Economy Study: Middle Class Is Over

DIDM said:
I call bullshit, look around, is it all poor people and extremely rich? No it’s not
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Yea. It’s weird. I live in an area where everyone around me would be considered Middle Class.

Idk. Maybe some politicians think we are all rich
 
milkmandanl said:
I agree with some of what you say BUT....legal corruption in the form of lobbying is deplorable and need to stop
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I agree with this. I do not feel there is a single global plan to keep the poor poor. However, there are hundreds of massive corporations, part of even bigger conglomerates, all with their own lobbyists. It is all legal in today's world, but honestly, their business meetings and marketing plans could literally be considered collusion and conspiracy in a different universe. They are using billions of dollars to influence people through marketing campaigns and lobbying. It is all just a matter of perspective.

Then you have presidents and other politicians meeting and having parties with these exact people at the heads of these corporations and conglomerates.

That is why I said look at Humana's, BCBS's stock since Obamacare passed, which no one every bothered to comment on lol.
 
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Henry Huggins said:
Thank you..study is trash if you actually read it and look at the methodology and results.

There is barely any information on demographics so you don't even know who was being sampled. Even when looking at this study's results, barely anyone was evicted or had their utilities shut off. Additionally, the food insecurity metric is questionable at best. Basically, the overwhelming majority in this study had housing and utilities and I'm guessing they're all well-fed.

If you want to argue medical care I'm with ya.
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Our great country could do sooooooo much better with health care...for fuckssake...the number 6 company in the US is a healthcare company
 
zebby23 said:
Sure you can live but you’re likely not saving for retirement or putting those kids through college which is what he middle class used to be able to do
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I’m not sure that’s true...I grew up middle class in the 70’s and college for me (7 kids in my family)...was pretty much “get a scholarship, learn a trade or join the military”.....it was NOT go to college get a degree and have an enormous debt when you leave the nest...nor was it true for friends and families in the 80’s and somewhat in the 90’s...would be interesting to lay a trend line of college debt increasing on top of some of this data being thrown around...BTW and FWIW...I’m a 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant...depending on who you ask in my family lol...but I’m 100% American born and raised in the south
 
panamaican said:
Except that the definition of "rich" is relative, not absolute. It's not that 20% of the people are "rich", it's that in a group of 10 people the top 2 people will be always be the top 20% and thus by definition "rich".

His example is even worse because the allocation of the income to the top 2 people remained relatively constant until recently. He can't arbitrarily say people from 1950 or people from 1960 or 1970 or 1980. Historically, the allocations have fluctuated. If his argument was mathematically sound then the income allocation to the top 1% of the population would not arbitrarily spike in the last 30 years.

We could get into all the aspects of economies that explain why the richest people from 40 years ago are not the richest people today but that's secondary to his basic misunderstanding of what the "1%" actually means in this conversation about income/wealth allocation.
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The rich has got richer and widened the gap but everyone else has got richer as well. What has really happened is there are a far greater proportion of people that are choosing to live beyond their means. Generally speaking at both a global and western society level, people can better afford the necessities of life today than any other point in history.
 
Gandhi said:
While you may have some good points here, if overal wealth has gone up at the same time as the wealth of the bottom 3 quintiles in society has stagnated, absent some upward tick in fertility, something is really broken well beyond having too many kids. I know you kind of acknowledge this, but I am just stressing, the data @luckyshot provides is not being driven by more kids.
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Absolutely agree. I made the point about kids because the study completely failed to include this variable. It blamed females being more likely to complain about hardships on the wage gap, which is an incomplete assessment. If you had two individuals, a man and a woman, who's lives were almost identical - let's say zero kids, same socioeconomic background - who worked in the same position, it's simply not true that the woman would complain about hardships while the man wouldn't because he got preferential treatment at work. However, from a broader perspective, irrespective of the wage gap, I can absolutely believe that women are more likely to experience hardships, because women, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status, get stuck with the kids. This problem is exponentially exacerbated by the number of kids present. There isn't a person out there who's single with 4 or more kids who can have a fruitful career (provided they didn't already have one before they decided to have kids and were thus already in a position to afford support structures like multiple nannies....a situation which is obviously a far outlier).

You're right, I acknowledged that there are issues which need to be addressed, but at the same time, there is a significant part of our society which ostensibly doesn't understand how to even put themselves into positions from which it's possible to succeed. The remedy here isn't higher wages, lesser working hours that count as fulltime, mandated raises indexed to the CPI, etc. - it's education and free and easy access to birth control.
 
cottagecheesefan said:
I agree with this. I do not feel there is a single global plan to keep the poor poor. However, there are hundreds of massive corporations, part of even bigger conglomerates, all with their own lobbyists. It is all legal in today's world, but honestly, their business meetings and marketing plans could literally be considered collusion and conspiracy in a different universe. They are using billions of dollars to influence people through marketing campaigns and lobbying. It is all just a matter of perspective.

Then you have presidents and other politicians meeting and having parties with these exact people at the heads of these corporations and conglomerates.

That is why I said look at Humana's, BCBS's stock since Obamacare passed, which no one every bothered to comment on lol.
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We’re pretty much on the same page albeit...I’m at MOA in MinnyAppOlus and on my 4th happy hour beer...$3...DIPA from Granite sumthing ..... :-o
 
Bargey said:
The rich has got richer and widened the gap but everyone else has got richer as well. What has really happened is there are a far greater proportion of people that are choosing to live beyond their means. Generally speaking at both a global and western society level, people can better afford the necessities of life today than any other point in history.
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It would be interesting to see a trend line on “rich getting richer” during the tech explosion of the 90’s and 2000’s....
 
I think we can all agree that this study is bullshit...I for one am happy we were able to all have a civil discussion none the less!

@panamaican @Madmick

I’m getting close to 1k posts..any advice or awards coming my way? Can I get a cool avatar?
 
milkmandanl said:
It would be interesting to see a trend line on “rich getting richer” during the tech explosion of the 90’s and 2000’s....
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You can look at the graph I posted not to far back that shows the portion of real incomes earned by quintile (ie the richest 20% earned $x over time). As Pan explained later, that’s a relative measure, ie as population grows, so does the top 1%. You can clearly see the rich have gotten way richer over the last 50 years, while the rest have made very minminal gains.

Here it is

average-after-tax-household-income-of-quintiles-large_0.jpg
 
milkmandanl said:
It would be interesting to see a trend line on “rich getting richer” during the tech explosion of the 90’s and 2000’s....
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Yep there’s no doubt that the tech explosion has resulted in a far greater proportion of rich. There’s way more extreme upward mobility than there ever was.
 
WaylonMercy5150 said:
Here is you AV.
images
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El o El
I was hoping for soemth8ng along the lines of:
3 rules of the str8 male...be the pitcher not the catcher, if you ONLY suck one cock you’re still a cocksucker and I love you, not in a gay way but more like a prison way...
 
Gandhi said:
You can look at the graph I posted not to far back that shows the portion of real incomes earned by quintile (ie the richest 20% earned $x over time). As Pan explained later, that’s a relative measure, ie as population grows, so does the top 1%. You can clearly see the rich have gotten way richer over the last 50 years, while the rest have made very minminal gains.

Here it is

average-after-tax-household-income-of-quintiles-large_0.jpg
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Your chart supports my hunch...late 90’s saw a surge..small correction early 2000’s and the a surge...wonder how the NSADAQ did?
 
milkmandanl said:
El o El
I was hoping for soemth8ng along the lines of:
3 rules of the str8 male...be the pitcher not the catcher, if you ONLY suck one cock you’re still a cocksucker and I love you, not in a gay way but more like a prison way...
Click to expand...
I don't care that you're gay dude. The AV I suggested was more about your post history than your sexual preference.
 
milkmandanl said:
I’m not sure that’s true...I grew up middle class in the 70’s and college for me (7 kids in my family)...was pretty much “get a scholarship, learn a trade or join the military”.....it was NOT go to college get a degree and have an enormous debt when you leave the nest...nor was it true for friends and families in the 80’s and somewhat in the 90’s...would be interesting to lay a trend line of college debt increasing on top of some of this data being thrown around...BTW and FWIW...I’m a 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant...depending on who you ask in my family lol...but I’m 100% American born and raised in the south
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You aren’t putting 3 kids through private college on 60k per year my man. No sir
 
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