Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Even middle class Americans can afford less and less. Not to mention the lower class that really struggles.
First it was about houses, now I read that many can't afford to buy new cars.
Most middle-class Americans say they can't support their cost of living.
Sadly, such falsehoods continue to be propogated despite data showing them to be completely false.
You have to remember, such click-bait news stories are not objective truth. They are written by journism majors, not by economists who study actual, you know, DATA. Most journalists couldn't pass high school Calculus let alone understand an Econometric Model. They are first and foremost purveyors of progressive words.
These commentators and many progressive politicians seem to believe that
little progress has been made in raising average American living standards since the 1960s
poverty has not been substantially reduced over the period
the median household’s standard of living has not increased in recent years, and
inequality is currently high and rising (“a truth universally acknowledged,” according to the Economist magazine in 2020).
Yet the data show such hand-wringing is misplaced (a charitable interpretation) or just made up out of whole cloth to influence the easily-influenced public (all too often).
Average living standards in the USA have improved dramatically. Real (inflation-adjusted) income of the bottom quintile of families grew more than 681% from 1967 to 2017. The percentage of people living in poverty fell from 32% in 1947 to 15% in 1967 to only 1.1% in 2017.
Opportunities created by economic growth, and government-sponsored social programs funded by that growth, produced broadly shared prosperity:
94% of households in 2017 would have been at least as well off as the top quintile in 1967.
Bottom-quintile households in 2017 enjoy the same living standards as middle-quintile 1967 households, and on a per capita basis the bottom quintile has a 3% higher income adjusted for inflation.
Top-quintile households receive income equal to roughly four times the bottom (and only 2.2 times the lowest on a per capita basis).
Some people take data out-of-context saying the middle class has been shrinking for decades. True - but for the best of all possible reasons:
Even middle class Americans can afford less and less. Not to mention the lower class that really struggles.
First it was about houses, now I read that many can't afford to buy new cars.
Most middle-class Americans say they can't support their cost of living.
Musk, Buffet etc. did not cause our latest round of inflation.
1. Incredibly dumb fiscal policy in '21 and '22 did, I can be very specific if anyone desires. Russia invading Ukraine added to the pressure.
2. General price inflation increases as defined by CPI always hurt the working poor and those on fixed incomes the worst.
3. People make their own beds....too many middle class people insist on living in areas, neighborhoods and homes they cannot afford, this has been a problem in NY, SF and LA for decades. Many people spend stupidly. A few years ago The Dallas Morning News ran a story about a number of local lower middle class families who were struggling. One family was in trouble very obviously because the, "dad" insisted on driving a newish F-150 to his job a long way off that did not require the use of his truck - ever. The net of all this is the guy was spending about 35% of the family's discretionary income on his truck. That's just stupid and the family should've blamed the dad. Not me. Not Warren Buffett etc.
It is narrow minded to measure anything in dollars as our government policies make the dollar worth less every day. A millionaire in 1950 would have less than 15,000 in todays dollars.
It is narrow minded to measure anything in dollars as our government policies make the dollar worth less every day. A millionaire in 1950 would have less than 15,000 in todays dollars.
And if that millionaire had just 1/10 of that million dollar net worth in the S&P 500 index in 1950 and left it be, he'd have $262 million today. Just saying, power of compounding and all.
Those who understand the power of compound interest earn it. Those who do not understand pay it.
Real (inflation-adjusted) income of the bottom quintile of families grew more than 681% from 1967 to 2017.
That statistic does not pass the sniff test. Inflation (CPI-U) for that period was a factor of 7.4. You're suggesting wages grew by another factor of 7.81 beyond inflation. Multiplying those two we get a wage growth factor of about 58 in nominal dollars. Now working backwards, let's use $10/hr as a bottom quintile wage in 2017. That's a guess on my part, but IMO a reasonable guess. Applying the factor of 58, we arrive at a bottom quintile wage of 17 cents per hour in 1967.
Considering the federal minimum wage was $1/hr in 1967, a wage of 17 cents/hr seems unlikely. To put this in some perspective, in 1967 17 cents could buy half a gallon of gasoline, or about three and a half postage stamps. Were wages really that awful? I was a child at the time so I don't have personal work experience to support or refute any of these numbers. I made around $3/hr in my first paid jobs during the late 1970s, doing manual farm labor.
It is narrow minded to measure anything in dollars as our government policies make the dollar worth less every day. A millionaire in 1950 would have less than 15,000 in todays dollars.
False. It's very easy to track relative dollar values over time.
Further, 15,000 January 1950 dollars had the same relative buying power as ~$196,000 today. Not $1,000,000 today.
Finally, a millionaire in 1950 ($1,000,000) had roughly the same relative buying power as someone with $13MM and change today.
I don't know if he will make it to a trillion, but he is already incredibly wealthy. When I was vacationing on Lana'i some years 10 years ago, he had just bought 98% of the island. Being a part of Hawaii I was surprised he could buy that much (all be it the smallest of the islands the tourists go to). While I do not envy the uber rich, it seemed like an ostentatious act to gobble up almost the entire island,,,, and here I thought Oprah was selfish and bad by buying a large estate on Maui, then cutting off access to one of only two roads that lead back to civilization off the Road to Hana.
Even middle class Americans can afford less and less. Not to mention the lower class that really struggles.
First it was about houses, now I read that many can't afford to buy new cars.
Most middle-class Americans say they can't support their cost of living.
Don't confuse wants vs desires - they can afford what they need but their desires are higher which is why so many have little in savings. They can support a middle class style of living but many want the upper class style.
Elon Musk has a fair shot at it if one of his several companies gets to the next level.
I’m curious if there may already be a trillionaire or two in the middle-east where it’s more difficult to measure wealth.
I hear the top 5 Hamas leaders are billionaires now.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
