According to the graphs, the US middle class is actually still doing pretty good. I was expecting it to do a lot worse than that of many European countries, but there's only a few countries that have overtaken the US middle class, and then just barely.
Puts all those articles about the weak US middle class in perspective.
The real travesty is at the bottom. The worst 10% are actually doing worse now than 30 years ago. The few groups above that didn't benefit at all from the enormous economic growth of the past decades. The extreme growth of the wealthiest 10% is simply outrageous by comparison. But the middle class isn't doing quite as badly as I expected.
> The extreme growth of the wealthiest 10% is simply outrageous by comparison
Is the bottom decile worse off because the top decile is better off? I don't think so, I think everyone is better off with Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin making tons of money. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Don't get me wrong, I want to see a world where everyone can support themselves and provide for their families. I just don't think having super rich people prevents that from happening, I think it is just the opposite. The Gates Foundation is a million times more effective than any gang of UN Bureaucrats.
Well, if you consider that the top decile is the reason why American factories close up shop and all of the bottom decile loses their jobs as a result of cost-cutting measures by the top decile to increase their own bonus package, then yes, the bottom is worse off because of the top.
There are super wealthy who actually use their wealth to make the world a better place; then there are super wealthy who use their wealth to stack the odds ever in their favor, at the expense of everyone else.
Unfortunately, it seems most of the super wealthy are part of the latter group.
Simply tying some European countries isn't really that great a performance when the U.S. is so much more productive overall. For example, our PPP GDP per capita is 20-25% higher than Canada's. So if Canada edges us out in terms of median income, even just barely, that's not a great showing.
Well, it's necessary to remember what GDP actually measures, and that's the sum of all economic transactions. This does not necessarily make a country richer or improves its quality of life. For example, if the US healthcare system operated on the same level of efficiency as the average European one, the US GDP would instantly shrink by at least 5% (probably quite a bit more). There are lots of things that the US does inefficiently (not always a bad thing, some inefficiency is the price of freedom).
As Robert Kennedy once put it:
"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
It's actually a good bit worse than the article makes it out to be because it's after tax income. Almost all of the European countries that have been gaining on the US have substantially more services paid for by their tax dollars. So their income is far less stressed than in the US.
> I was expecting it to do a lot worse than that of many European countries
I would say that the median quality of life is slightly better in western Europe. The charts compare income after taxes – but the taxes pay for services like free healthcare and free education (in some countries, you even get paid for studying).
Another important note is that Americans work more hours per year.
> The worst 10% are actually doing worse now than 30 years ago.
But that is largely due to the fact that the bottom 10% are more likely to be new immigrants now than they were 30 years ago. If you correct for that, by only doing the comparison with the same pool of population (people who lived here 30 years ago or their descendants), the inequality is quite a bit smaller.
I agree. The middle class of other parts of the world catching up to rising US[] is a good thing from any perspective except for the most cynical realpolitik subscribers. Even from a pure US centric point of view, it provides a larger market for US goods.
However, the poor doing worse than 30 is really bad. Even if you believe that a high gini coefficient is needed to encourage upward mobility, a falling living standard for the poor indicate that it is not working.
[] I'd really like to see the comparison in income after tax+education+health care. Health care and education is more or less mandatory for the middle class, and the details of how it is financed (tax, savings, insurance) shouldn't affect the comparison of living standard.
> Even if you believe that a high gini coefficient is needed to encourage upward mobility, a falling living standard for the poor indicate that it is not working.
Yeah, social mobility in the US is pretty low nowadays. I don't have any numbers at hand, but wasn't there a recent story on HN about how most European countries had more social mobility than the US now?
Trickle down doesn't work. Money flows up. The poor spend it immediately (because they need it to pay for stuff they need but can't buy, which is what makes them poor), whereas the rich can afford to hoard it.
Puts all those articles about the weak US middle class in perspective.
The real travesty is at the bottom. The worst 10% are actually doing worse now than 30 years ago. The few groups above that didn't benefit at all from the enormous economic growth of the past decades. The extreme growth of the wealthiest 10% is simply outrageous by comparison. But the middle class isn't doing quite as badly as I expected.