Economy Study: Middle Class Is Over

[Squarechoke]

Your response shows that you don't understand what you're saying about what's in the Bible.

Your response shows that you don't want to answer when things you try to ignore in the Bible are brought up. The classic religious hypocrisy, as expected.

 

[panamaican]

I am not just attributing it to urban areas, I am attributing it to poor people having babies. This includes poor people in rural areas. Moreover, this response does not address the simple math of adding 5-6 billlion more people withing 60 years, and how that directly distorts the wealth gap ratio. Regardless of where the population boom is happening, it is going to obviously shrink the wealth gap.

I'm speaking specifically about the U.S. so I'm going to disregard the 5-6 billion people answer.

Your response on poor people having babies distinctly misses what's going on. Birth rates in the U.S. have been falling for years. Among the rich and among the poor.

However, the decline is greatest among the poor. Statistical data shows that poor people are the ones having fewer kids, not the middle class or the rich. If your argument is accurate, the shrinking birth rates of the poor should yield less income inequality, not more, because the number of poor babies is becoming a smaller fraction of the total births.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-poverty-status-in-the-us/

 

[PainIsLIfe]

Yes, it necessarily drives wages up (or maybe more accurately, wages are one of the key inputs that define it). Think about the implication of the claim that inflation causes wages to go down over a long period. You're saying that both parties in labor contracts are totally passive, that supply and demand and bargaining power don't affect the prices.

How many teachers recently went on strike because they haven't had raises in several years? Or the time in the 90s that my company was on 3 yr wage freeze - inflation didn't dissappear.

Avg wage growth may drive inflation and vice versa, but inflation in and of itself doesn't drive wages.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

I've been saying this for awhile, it's only going to get worse

the average 401k has a loan out against it right now...
the average American has 1g or less in savings
and SS reserves are dwindling, granted they could reform it, but they haven't yet...

So what are all these people struggling now going to do when elderly?

There's only two options really: continue as we are, which will result in a Modest Proposal type solution of just letting the old die. Or, we drastically reform our Social Welfare and HC systems to match the lack of retirement planning and state of our Service economy and it's lack of wage growth.

When even I am arguing for the latter.....we got problems haha.

 

[Gandhi]

There has been an upward tick. The wealth gap was pretty stable after ww2, up until the population boom, which starts in the early 1970s. It is simple math that exponentially increasing the population of the lower class, will exponentially distort the wealth gap. The population spike starts 15 years or so before the wealth gap, but that can be attributed to the first generation of baby boomers reaching adulthood and now being able to have kids. In fact, it pushes people in the upper middle class into the upper class, because the lower class is being flooded.

As for saying that it isn't being driven by more kids, why does the statistical data in the urban areas in the OP differ from the data collected from the country as a whole? Urban areas have an increase in food insecurity (based on the OP), while the population of the US as a whole has actually been decreasing. Urban populations are growing rapidly, where as non urban populations are not. So that seems to imply too many children IS a factor.

Interedasting....

I would point out that despite increases in GDP per capita over the same period, every quintile in the US has seen their wages be relatively stagnant over the last 50 years, except the top 20%, Top 1%, and top .01%, don’t see how that is explained by baby boomers having kids. Point is average income per person has gone up but it has mostly accrued to the top. That is what is driving the wealth gap and it’s largely due to globalization, technology, and exacerbated by fiscal policy.

Not sure how having areas with more population growth with more insecurity correlates to a “kids” issue unless you can show that the number of kids per family is higher / causing that metric to actually go up over time. Even though overall family sizes are down in the USA, it might be a contributing factor in poorer urban areas, I would want to dig into that more. That still does not explain a 50 year trend over multiple quintiles imo.

Imo one of the best argument one could make from your population theme, and where I thought you might go, is that you need to strip out new arrivals that are weighing down the numbers. Population growth from immigration should increase hardship but if after a few generations it improves, things are working as intended.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

I'm speaking specifically about the U.S. so I'm going to disregard the 5-6 billion people answer.

Your response on poor people having babies distinctly misses what's going on. Birth rates in the U.S. have been falling for years. Among the rich and among the poor.

However, the decline is greatest among the poor. Statistical data shows that poor people are the ones having fewer kids, not the middle class or the rich. If your argument is accurate, the shrinking birth rates of the poor should yield less income inequality, not more, because the number of poor babies is becoming a smaller fraction of the births.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-poverty-status-in-the-us/

that is over just a small window tho, where as the other statistics you are measuring are over a much larger window. It only shows a decrease starting in 2008. That isn't "years" considering the starts people are looking at are from 1900 or 1950 and beyond. That is only one very small segment of the time line.

I edited my other post and said the population has more than doubled (over 150 million), not to mentioned 10-20 million undocumented people. That is still just simple math.

The population graph I show even shows it leveling off and declining. Interestingly enough, it shows the population decline aroud 2008, when Obama came into office. Despite the population decline starting in his office, the wealth gap continue to increase. Is this further evidence of Obama not being a president of "change" ? Especially since there was a spike of wealth for the 1% right around 2008, which has only continued? Maybe that has something to do with the stock market bailout.

Again, look at 2008 here.

 

[Gandhi]

Or it implies, as we should know, that people are leaving the rural areas and migrating to the urban/suburban areas because the rural areas lack economic and educational opportunities. The only people staying in rural America are those who are already economically well-off enough to disregard that those parts of the country are becoming dead zones for opportunity.

And, no, it's not because urban areas have more kids. It's specifically because people are leaving rural America.


https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/2393-rural-america-is-losing-young-people-

Agree and is there any data that shows that the number of kids per family in these areas are actually going up?

Seems to me like areas with the most poor people are going to continue to have people with the most poor people....especially when all the well off just up and leave for better pastures.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

Interedasting....

I would point out that despite increases in GDP per capita over the same period, every quintile in the US has seen their wages be relatively stagnant over the last 50 years, except the top 20%, Top 1%, and top .01%, don’t see how that is explained by baby boomers having kids. Point is average income per person has gone up but it has mostly accrued to the top. That is what is driving the wealth gap and it’s largely due to globalization, technology, and exacerbated by fiscal policy.

Not sure how having areas with more population growth with more insecurity correlates to a “kids” issue unless you can show that the number of kids per family is higher / causing that metric to actually go up over time. Even though overall family sizes are down in the USA, it might be a contributing factor in poorer urban areas, I would want to dig into that more. That still does not explain a 50 year trend over multiple quintiles imo.

Imo one of the best argument one could make from your population theme, and where I thought you might go, is that you need to strip out new arrivals that are weighing down the numbers. Population growth from immigration should increase hardship but if after a few generations it improves, things are working as intended.

The metric you want, kids per family isn't a solid metric at this point, considering the break down of the atomic family.

edit:

Also, that argument you thought I would make, is the one I am making. I am saying that if you have 10 CEOs per 100 people in 1950, you have 150 million new arrivals, along with technology becoming more efficent. You don't need 150 thousand new CEOs. There is simply to much of an influx.

That is why I said in another post that I am surprised the productivity graphs did not show a +2000 percent increase of productivity, rather than only +200, considering the technological advancements since 1970.

And how are things working as intended, as this thread is about something being wrong? Which you agree with.

 

[panamaican]

that is over just a small window tho, where as the other statistics you are measuring are over a much larger window. It only shows a decrease starting in 2008. That isn't "years" considering the starts people are looking at are from 1900 or 1950 and beyond. That is only one very small segment of the time line.

I edited my other post and said the population has more than doubled (over 150 million), not to mentioned 10-20 million undocumented people. That is still just simple math.

The population graph I show even shows it leveling off and declining. Interestingly enough, it shows the population decline aroud 2008, when Obama came into office. Despite the population decline starting in his office, the wealth gap continue to increase. Is this further evidence of Obama not being a president of "change" ? Especially since there was a spike of wealth for the 1% right around 2008, which has only continued? Maybe that has something to do with the stock market bailout.

Again, look at 2008 here.

The trend line has been ongoing for quite a while. It's not just a recent thing.

And it's not simple math. The population has doubled. Your analysis of why/how is what's incorrect.

teen birth rates:

Overall birth rates:

Your graph doesn't have anything to do with birth rates or the income brackets associated with them.

 

[panamaican]

Agree and is there any data that shows that the number of kids per family in these areas are actually going up?

Seems to me like areas with the most poor people are going to continue to have people with the most poor people....especially when all the well off just up and leave for better pastures.

The thing with rural America though is that's not the well off who are up and leaving. It's the young people leaving for better opportunities.

I don't know about birth rates by geographic region, I haven't looked yet but I'd be surprised if the Bible Belt wasn't having more kids compared to the Northeast and the coasts.

Lo and behold, per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

If I was going to hazard a migration guess, it would go like this. Poor rural America is pumping out kids that their local economies cannot educate or employ. Those poor kids grow up and move to the coasts and big cities looking for opportunity. They bring their relative poverty with them.

Meanwhile, the people in rural/Midwest America bitch about problems on the coasts without realizing that they've been pumping out the problems because they're the ones pumping out the undereducated, unemployed kids and then standing in the way of how the cities try to care for them.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

The trend line has been ongoing for quite a while. It's not just a recent thing.

And it's not simple math. The population has doubled. Your analysis of why/how is what's incorrect.

teen birth rates:

Overall birth rates:

Your graph doesn't have anything to do with birth rates or the income brackets associated with them.

why are you posting graphs about TEEN birth rates and fertility? Those are just one facet lol... that is a REAL STRETCH.

This is a much more accurate graph, as it is total people actually having kids. Not teenagers, not potential to have kids (fertility)

Again, the math is simple. You have 1% of people with the money in 1950. Even if those people experience the same growth rate as the other people, that still exponentially reduces that 1%. That is simple math.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

The thing with rural America though is that's not the well off who are up and leaving. It's the young people leaving for better opportunities.

I don't know about birth rates by geographic region, I haven't looked yet but I'd be surprised if the Bible Belt wasn't having more kids compared to the Northeast and the coasts.

Lo and behold, per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

If I was going to hazard a migration guess, it would go like this. Poor rural America is pumping out kids that their local economies cannot educate or employ. Those poor kids grow up and move to the coasts and big cities looking for opportunity. They bring their relative poverty with them.

Meanwhile, the people in rural/Midwest America bitch about problems on the coasts without realizing that they've been pumping out the problems because they're the ones pumping out the undereducated, unemployed kids and then standing in the way of how the cities try to care for them.

lol, that graph is from a wikipedia of the US fertility rate, what are you trying to prove here? Look at the graph I posted of the food insecurity by the USDA, and look at the overall population graph. The population is growing, the food insecurity is decreasing. That is completely opposite of the narrative you guys are arguing for.

Again, what does fertility rate have to do with anything, if the population rate is increasing.

Yea, I am sure all urban problems are rural kids going to urban areas and complaning. Lets ignore all inner city statistics lol.

 

[panamaican]

why are you posting graphs about TEEN birth rates and fertility? Those are just one facet lol... that is a REAL STRETCH.

This is a much more accurate graph, as it is total people actually having kids. Not teenagers, not potential to have kids (fertility)

Again, the math is simple. You have 1% of people with the money in 1950. Even if those people experience the same growth rate as the other people, that still exponentially reduces that 1%. That is simple math.

I posted multiple graphs about birth rates to show that the trend in declining birth rates has been ongoing for decades. I included teen birth rates because the majority of children born into poverty are born to teen mothers. Hence a decline in teen mother birth rates will run parallel with a decline in children born into poverty.

And I don't think you understand how the math works at all. For example - just because the number of people increased, it doesn't account for how the amount of wealth in the nation increased or how it is distributed. If the rate of allocation remained constant then the top 1% would continue to receive a similar proportion of the income, regardless of birth rates. If the population is growing then the top 1% of the population would grow at a similar rate. It has to in order to remain 1%.

Your argument only makes sense if you're saying the the top 1% of the population in 1950 somehow remained an absolute number relative to the overall growth of the nation thus resulting in a smaller percentage of the overall population. Yet even if that was true (and it's not), there's no reason that smaller portion of the population would reap a larger share of the economic pie. Just the basic division of assets over generations would mean that those people should gradually fall out of the upper economic echelons and be surpassed by new money.

Your argument was that because poor people had more kids than rich people then poor people's percentage of the population should be increasing and thus the rich would split a growing pie among a shrinking pool. It's wrong on every level.

 

[panamaican]

lol, that graph is from a wikipedia of the US fertility rate, what are you trying to prove here? Look at the graph I posted of the food insecurity by the USDA, and look at the overall population graph. The population is growing, the food insecurity is decreasing. That is completely opposite of the narrative you guys are arguing for.

Again, what does fertility rate have to do with anything, if the population rate is increasing.

Yea, I am sure all urban problems are rural kids going to urban areas and complaning. Lets ignore all inner city statistics lol.

I haven't put forward a narrative at all. I've been saying that your narrative, premised on poor people's births compared to rich people's births, is wrong.

And fertility rates have everything to do with that.

 

[Gandhi]

The metric you want, kids per family isn't a solid metric at this point, considering the break down of the atomic family.

edit:

Also, that argument you thought I would make, is the one I am making. I am saying that if you have 10 CEOs per 100 people in 1950, you have 150 million new arrivals, along with technology becoming more efficent. You don't need 150 thousand new CEOs. There is simply to much of an influx.

That is why I said in another post that I am surprised the productivity graphs did not show a +2000 percent increase of productivity, rather than only +200, considering the technological advancements since 1970.

And how are things working as intended, as this thread is about something being wrong? Which you agree with.

Baby boomers kids and immigration is a different argument. Boomers having kids does not explain why amongst those kids, increases in average income per person have gone disproportionately to the top.

While it would be interesting to tease out immigrants to see the impact on the quintiles and 1%, it’s hard to imagjne a scenario where it explains the result (massive accumulation at the top that takes most of the increases in the average). Taking out immigrants would unlikely result in some sig slanted upward line for all lower 4 quintiles.

This is especially true when you line things up with the impact on wages from the decline in jobs in the manufacturing sector (globalization then tech) with the massive increases in pay for ceo/ exec postitions.

And I to clarify, if income is going up for immigrants generation over generation, then things are working as intended, for them. While that may make things look less dire than the raw numbers suggest, I don’t think things are working as intended and policy is making it worse.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

Baby boomers kids and immigration is a different argument. Boomers having kids does not explain why amongst those kids, increases in average income per person have gone disproportionately to the top.

While it would be interesting to tease out immigrants to see the impact on the quintiles and 1%, it’s hard to imagjne a scenario where it explains the result (massive accumulation at the top that takes most of the increases in the average). Taking out immigrants would unlikely result in some sig slanted upward line for all lower 4 quintiles.

This is especially true when you line things up with the impact on wages from the decline in jobs in the manufacturing sector (globalization then tech) with the massive increases in pay for ceo/ exec postitions.

And I to clarify, if income is going up for immigrants generation over generation, then things are working as intended, for them. While that may make things look less dire than the raw numbers suggest, I don’t think things are working as intended and policy is making it worse.

I posted multiple graphs about birth rates to show that the trend in declining birth rates has been ongoing for decades. I included teen birth rates because the majority of children born into poverty are born to teen mothers. Hence a decline in teen mother birth rates will run parallel with a decline in children born into poverty.

And I don't think you understand how the math works at all. For example - just because the number of people increased, it doesn't account for how the amount of wealth in the nation increased or how it is distributed. If the rate of allocation remained constant then the top 1% would continue to receive a similar proportion of the income, regardless of birth rates. If the population is growing then the top 1% of the population would grow at a similar rate. It has to in order to remain 1%.

Your argument only makes sense if you're saying the the top 1% of the population in 1950 somehow remained an absolute number relative to the overall growth of the nation thus resulting in a smaller percentage of the overall population. Yet even if that was true (and it's not), there's no reason that smaller portion of the population would reap a larger share of the economic pie. Just the basic division of assets over generations would mean that those people should gradually fall out of the upper economic echelons and be surpassed by new money.

Your argument was the because poor people had more kids then rich people then poor people's percentage of the population should be increasing and thus the rich would split a growing pie among a shrinking pool. It's wrong on every level.

your math is still off, by virtue of the argument of wealth being disproportionate.

Even if there is equal population growth among social classes, you have a 1%, a middle class and a lower class. By your argument, this is not 1/1/1 ratio. It is a 1/3/9 ratio at best. So each generation you have 1*2/3*2/9*2, which leads to 2/6/18. After another generation it would be 4/12/36. The 2-6-18 ratio is not entirely accurate, but it easily shows the fallacy of this entire argument.

edit: the age of of being a parent throws off that ratio further. Average lower class person being a teenager or early 20s, as you highlighted, vs the older, upper class person.

edit:

 

[Gandhi]

I posted multiple graphs about birth rates to show that the trend in declining birth rates has been ongoing for decades. I included teen birth rates because the majority of children born into poverty are born to teen mothers. Hence a decline in teen mother birth rates will run parallel with a decline in children born into poverty.

And I don't think you understand how the math works at all. For example - just because the number of people increased, it doesn't account for how the amount of wealth in the nation increased or how it is distributed. If the rate of allocation remained constant then the top 1% would continue to receive a similar proportion of the income, regardless of birth rates. If the population is growing then the top 1% of the population would grow at a similar rate. It has to in order to remain 1%.

Your argument only makes sense if you're saying the the top 1% of the population in 1950 somehow remained an absolute number relative to the overall growth of the nation thus resulting in a smaller percentage of the overall population. Yet even if that was true (and it's not), there's no reason that smaller portion of the population would reap a larger share of the economic pie. Just the basic division of assets over generations would mean that those people should gradually fall out of the upper economic echelons and be surpassed by new money.

Your argument was the because poor people had more kids then rich people then poor people's percentage of the population should be increasing and thus the rich would split a growing pie among a shrinking pool. It's wrong on every level.

At the end of the day, income per person on average has gone way up since the 1950s and it has mostly accrued to the very top. This is all on a per capita basis so population, kids, etc. are not relevant to that fact.

Even the new arrivals argument, while interesting, does not hold up well. You need new immigrants coming it at every level except at the very top to explain. I could see it holding down the bottom 20%, but why is the 21% to 79% showing such low growth in wages compared to the 1%?

 

[IReallyDoTrainUFC]

All these lazy full time workers with second jobs need to pull themselves up by their boot straps.......

Nearly half of America wealth is taken to fund bankrupt entitlement programs and military costs for policing the world and paying for the defense of other nation's borders.

You probably vote for the mobsters that steal from you too.

 

[Gandhi]

your math is still off, by virtue of the argument of wealth being disproportionate.

Even if there is equal population growth among social classes, you have a 1%, a middle class and a lower class. By your argument, this is not 1/1/1 ratio. It is a 1/3/9 ratio at best. So each generation you have 1*2/3*2/9*2, which leads to 2/6/18. After another generation it would be 4/12/36. The 2-6-18 ratio is not entirely accurate, but it easily shows the fallacy of this entire argument.

Sorry but



I mean 1% of the population is 1% of the population. That relative number is going to remain constant to any other % of the population over time. If the country has 150m then 1% is 150k, if the country has 300m the 1% has 300k.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

Sorry but



I mean 1% of the population is 1% of the population. That relative number is going to remain constant to any other % of the population over time. If the country has 150m then 1% is 150k, if the country has 300m the 1% has 300k.

sorry, add into the edit of my post about:

I knew something was missing in my math lol. That adds a factor over each generation. One generation is multiplying 6 years faster, multiple that over a number of decades, and you see how poor people are breeding faster. This is proven by panamericans poster about teen birth rates representing uneducated/poor people