“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a cliche because it has been true for most of history. Faux News’ John Stossel calls it a “myth.”
The truth has been documented by the Center for Budget Priorities, in A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality.
Census family income data show that the era of shared prosperity ended in the 1970s and illustrate the divergence in income that has emerged since that time. CBO data allow us to look at what has happened to comprehensive income since 1979 — both before and after taxes — and offer a better view of what has happened at the top of the distribution.
As Figure 2 shows, between 1979 and 2007, average income after taxes in the top 1 percent of the distribution rose 277 percent, meaning that it nearly quadrupled. That compares with increases of about 40 percent in the middle 60 percent of the distribution and 18 percent in the bottom fifth.
Faux News Channel tries to deny the reality of stagnant and declining middle-class incomes using cherry-picked statistics.
More truth: FDL’s David Dayen notes that the expansion in manufacturing employment in recent years has been accompanied by flat wages. No wonder the benefits of the so-called “economic recovery” are going mostly to the top.
#1 by brewski on May 29, 2012 - 4:39 pm
You just proved that it is a myth.
The only thing you proved is that the rich get richer and the poor get richer, but less so.
#2 by brewski on May 29, 2012 - 4:46 pm
BTW, your chart only shows money income after taxes.
Nevertheless, I suppose the answer to get back to where you want to be is that we need to bomb Europe and Japan into oblivion, convince the Chinese to commit mass self-genocide, tell half of the rest of the world to try communism and run themselves into the ground, then get the US spending as a % of GDP as it was under Eisenhower. If we can do all that we’re golden according to you.
#3 by Richard Warnick on May 29, 2012 - 4:52 pm
[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/5/12]
#4 by Richard Warnick on May 29, 2012 - 5:05 pm
brewski–
I will settle for a system that rewards the productivity of people who work for a living, and provides affordable health care and a safety net for hard times.
Your smug statements make it sound like nobody you know has ever been unemployed or struggling to make enough money. Unless you are truly of the 1 Percent, that’s probably not the case.
#5 by brewski on May 29, 2012 - 5:11 pm
Observing what has happened is not the same as determining why it happened.
My wife comes home every day with things her students say to her. My favorite recent one was “I don’t have time to do all this studying. It really gets in the way of other things in my life.”
Do you think this generation of entitled babies is going to be able to keep up with the Chinese and the Indians? Do you think the Chinese and Indians complain to their professors for asking them to study?
We don’t have an income gap problem. We have a skills gap and a motivation gap problem.
#6 by brewski on May 29, 2012 - 5:16 pm
You don’t want a system that rewards the productivity of people who work for a living. You want a system which guarantees that no matter what people do, that someone else will always take care of them. So if they don’t want to work too hard, or they don’t want to save, that there are no consequences for that. Or if they have a burning desire to learn about art history that they should make as much money as a chemical engineer. Or if someone takes risks and endures sacrifices and hardship to build a business that they should not reap their own rewards but they need to give it to the government so they can have parties in Las Vegas.
#7 by Richard Warnick on May 29, 2012 - 5:20 pm
brewski–
Perhaps young people today realize that if you’re not born rich, hard work probably won’t get you there. Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.
Work is not rewarded, only capital accumulation. I want to live in a country where work is worthwhile. People who get a good education today find themselves searching for a job for more than a year, on average. Then they can look forward to spending a decade or more trying to pay off student loans with their meager earnings.
#8 by brewski on May 29, 2012 - 11:14 pm
Richard,
Wrong.
So now you are defending people who don’t study and whine that things aren’t just handed to them. Nice job.
People today who have a good education don’t find themselves searching for a job for more than a year, on average. That is a lie. The people who are searching for a job for a year are the ones who didn’t get a good education. They are the ones with the degrees in art history and then resent their classmates with the degrees in math who got the signing bonus.
My wife was talking to a student who is 40 something years old. He had a degree in something fluffy 20 years ago. After struggling for 20 years he finally learned, in his words, that you need to learn something valuable to others, not just interesting to you. So he is working in becoming a pharmacist now. How fast do you think he will get a job?
All education is not equal:
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.pdf
http://www.math.duke.edu/major/whyMajor.html#salaries
#9 by cav on May 30, 2012 - 8:07 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-senator-and-jpmorgan_b_1551561.html
There’s a lot we have yet to learn about the story of Sen. Mike Lee, Tea Party Republican of Utah, and America’s largest bank. But we already know something’s very, very wrong:
Why is it that most Americans can’t get a principal reduction from Chase or any other bank, but JPMorgan Chase was so very flexible with a sitting member of the United States Senate?
#10 by Richard Warnick on May 30, 2012 - 8:58 am
brewski–
Some educational reading for you:
AP: 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed
Bloomberg: “While the jobless rate for college graduates has fallen from its peak of 7.5 percent in 2010, it remains more than double the low of 3 percent in 2008.”
Mixed news on job market for grads
Unfulfilled Expectations: Recent College Graduates Struggle in a Troubled Economy (PDF)
#11 by brewski on May 30, 2012 - 9:13 am
None of that addresses what I said at all, nor supports what you said at all.
White noise.
#12 by Larry Bergan on May 30, 2012 - 4:20 pm
Students are in the street because they realize they’ve already been raked over the coals with their college loans and and are indebted to paying off multiple wars. Of course the multiple wars never come up in the discussion. Much better to drum up a resentment of retired people, not the 400 people who have half the wealth in this counrty.
Notice how Stossel had to throw Oprah into the conversation. No wonder he ended up on Fox “news” where the people we thought had integrity go to make fools of themselves. For some reason, people find it entertaining to watch them.
#13 by brewski on May 30, 2012 - 5:04 pm
Ever wonder why college in the US costs so much in the first place?
Oxford University (foreign student fee) = $20,460
Harvard University = $37,576
How about start with a $17,000 tuition cut.
#14 by cav on May 30, 2012 - 5:50 pm
Bu-but Harvard’s sooo prestigious, if they lowered that bar, who knows what riff-raff might get in! cough(Bush)cough
#15 by brewski on May 30, 2012 - 8:40 pm
The same sort of riff raff who get into Columbia cough(Obama)cough.
#16 by Larry Bergan on May 30, 2012 - 9:42 pm
I just saw Paul, (the war in Iraq won’t cost us anything), Wolfowitz on C-Span at that wonderful think-tank, AEI. Good to know he’s still out there working for us, isn’t it?
That money we didn’t spend in Iraq could have sent everybody’s kid to college. I don’t like sarcasm, but It’s just impossible not to haul it out sometimes.
Not to mention that war on our own soil and other places against plants.