The Myth of Middle Class Stagnation

not to mention that the iPad 2 cost the same as the iPad 1, and is significantly superior ... and thinner.

but then there are all these other charts that say the opposite. how to know which side to believe? i guess it could help if anyone on this board actually knew any middle class people. real middle class, not manhattan middle class.

They're conveniently leaving out the fact that back in the 1970s, the "Middle Class" was living a "middle class" lifestyle on just ONE income. Today's MIddle Class is barely keeping pace with their parents' lifestyle 40 years ago with TWO incomes.

I wonder why Mr. Conover's data only goes up until 2007. Did something happen in 2008 that he wanted to leave out that would discredit all the points he made? Hmm, what happened in 2008?

And one study I read recently found that most of the income gains in the middle class came from working more hours, not through higher income.

"They're conveniently leaving out the fact that back in the 1970s, the "Middle Class" was living a "middle class" lifestyle on just ONE income"

great point!

Some Socialist publication calling itself the "Wall Street Journal" says that most ofthe income gains went to the top 5%:

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/09/16/the-top-5-grabbed-most-of-the-americas-gains/

Yeah, between 2001-2007 the Middle Class took advantage of the greatest RE bubble in history to "keep up" with the corrupt and connected upper class.

Guess what happened after 2008?

Jesus man... why waste our time with this trash?

>>The share of �the bottom 50% declined from 3% to 2.5%.>>

socialist you must be upset that your piece shrunk

I'm sorry, LIC, I'm not following your logic. If median income stayed the same, you think that means that the gap between the rich and the middle class shrank. Explain?

i see, LICDope....because some shill for the kochs says that the prodctivity of our disappearing middle class has not been wrung out by the likes of the kochs, I am changed

i prefer the socialist analysis of the wall st journal, thanks

and matt is quite right---'member early cold war rhetoric about how commies would take away children and put them in day-care centers so that mothers could work?? whipped us into a damned frenzy

less well offf families often have to serve their pre-school kids up to poor day care--it's either that or go homeless

This piece is the Heritage Foundation at its best -- the greatest source of agitprop since the unlamented demise of the Comintern. The myth is that the middle class has stagnated: every statistic, and just open eyes, shows that it has declined radically.

It's not just that two incomes are necessary to get what once used to do, or that decent jobs for HS educated men have disappeared, or that the median family has the same inflation adjusted income as in 1979, or minimum wage is actually lower, or that the top 1% have taken an extra 10% of the economy since then, so that 75% of the country has gotten no benefit from economic growth for a generation (unless, of course, you consider cheap music a good trade for good jobs, food and education). People in the entire bottom 95% work harder than a generation ago and have more trouble buying the basic ordinary middle class necessities: housing, medical care, education, child care and transit.

And the consequence is constant crisis. We no longer pay people enough to buy what they produce, and so we have to find unsustainable gimmicks - ever increasing private debt, novel ways to use government to tax the middle class to subsidize the wealthy and corporations - to generate the demand we need to keep the economy moving.

"prodctivity of our disappearing middle class has not been wrung out by the likes of the kochs"

the mythical kochs and their sinister likes would not have been able to succeed in their calamitous mischief without being enabled by your democratically elected leaders. why you blame the greedy self serving business people who have no responsibility to you what so ever, and not greedy self serving politicians who have a job because you vote for them and get paid because you give them half of your salary, continues to perplex.

LICscum must feel pretty alone in this world, living among the middle class in LIC, yet despising it, and defending Millionaires who look down at him and despise him.

best is that soon LIC will be even-more-filled with middle class, many of whom will live in subsidized riverfront apts with super views, at least as nice as those LICDope paid dearly for

and these middle-class are and will continue to include large number of the the unionized working class LIC finds responsible for our current econ woes

there is justice

Go back to your shithole, say the Hail Mary prayer out loud 30 times and meditate on what you are, not what you wanna be. You may find redemption.

This thread was rather comical. From the WSJ article linked to above:

"...more than 80% of the nation’s wealth gains between 1983 and 2009 went to the wealthiest top 5%. The top 1% gained 40% of the nation’s total wealth gain, while the next 4% gained 41.5%.

The share of wealth held by the bottom 60% dropped 7.5%.

Put another way, the top 1% gained an average of $4.5 million per household, while the next richest 4% gained $1.2 million...."

Yet LIC's source cherry picks just the housing bubble years. Nice.

the middle class did catch a break.
There not at the door of the soup kitchen

yet

When future studees are down that include 2010 and 2011, the gap between the middle class and rich will be even larger.

*studies are done*

If LICC shills for the rich enough, maybe they will pay him enough money so that he can afford to move out of LIC....

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/news/economy/middle_class_income/index.htm

Middle-class income fell in the last decade

"It's official. The first decade of the 21st century will go down in the history books as a step back for the American middle class.

Last week, the government made gloomy headlines when it released the latest census report showing the poverty rate rose to a 17-year high. A whopping 46.2 million people (or 15.1% of the U.S. population) live in poverty and 49.9 million live without health insurance.

But the data also gave the first glimpse of what happened to middle-class incomes in the first decade of the millennium. While the earnings of middle-income Americans have barely budged since the mid 1970s, the new data showed that from 2000 to 2010, they actually regressed."

LICC: Take a look at the above article. They even have a graph so you will be able to understand it.

LICC is not here. He took the 7 train to grand central and is shining some several times Millionaires shoes who promise him that if he works hard, one day he'll be sitting on that chair getting all shined up!
Now take that grim of your face and keep shining bitch!