Yeah, as this chart clearly shows, the middle class has been getting killed by all that arbitrage. LOL! Do you even know what the word means? I believe that you'll believe just about anything.
Posted on 12/18/2006 8:53:12 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
...
The portion of national income earned by the top 20 percent of households grew to 50.4 percent last year, up from 45.6 percent 20 years ago; the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households received 26.6 percent, down from 29.9 percent in 1985, according to the Census Bureau.
Meanwhile, average pay for corporate chief executive officers rose to 369 times that of the average worker last year, according to finance professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California; that compares with 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976.
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(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Did you see my takedown of his "professor"? Of course he didn't respond. He'd need to use facts and they're a bit thin on the ground on his goldbug websites.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis took a longer perspective in the August issue of its "National Economic Trends." Michael Pakko used a graph to show that, "labor's share of income has averaged 70.5 percent (of national income) over the past 50 years and has remained within a narrow range of that average."
Real wages for all workers have been increasing regardless of what their portion of the national income may or may not be. The fact that CEO income has been increasing tells us only that there is a supply issue. Must be a tough and demanding job.
I'm a Republican who believes that conservatives SHOULD be concerned about income disparity, and I also believe that the 1990s were terrible for growing disparity, but this report says NOTHING! But what does this data show? That households were less likely to have multiple incomes, as single-parent households and never-marrieds became more prevalent? That massive numbers of low-income, illegal immigrants have weighed down the median incomes of the lower middle classes?
And if there is a problem, whose policies should be blamed? Reagan's conservativism? Clinton's liberalism? Bush's wishy-washiness?
That the 2nd tier (20-40%) held steady seems to disprove to me the notion that there was a crisis with a growing economic oligarchy. That the amount of wealth has grown so much since 1985 certainly disproves the notion that the lower 60% have seen their conditions worsen.
Yeah, as this chart clearly shows, the middle class has been getting killed by all that arbitrage. LOL! Do you even know what the word means? I believe that you'll believe just about anything.
You are right, I would have to go look it up. And, of course, I could go look it up. But it wouldn't change anything...
In other words. "I don't know what I'm talking about, and no I won't look up the facts, because facts won't change my mind."
Slower gains are still gains. Are you surprised that gains are lower than they were after WWII ended? Are you surprised that gains at the lower end (high school dropouts, high school grads with no college) are lower in our modern economy than they were before. Haven't you heard that college is more important than it used to be?
I almost feel sorry for him. If he did some research, he'd realize how wrong he has been. And if he couldn't be miserable, what would he do for fun?
If you got questions, the numbers are available to all for the asking.
Trends on multiple family incomes.
massive numbers of low-income, illegal immigrants
median incomes of the lower middle classes...
...a growing economic oligarchy
Bear in mind that all this "income disparity" talk may start out as a nut's & bolts issue, but it goes real quick into feeling and faith mode like some kind of goofy global warming quarrel. More on that here.
I certainly don't believe anything coming from you.
Somebody has a lot of studying to do before she earns her degree...
Perhaps I wasn't clear: my comment was pointed to those who think that high paying jobs are attained by just drifting along in life. Most people in those upper echelons of business have brains and many have worked their way up the ladder from the ground floor. No one is gonna hand those jobs to a mediocre worker.
I didn't make the chart, or didn't you read that far? You only believe things from goldbug sites. Kinda limits your access to objective information, don't you think? Or do you just like being told what you want to hear?
Because facts are harder than feelings.
Were it not for illegal immigration the bottom 20% would also be growing at the same rate as the top 20%. But having a labor pool of 10 million people who are willing to work at sub-minimum wages, often substantially so, means the rate of the bottom 20% is somewhat distorted.
If this is true, then it's got to be the fault of Chairman Mao becuase Chinese haven't hurt incomes a bit since the mid 80's (you can get your free Fed graph here)..
By the way -- we had a similar income-rate drop back in the 50's. Who's fault was that?
Yeah, but if you add 4% to the inflation rate (don't ask why you would), things would look much worse.
What’s happening today is that many parents increasingly see their children as having a more uncertain future than their own, and that see this difference in likely success as an increasing gap between the very affluent and themselves - for example that their children will have a more difficult time attending college and will graduate deeply in debt, that they will be at greater risk of financial ruin because of uninsured illness, and the like.
And IMO, conservatives ignore there real (and sometimes realistic) concern at their electoral peril - no blizzard of statistics will change the fact that such voters (many of whom identify themselves as “middle class”) increasingly look forward to the prospect of their children graduating from a second tier college (the best they can afford) tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to obtain the diploma that’s a basic requirement to even be considered for most jobs with a reasonable prospect of financial independence. Or that even if they land the job, they will be reliant on their employers for access to affordable health insurance. The proof of this is in the "unwillingness" of such voters to accept the argument that objectively they are doing well.
IMO the important political fight over these issues is not going to be between the people who want the Government to do less and those who want it to do more – as the recent behavior of both partiers demonstrates that’s already a forgone conclusion - it’s going to be between those who want the government to improve equality of opportunity (for example, by improving access to education, or by providing affordable insurance against catastrophic illness to the self employed) and those who want to improve equality of result by direct transfer payments of various sorts.
There’s a lot of room for conservative influence on the direction of America in that debate, but not if conservatives just say “work harder ‘cause everybody is getting what they deserve” in an economy where it’s increasingly hard for many hard-working families to get and stay ahead.
How should they improve access to education? Have you noticed that as the amount of government money devoted to colleges increases, tuitions increase more. The same thing happens in health care. The two fastest rising expenses for many families is education and health care, the two areas where government involvement is largest.
Do you really think more government involvement will make things better?
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