Nonsense.
As you can see from the data (for secretaries, with a link to 3,200 other professions included) in the above post, average incomes have soared from $3,060 in 1950 up past $28,000 by 1995, and they continue to climb today.
Nonsense.
As you can see from the data (for secretaries, with a link to 3,200 other professions included) in the above post, average incomes have soared from $3,060 in 1950 up past $28,000 by 1995, and they continue to climb today.
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!