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Getting better all the time

Submitted by Jon Henke on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 08:02
in

Democrats have excelled at creating the impression that wages have been stagnant or even declining in recent decades (which is inaccurate), so this sort of thing is important to emphasize. We really are getting richer. (bullet points added for clarity)

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this Census report on household income from 2006.  What's really interesting is to look at the percentage of households in each income category and how that's changed over time.  If the prophets of doom and decline and rising inequality are right, we would expect to see, I'd think, lots more rich households and lots more poor ones as the supposed gap widens.  Some prophets of doom might expect to see fewer households in the upper brackets as the highest income categories are dominated by a few people getting very, very rich.

The reality, as it turns out, is different. 

  • From 1980 to 2006, the percentage of US households earning $100,000 or more (in constant 2006 dollars) grew from 8.6% to 19.1%.
  • The percentage between $75k and $100K grew from 10.3 to 11.3 percent. 
  • At the other end, the percentage under $15K fell from 16.6% to 13.4% and
  • [T]he percentage between $15K and $34K fell from 26.2% to 23.3%.
  • Thus all three categories below $35K fell a total of 6.1 percentage points. 

The middle classes fell too, though by less.   The sum total across the $35K to $75K categories fell by 5.4 percentage points.  In other words:  the net movement of households was an 11.5 percentage point gain in households above $75K and a net reduction of 11.5 percentage points in houses below $75K.  So the percentage above $75K rose from 18.9% to 30.4%.  That is, it increased by over 50%. Let me repeat that:  over 30% of US households in 2006 earned above $75K compared to under 20% in 1980.  Over the same period, the percentage of US households earning under $35K fell from 42.8% to 36.7%.  Fewer households are poor, fewer are middle class, and a hunk more are above $75K.

 

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Thank you Clinton

Submitted by KJ on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 10:44.

You'll also notice that the majority of those gains took place between 1990 and 2000, with smaller gains from 1980 to 1990, larger gains from 1990 to 2000, and regression from 2000 to 2006.  Here's the breakdown:Under 50K dropped 4% from 1980 to 1990, dropped 5% from 1990 to 2000, and rose .5% from 2000 to 2006 (and this is before a very large recession which will undoubedly make things worse).  Thank you for further discrediting the Bush years and movement conservatism. 

Couldn't this be due almost entirely to

Submitted by Mead50 on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 11:20.

the rise in the number of dual income households - in other words, two people are now working to produce a bit more income than one person used to earn on his own?

Jon please!!!!!

Submitted by gunthestops on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 11:26.

Jon---do you have info on income and net worth from 2006 to 2009---lol--- that is a cliff dive you don't want to talk about.  Also during the 8 years of Bush domestic puchase power of our money (not inflation stats from the BLS) fell by about 30% so all those that moved up into the 100k income range did not gain anything---in most cases they lost ground. 

But please go on and keep telling yourself how good things were under Bush!!!!

 

another way of looking at it

Submitted by bob on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 16:18.

I found the median income interesting.

Median as you know means that 50% of values are higher than the median and 50% values are lower.  So despite the growth in the high end this number over 26 years basically didn't grow.  It went from 41000ish to 48000ish.  Divide that by the 26 year period and basically someone who began in the 50% and ended in the 50% got an annual payraise of about $270 per year. or about $22 per month or $5 per week or 15 cents per hour.   Give or take. 

So now let's think about a few costs for someone who makes 48000 a year versus 40,000. Not a bad salary I must say. 48000 is about 16,000 MORE than my sister currently makes at a little regional bank in PA.  She's single though. No kids.  Livin' la vida loca, well not really but she's not starving either.  But anyway.  Hypothetically let's say that there's a kid.  Wants to go to college.  That 15 cents an hour sure comes in handy with the increase in tuition since 1980.  How about medical costs?  Up or down since 1980?  Let's talk about the price of milk? Higher or lower you think?  Gas prices? Up or down? Been to a bookstore lately? Paid that $10. for a stupid paperback?  Let's talk technological change and its impact on society.  Laptop. Cell phone, cable, internet access. Add it up.  Laptop: $400 per year assuming a 3 year lifespan (Ooops more than that raise we got!) cellphone (40 per month=480 per year. -get rid of that land line!) cable ($50 per month=600 per year. internet access (30 per month=360 per year) Of course you won't starve if you don't have internet access, but pretty hard for your kid to do homework without. Be a HUGE competitve disadvantage.) 

Redumbicans forget that we're not living in the age of Reagan.  Things have changed, mostly for the good. They're more complex than the leave it to beaver land that their sheep romanticize about .  There's more demands on kids and families than there ever were and despite claims to the contrary, life stuff is simply more expensive.  End of story. 

Let's get back to that median number. If so many people got that much richer, why didn't it move more?  It basically stayed the same over a quarter century. It moved  up less than 1% per year.  Why?  Why was it higher in 2000 than in 2006?  What happened? 

oh yeah. The republicans happened.

 

 

 

 The republicans must live on

Submitted by In between on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 20:27.

 The republicans must live on another planet. With factories closing and globalization, with cities and states going broke, with a near depression and loss of jobs, with nothing invested in our future as our jobs went overseas, it takes a lot of guts to say wages went up. 

I was lucky to leave a factory in time, others have lost their jobs to the Mexicans. That is one factory out of three that has closed in a town of 16,000. 

My wife's boss at a big box store is afraid of losing his job. Why? Because he is getting paid too much. What they do is fire the older and well paid people and hire younger people and put them in management positions at less pay. They have already fired some 6 experienced managers this year.

The republicans talk of God and country and they act like they know it all. And yet, they just don't know what is going on. They are out of touch.

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