Mr. and Mrs. Median's $46,326 in annual income is 32% higher than their mid-1960s counterparts, when adjusted for inflation, ...
Is Mr. Van Riper really so dense that he can't see a big difference between "Mr. and Mrs Median" in the mid-60's and "Mr. and Mrs. Median" today? If he can't, here's the important. In the mid-60's, only Mr. Median was working outside the home in order to produce that income. Today, both Mr. and Mrs. Median must have jobs to make ends meet. While their annual adjusted income has increased 32%, they've had to put out 100% more work in order to make that income. When we consider that not every family is a double-income family, the increased work is probably only sixty or seventy percent higher, but the point is the same. Mr. and Mrs. Median are getting a much lower return on their effort than they were forty years ago. Working harder to get less is going to make anyone feel less optimistic about their financial future.
Later in the editorial, he makes this comment:
They also pay less tax to the federal government and have 8% more purchasing power than they did 20 years ago and 5.7% more than they had just 10 years ago.
I have a hard time believing that we're paying less in taxes than we were forty years ago. The rate on the top incomes may or may not be lower, but that rate is not what "Mr. and Mrs. Median" face. We may have 8% more purchasing power, but again, if we are having to go from one income to two incomes to get that purchasing power, we're getting a lower return than we were back then. I wonder whether the difference in purchasing power would reverse if he compared the couple of today to the one of forty years ago. What made him use an example from the 1960's for inflation adjusted income but use other examples for purchasing power? Would a comparison of purchasing power contradict his argument?
Another point that could be significant but that he doesn't address is the aging of America. As we become older and more skilled at our work, we generally command higher salaries. For the past thirty years, we've been aborting the next generation, and the editorial does mention that people are waiting longer to have children. The average age of Americans today is higher, so we should be making more money simply because we're older and more experienced in our careers. However, for the person at each stage in a career, prospects may be no better and are likely worse than they were at other points in the past.
A big point that the editorial doesn't address is the loss in benefits for people who must change companies because of layoffs. Many companies have a pension formula that includes a years of service multiplier and salary during the last two or three years of service. The employee who can work thirty years for one company will end up getting a very good pension from that company. The employee who has been forced to change companies two or three times may end up retiring with only fifteen years of service. He may have some pension coming from those other companies, but the pension from those companies will be computed based on the much lower salary he had at those early times in his career. The pension from his final company, where he rose to the highest salary, will be half what the 30-year employee will get if they both finish with the same salary.
I'm not saying that the situation is the employer's fault or that employers should pay everyone the same pension regardless of years of service. I think a years of service multiplier in the pension formula is a fair policy. However, the employee lucky enough to spend a long career with one company will do much better than the employee unlucky enough to be forced to change companies. (I realize that many knee-jerk conservatives have already stopped reading are getting ready to flame me for saying that anything about layoffs could be anything but rosy and wonderful. Thank you to all who are still actually reading.)
While I don't blame the employers for this situation, those of us who are facing much lower pensions than what our peers are getting will feel that our financial outlook is less than ideal. We see our fathers who worked thirty or so years with one company and are enjoying retirement on a comfortable pension, and we know that we aren't likely to have the same experience.
The other part of the layoff picture that the editorial doesn't address is that a high salary right now doesn't add up to an overall good financial future if we expect to face another layoff someday. Many of our fathers felt reasonably secure that their jobs would be there. They may have "saved for a rainy day," but they had a reasonable expectation that they would always have that salary. Many of us today expect that we will be unemployed again and trying to live on savings while cutting expenses and finding a new job. Those higher salaries that we are supposed to be earning tend to pale when we realize that they won't last for a career and that we will be starting over from time to time.
Maybe Mr. Van Riper is a Republican trying to spin good news in front of the election. If so, he means well, but he's still spinning the facts instead of painting an accurate picture. In the long run, victories based on spin and not fact are not good for either the country or the party.
Bill
Notice the article says "typical" without defining the term and "median" as opposed to "average". It's complete fishwrap.
The higher standard of living we enjoy today comes at a price. More time spent at work, less pensions but we now have 401Ks that empoyers pay into and that we can take with us. Yes, there are layoffs but we have the opportunity to change jobs more frequently as the economy has grown.
Life is what you make it.
I know very few if any people with a net worth of 467,000 dollars. Now I may be worth that much by retirement age, if the house is free and clear, and savings don't get used up. That is a lot of dineros.
"the "good old days" -- defined by the bulk of respondents as anywhere between the 1950s and the 1980s -"
I saw all of those years. We're better off today, by far. I'm speaking here in terms of personal well-being, not in terms of culture and intellectual growth. In those areas, we're spiralling down the drain.
I have a crazy idea. What if we as human beings only need so much "wealth", and after a certain amount of wealth, money isn't the most important aspect in our lives.
Your analysis nailed it.
My Dad was the only one who worked, my Mom either was with the kids or was a volunteer worker for charities.
I never remember my father ever going into work on weekends. He only got two weeks of vacation a year, but he got to take it religiously every year. He started work every day at 8 a.m. and was home for dinner by 5.
His firm gave him a new car every two years.
They lived in a home I and my wife could never hope to afford, and they did it on one income.
In contrast, my wife and I both work 50-60 hours a week. I usually am in 6-7 days a week, my wife works 6 days a week.
Although on paper with my seniority I am entitled to 4 weeks of vacation a year, I haven't taken a vacation in 7 years, largely because the number of workers have been cut back so far there is no one to cover my position if I were out. And I never know whether my job would still be there when I returned from vacation.
There is no way I would send my kids to public school, like my parents' generation was able to do. Instead, to get any sort of decent education, I pay $14,000 a year apiece to send my kids to private school, while still getting taxed up the wazoo to maintain the public teachers' union and retirement fund they jokingly call the public school system.
A couple of months ago I was visiting an elderly aunt of my parents' generation that I don't see very often. Knowing how hard my wife and I have to work to survive, she commented that she worried our younger generation has it much harder than they did and that we may very well be working ourselves to death before we ever get the chance to retire. Her parting comment was to "take it easy and not work so hard."
I remember two prices from the 60s: Ferrari - 15K Brick house - 15K
In case you are interested
If you stand each American in a space that is 5 ft on 4 sides (square), you have each one in a comfortable standing space. In other words, each person has a bit of room to the left and right and to the front and rear. Not too many are wider than 3 ft across, nor deeper than 3 ft deep. We add 2 feet in each dimension to get our five feet.
If we then make a row of people one thousand people across, we would stretch about one mile wide. (5280 feet = mile.) If we also make a column one thousand people deep, then we would be about a mile deep. If we fill in each row with a column, then we'd have one thousand people wide and one thousand people deep. Add that up and we've got one million people in that one square mile.
The square root of 300 = about 17.321 OR 17.321 x 17.321 = ~300.
Therefore, if we can get one million people in a one square mile area, then we can get 300 million people in their above-mentioned 5 ft area, in a square that is 17.3 miles wide and about 17.3 miles deep. (Please don't ask why we'd do this? :>)
That is about one fourth the size of the average-sized county in the average-sized state of Ohio in which I live.
In short, MATHEMATICALLY (certainly not practically) we can put the entire population of the USA in an area one fourth the size of an average county in an average state.
Heaven help the guy in the middle of that crowd who has to pee.
And of course, in reality, people are better off today by a fair amount. See Are You Better Off Today than you would have been 25 or 50 years ago?
My question is ... that $46,326 is that EACH or both together?
Throw in the low inflation of the past 20 years,
The cost of cars has increased tremendously, the cost of college has increased tremendously. I'm not sure where they get the idea of low inflation.
I think the media is to blame for a lot of America's discontent. Early TV shows were about middle class families living middle class lives. June and Ward Cleaver were not very different in their lifestyle from the average viewer. The comedians, Lucille Ball, for example, were likeable in a girl next door type of way. Famous people lived better than average Americans, but their lives were more private, not the outrageous, in-your-face-pimp-my-life way of many celebrities today.
Recently, the media has elevated class envy to an art form. TV is a constant parade of the lifestyles of the rich and famous; the shows are full of beautiful, thin people who spend lavishly. We're treated on a daily basis to homes and cars and boats and private jets the average person on the average salary will never be able to afford. One evening spent watching HGTV, the Fine Living Channel, or any of the ominipresent "beautiful people" entertainment shows is enough to depress the average person who looks around at his average life and thinks, "Is this all there is?"
Add to that the great personal and spiritual void many feel when they must move frequently for jobs, work and commute long hours away from family, or give over their lives to unsatisfactory jobs in the pursuit of material possessions that, in the end, will never satisfy. It's not hard to see why, materially, life has never been better, but Americans are more discontented than ever.
There are less traditional families (parents + children ) these days and more single households compared to the 60's. Thus despite the marked increase in individual personal income, the median houshold income has increased only modestly.
Put simply, the average Joe is earning significantly more than previously but he/she chooses to stay single:)
From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
Since 1967, the median household income in the United States has risen modestly, fluctuating several times. Even though personal income has risen substantially and 42% of all household now have two income earners, the median household income has increased only slightly. According to the US Census Bureau, this paradoxial set of trends is due to the changing structure of American households. For example, while the proportion of wives working year-round in married couple households with children has increased fron 17% in 1967 to 39% in 1996, the proportion of such households among the general population has decreased. Thus, while married couple households with children are the most economically prosperous type of household in the United, their share of the population has been dwindeling in the United States. In 1969, more than 40% of all households consisted of a married couple with children. By 1996 only a rough quater of US households consisted of married couples with children. As a result of these changing household demographics, median household income rose only slighly despite an ever increasing female labor force and a considerable increase in the percentage of college graduates.[23]
"From 1969 to 1996, median household income rose a very modest 6.3 percent in constant dollars... The 1969 to 1996 stagnation in median household income may, in fact, be largely a reflection of changes in the size and composition of households rather than a reflection of a stagnating economy."- John McNeil, US Census Bureau
So in terms of happiness and well-being, these type of articles are useless.
God is not the center point of American life now so much as personal gratification.
The problem is that despite how many "things" one accumulates, it is never so satisfying as the spiritual fulfillment one receives via a relationship with the almighty. Yet the cultural crusade against those of faith has claimed a huge number of victims who turn away from God and place their faith in "things".
What can I say? Good luck attaining spiritual fulfillment from that DVD player or Ford Mustang there, fellah.