There is a post about CBO and the distribution of income since 79. Here is some more info..

[WCGreen]

Being a numbers guy, I wanted to look at what that really means for people and the Cost of Living during that same time.

The CBO says that in reality, the real income of people from the bottom 5th of the population saw their income rise 18% in real money since 1979 to 2011.

Now I went to the official Cost of Living stats to see how that worked out, again from the CBO.

I'm taking this to mean that a person making 10,000 in 1979 would now be earning 11,906 in real money.

I took the 18% and spread it out evenly across the 32 years.

Now since the rate of inflation as expressed by the CBO varied but stayed between a range of 0-6.85, we can take that 10k and multiply by the yearly COLA's.

Adjusting for the inflation as measured by the CBO, that 10,000 in 1979 dollars would have the purchasing power of about 24,042 in 2012 dollars.

That amounts to about a 35% increase in the cost of living but only an 18% adjustment.

I am sure that if we examined all the other factors that have changed since 1979, we would get a better picture about the state of those living in the bottom 5th of the income parameters.

I just wanted to point that out, from a pure numbers approach.

In reality, you could say that the cumulated percent increases of the Cost of Living has far outpaced the growth of income.

Again, I don''t know how they adjusted for inflation, I am just looking at the numbers.

I am sure that there is a correlation between the increase in debt which is what people often turn to in order to maintain their standard of living.

I could be wrong, I could be jumping to conclusions, but the numbers don't really do it justice.

I guess it's a way to look at the disparity across the income levels.

I guess in the long run, the person who made 10k back in 1979 saw his/her income rise to about 11,900 in 1979 dollars.

And that, my friends, is a telling story about the state of America today.

[duhneece]

1. From a recent Christian Century

William J. McDonough, who at one time was CEO of one of Chicago's largest banks. After the Enron accounting scandal and the collapse of the corporation as a result of executive mismanagement and deception, McDonough left banking and became chairman of the Public Company Ac¬counting Oversight Board. In an address titled "The Challenge for Private Sector Leaders," McDonough said that the accounting scandals of the 1990s happened because "many American business leaders got confused and their moral compasses stopped working."
Then, in front of a gathering of Chicago's business and corporate leaders, he addressed the topic of executive compensation. "In 1980, the average large company chief executive officer made 40 times more than the average employee in his or her firm." By 2000, the multiple had risen to at least 400 times. In other words, over the course of 20 years, the CEO pay multiple went up by about 1,000 percent. "There is no economic theory, however farfetched, which can justify that increase," said McDonough. "It is also grotesquely immoral." These would be strong words coming from a theology professor or preacher. They came from a former bank CEO.

[WCGreen]

3. It just boggles my mind that people in the lower classes defend this

as if they will someday make it into the top

[duhneece]

6. Reminds me of 'house slaves' defending slavery

Well, they had it better than the field slaves...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Kick!

:kick:

[applegrove]

4. Good catch.

[WCGreen]

5. kick