Author Topic: Incomes Collapsing in the US  (Read 2333 times)

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Offline TimG

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Re: Incomes Collapsing in the US
« Reply #15 on: February 12, 2017, 07:07:13 pm »
That's one way to summarize those graphs... an equally accurate summary would be that incomes for the bottom half grew substantially between the 1980s and 2000, but have fallen since.
1) I was addressing the suspect claim in the op. The range I quoted matches the op;
2) My argument in this thread was about how "inequality" is irrelevant. What matters is real income. And if real income is falling then that is a concern but it has nothing to with inequality. The real income of the riches quintiles fell by more during the 2008 crisis but have since recovered faster. This is largely due the massive amounts of money printed which seems to do nothing other that inflate the portfolios of the already rich.
3) There are many was to fuss with the numbers. The source I quoted is sympathetic to the notion that the poor are losing out but his data still shows a net increase over 50 years. The op claimed a decrease over the same period which is likely due to some extremely dubious statistics.

Most countries are on a path that will inevitably lead to declines in real income across the board because entitlement spending is growing faster than revenues. We are in the stage where we will be squabbling about scraps as the ship sinks. People who are wealthy enough to not depend on a particular country are not going to be affected no matter what policy makers do. If policy makers want to go after the next tier of high income earners they will be chasing a lot of public servants with rich pension plans an even richer benefit packages. IOW, the "rich" are not the type of people that are normally perceived as "rich'. It is not clear how much money can be extracted from this class of people. Whatever is extracted is not going to delay the inevitable