his local Barber Shop.
Soaking the rich won't move the numbers much Paul baby. Globalization is a harsh mistress.
If things are so bad, why doesn't he strap a couple of grenades to his body, walk into his rich boss's office and demand that his rich boss at the Times give him as much money as he is making. Then to show he's serious, pull a couple of pins. I'm sure life will be so much better for him on the other side.
Goodbye.
Two words that should always raise a red flag. According to liberals ("progressives"), a progressive tax is ok, but a flat tax is "regressive" because it affects lower-income people more, since they have less discretionary income to play with.
His raw numbers are correct, well would be correct if the CPI didn't overstate inflation.
I guess, then, there was no reason for the "great society" or civil rights movement of the 60s?
Good grief what a bunch of nonsense. Lets see I was born in 1959. I was the third of FOUR children. My mom was born in 1933 my Dad in 1930. The home I grew up in had no sewer not even a septic tank till a few years ago. There was no central heating or cooling. The only heat in the house was the oven stove. One bathroom, no shower, 3 bedrooms. Iron water from a well -----had to go to the laundry in town each Saturday to wash the clothes so everything would not be the color orange. Wore hand me downs some shipped all the way from cousins in Dallas TX once a year. Dad and Mom graduated high school. He grew a few cows and cut pulpwood. Mom finally went to college (without gov. help) when the youngest was 4. Then she taught school. Dad finally built 12 chicken houses over about 40 years of hard work(no government help)All four of his children graduated college(no government help) and one went to medical school. They actually paid for us younguns to be born and when we had to go to the doctor which was rarely. No Union, Govermnet handout helped my family and I thank God they didn't try or it could have been we would still be caught in the same place waiting on people like this nut in NY City to help us poor ignorant folks from Arkansas.
Not a word about immigration and offshoring? Things are getting worse, but he doesn't mention the real causees. I do agree with him on the bankruptcy legislation. But a flat tax would help this country in ways that Krugman doesn't begin to imagine.
Because his rich boss is at Princeton University. He does his GIG for the Slimes for Pizza money.
Did you know that Princeton's endowment is large enough to educate the lowest of the lowest on the economic scale every year for the next 70 years WITHOUT collecting a dime in tuition. Krugman wouldn't even have to take a cut in pay.
Greed needs to be redefined.
Then those poorly paid professors at Montclair State University should be coming to his office strapped with explosives to their bodies demanding he give up some of his pay until theirs are equal with his.
What's with these elitist liberals? All they can see are the rich getting more than they are but not the more they are getting than everybody else.
There're always these richly paid editors at our local newspapers appointing themselves as the spokesperson for the poor -- while not letting the poor speak for themselves because what would these poor people know?
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