Not according to the inflation-adjusted graph in post #15.
That graph shows average **real** salaries and wages increasing by .2% per year even in the very worst periods of inflation and wages.
For example, the poverty level income is around 14K. However if you factor in various indices and financial realities, including things like the CPI and inflation, it should factor in much higher than that! 14K is a joke. Even, to be honest, in major cities an income of 35K would be a sustainance level.
The poor are getting poorer! Just look at the job situation! Most people look at it based on the unemployment index ......but totally ignore the UNDER-employed index! That is the real killer! People who are workign several strata beneath what they are truly worth .....yet because they are 'employed' they are not taken into consideration in any statistical study.
And by the way statistics can be easily manipulated one way or the other. Anyways..........
The average family has a higher dollar income than a family in the 1950s .....but their PURCHASING POWER (another factor your graphs ignore) is by far lower! Their JOB POTENTIAL has also gone down the drain (there is rampant outsourcing of white-collar jobs to places where the pertinent costs are less), meaning that the competition for good jobs has exploded .....globally! You are not just competing against Joe Blow from Michigan but also against Chinese Cho from Hong Kong, Slim Siam from Singapore, Pritesh Shah from Calcutta, and Simon Assegai from South Africa!
As for the rich they are getting richer. The average CEO earns several hundred % more than the average worker compared to a CEO from a couple of decades ago! And because of their connections they can ensure their offspring get good jobs (even with all the outsourcing certain jobs, the high-octane ones, remain in the US .....and the rich ensure their kids go to the right schools and know the right people so as to increase their chances of being a big-shot. Why do you think there is such competition to get into Baby-Ivies ....essentially elite nursery and kindergarten schools? Jack Grubman for example commited fraud and enhanced the profile of a useless stock just to get a recommendation for his kid to go to an elite preparatory school! Why?)
And the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider! And as the gulf widens the middle class gets thinned.
And the one of the true wonders of the US (which anyone who has travelled globally can attest to) si that it is one of the few places in the globe that has a TRUE middle-class.
That middle-class may be facing extinction .....protracted yes, but seemingly inevitable!
Not according to the inflation-adjusted graph in post #15.
That graph shows average **real** salaries and wages increasing by .2% per year even in the very worst periods of inflation and wages.
But won't it always get wider? How can it not get wider? There will always be bums and other losers who make zero. There will always be people in the black market who report making zero. Are other people supposed to stop working so that the gap between income groups doesn't widen?
Secondly, the whole "rich get richer" thing is not really what the statistics say. Take some star baskeball kid from Harlem who is poor. When he gets signed to a 50 million dollar contract, does the income of "poor" people in the statistics go up? No, he is shifted to the rich section, and the statistics show "the rich getting richer" when in reality the poor got rich. The point being that these statistics assume that it is the same group of people in each bracket all the time. It is not.