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whatthehey

(3,660 posts)
1. Except that chart shows all winners
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 12:31 PM
Jun 2016

If true, every income demographic (no that wouldn't mean every individual; you can always move between demographics remember) is better off than they were a generation ago, and those poorer than OECD working class folks have done the best.

If, and a big if, this is the cause of the resentment it's merely that the lower echelons in the most fortunate countries are now not as far ahead of the dusky types as they used to be and aren't keeping up with their own well to do as closely as they used to. They are better off, but neither as relatively privileged nor as relatively comparable to the wealthy as they remember being. Spite and envy in other words.

TalkingDog

(9,001 posts)
2. Evidently you aren't one of the working class. Yay Birth Lottery!
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 12:45 PM
Jun 2016

Either that or you have no clue about the multitude of studies that show upward mobility is possible, but only within a set of very narrow constraints.

When the richest are getting substantially richer, while the people who made them rich are falling behind, I don't consider that "envy". I'd rather call it something more accurate like, "Outraged at being mugged".

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-tougher-in-u-s-than-two-decades-ago

The bad news is that growing income inequality has made the gap between income levels much wider than in the past, Autor says. A person who's born at the bottom and stays there is further behind than ever before.

"The costs of immobility have risen, because the lifetime difference in earnings now between someone born at the bottom quartile versus top quartile is much, much greater than it used to be," Autor says.

The study also contained some other disturbing findings. It said economic mobility in the United States remains behind that of other wealthy countries. An American born at the bottom has about an 8 percent chance of rising to the top, it found; the odds are twice that in Denmark.

"The political rhetoric has gone down a path of saying, 'Oh, maybe it's getting harder to move up in the income distribution,' " Hendren says. "But the sad fact is that it's always been very hard in the United States relative to other countries, and it hasn't gotten any better, it hasn't gotten any worse."




http://inequality.stanford.edu/sotu/SOTU_2015_economic-mobility.pdf





http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/the-mobility-myth

More important, in any capitalist society most people are bound to be part of the middle and working classes; public policy should focus on raising their standard of living, instead of raising their chances of getting rich. What made the U.S. economy so remarkable for most of the twentieth century was the fact that, even if working people never moved into a different class, over time they saw their standard of living rise sharply. Between the late nineteen-forties and the early nineteen-seventies, median household income in the U.S. doubled. That’s what has really changed in the past forty years. The economy is growing more slowly than it did in the postwar era, and average workers’ share of the pie has been shrinking. It’s no surprise that people in Washington prefer to talk about mobility rather than about this basic reality. Raising living standards for ordinary workers is hard: you need to either get wages growing or talk about things that scare politicians, like “redistribution” and “taxes.” But making it easier for some Americans to move up the economic ladder is no great triumph if most can barely hold on.

Response to TalkingDog (Reply #2)

whatthehey

(3,660 posts)
9. Not that you make a relevant claim (or even a coherent one)
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 01:22 PM
Jun 2016

but neither of my parents made more than $10 an hour their entire life, and my father retired only a few years ago (mother died a while ago, but made even less). I personally make a reasonable upper middle class income thanks to an education which, in its formal sense, depended on academic scholarships and in its informal sense has never stopped for four decades. But the relevant part of that life experience about which you made false assumptions for some strange reason is that that education also involved learning critical thinking skills. The data presented in the OP show an improving life for every income segment. That's what real income means. It shows too that the 70th-90th percentiles, which are identified as the lower echelons of rich nations (I haven't verified that personally; much would depend on PPP calculations as globally speaking even a minimum wage in the US is in the top 15%) have benefited, but at a slower rate than those both above and below.

Why would that matter to any rational being? There are only two answers, and both have only emotional appeal. If my life improves my happiness should improve. If it doesn't because poor neighbor X gets closer to my lifestyle (but is still poorer) while rich neighbor Y gets further away (because he's now richer to a greater degree) then what possible excuse do I have but spite for X or envy of Y? I'm doing better regardless of what they have. Maybe I only moved from a 2008 Civic to a 2012 Accord while neighbor X moved from a bus pass to my old Civic and neighbor Y sold me his old Accord and got a new Lexus. So what? They made bigger jumps than me but I'm still living a better life, and my concern for their changes is just sour grapes. Your only tangentially relevant complaints about mobility don't change the fact that the segment in which one was held immobile now has a better lifestyle, and is also belied by data on typical DU squawking about the middle class declining by 11% in the US which predictably ignored that far more of that 11% had become upper income than had become lower income.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027883851

Do poor people mostly stay poor and rich likewise? Sure! The rich have better access to better education, better networking with peers, better opportunity, easier access to capital, all the things by which wealth is most easily achieved. The poor have to overcome more obstacles to get access to any of that, but that has really changed little, generally improved over past eras when you look at global history, and still does not negate an improving lifestyle. Poor British children before and after compulsory publicly funded education, or laws preventing them from working in coal mines, were still infinitesimally likely to become landed gentry, but they surely saw an improvement in their lives, and the sensible among them thought not one second about the rich who could now drive cars instead of ride or the first generation of universally free blacks born in the US. They were better off. Still poorer than Dukes yet richer than sharecroppers, but the important thing is they were better off than before.

 

Just reading posts

(688 posts)
3. Interestingly, 12% of Americans are in the top global 1%. I couldn't find numbers for the next
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 12:48 PM
Jun 2016

category down, the 95th to 99th percentile, but I would speculate that something like half of Americans qualify.

Suck it, working class losers! Sincerely, The top 10%.

The vast majority of Americans are in the top 10% globally.

Response to Just reading posts (Reply #3)

Response to TalkingDog (Original post)

 

Just reading posts

(688 posts)
7. I was in China a few years ago, and I was struck by the difference between what I'd read about
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 01:15 PM
Jun 2016

growing up in the last half of the 20th Century, and contrasting it with today.



The average person in China is far better off today than they were 30 years ago.

Response to Just reading posts (Reply #7)

mainer

(12,013 posts)
10. Real winners are 55th-65th percentile income
Tue Jun 28, 2016, 01:57 PM
Jun 2016

Aren't those the actual middle class? From this chart, it looks like the income group that saw minimal growth was 75th-95th percentile incomes. Upper middle class. Everyone else did OK.

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