Yes, certainly adults who end up poor are more likely to have come from poor roots, but that does not mean that people who start off poor, are more likely to end up poor than in the middle class. Indeed their may be a hard core of poor in this country who never escape poverty, but I don't think that has anything to do with the ever expanding number of people who are getting really rich, and widening the gap.
Are you sure about that? If he is no longer a student, and files his own tax return, would he be included in the ranks of the poor by the government? I honestly don't know.
The answer is yes. See article above. I was counted because I wasn't a full time student. Like I said, I was a lazy-ass teenager. We need to differentiate. There are people the govt. say are poor and then there are people who are "really" poor. But for our purposes here, we need to stick with the "govt. poor" because that's how we get statistics. It's not perfect, but that's what we got. I'm sure a lot of people in Ethiopia would love to change places with many of the poor in the USA, but looking at it that way ruins any chance of real debate on the issue of poor in America.
Of course, that's NOT the point. It's that the ecoonomy rewards different people differently because they --are more talented --are more productive --offer a product/service that people are willing to pay large dollars for Socialists, or socialist leaning thinkers (there are folks on here who would be insulted if you called them socialst, but they indisputably have a socialistic turn of mind) want equality of OUTCOMES, not just equality of opportunity. In a capitalist system, unequal outcomes are inevitable. And it's a good thing.
Part of the issue is how you define classes, whether it be in absolute or relative terms. If we get an extra 20 million dirt-poor immigrants tomorrow, then the bottom 10% of income earners in the US have become "upwardly mobile" because they're no longer the bottom 10%, even though they haven't actually improved their lot at all. Class mobility is stalling, according to the WSJ, and virtually all the gains from GDP growth have been concentrated among the wealthiest Americans. Let's be clear: this isn't just a contemporary American issue, it's a historical and global one. Class mobility has expanded greatly over the past, say, 100-200 years, the US is traditionally better at providing upward mobility opportunities than other countries, and we are less concerned with class than most any other country in the world. But those expansive opportunities that existed in the 1950s and 60s are not as much there. We still believe in our own upward mobility, but how much of that is perception vs. reality? But the people who are getting "really rich", as you put it, are not a proper way to answer the question. Brazil and the Philippines would be first-world countries if our economic measures were based solely on the state of their upper classes.
I am sorry, negativist gloomsters and doomsters, the United States of American is getting richer, not poorer. The vast majority of people are NOT below the poverty line, and in way shape or form will a majority of people in this country EVER be below the poverty line. Yes, gloomsters and doomsters, chew on these facts for a while: (Source, Great American Dream Machine, Stephen Moore and Lincoln Anderson, The Wall St. Journal, 12/21/05) [No link available]. Families have more wealth -- Six out of 10 households own stock and two out of three own their own homes, the average family -- for the first time ever -- has net worth (assets minus liabilities) of more than $100,000. Median family income has climbed to more than $54,000 a year. Mobility Upward to Higher Income Levels -- The Census data from 1967 to 2004 provides the percentage of families that fall within various income ranges, starting at $0 to $5,000, $5,000 to $10,000, and so on, up to over $100,000 (all numbers adjusted for inflation). These data show, for example, that in 1967 only one in 25 families earned an income of $100,000 or more in real income, whereas now, one in six do. The percentage of families that have an income of more than $75,000 a year has tripled from 9% to 27%. Mobility Upward Out of Lower Income Levels -- Virtually every income group has been lifted by the tide of growth in recent decades. The percentage of families with real incomes between $5,000 and $50,000 has been falling as more families move into higher income categories -- the figure has dropped by 19 percentage points since 1967, moving from 70% to below 55%. This huge move out of lower incomes and into middle- and higher-income categories shows that upward mobility is the rule, not the exception, in America today. Median Income has fallen recently, but it's the long term trend that counts -- It is true that the median-income numbers have fallen slightly in recent years. But this has been the pattern during virtually every recession and immediate post-recession period of the last 40 years. Median-income growth stalls, and then when the recovery picks up steam, incomes resume their inexorable march upward. That is why the long-term trend is what we should be paying attention to. And examining this data leaves no room for argument: The middle class has not been "shrinking" or losing ground, it has been getting richer. For example, the Census data indicate that the income cutoff to be considered "middle class" has risen steadily. Back in 1967, the income range for the middle class (i.e., the middle-income quintile) was between $28,000 and $39,500 a year (in today's dollars). Now that income range is between $38,000 and $59,000 a year, which is to say that the middle class is now roughly $11,000 a year richer than 25 to 30 years ago. This helps explain why middle-income families can buy things like cable TV, air conditioning, DVD players, cell phones, second cars and so on, that were considered mostly luxury items for the rich in the 1950s and '60s. Total Household Net Worth in the Aggregate and in the Median has grown -- The total net worth of Americans rose to just shy of $50 trillion in 2004. The Fed has not yet calculated the median household wealth for 2004, but Moore and Anderson estimated that number by taking the average ratio of mean wealth to median family wealth over the past 10 years. This yields an estimate of $105,000 in 2004. This is almost double the median family-wealth level of 1983 and nearly triple the level of 1962. Until very recently, for a family to attain six figures of wealth was considered quite rich. Lower Income Strata has declined but it is still Low -- It is true that there is one income category -- $0 to $5,000 a year -- where income mobility is hardly observable. This very low income group has stubbornly fluctuated between 2.3% and 3.6% of American families. But is this the fault of the American economy? Well, a very large percentage of these families do not even have a full-time worker participating in the labor force. Getting an education, getting a job, and having strong family units for this segment are probably the real solution. A short term spike in the poverty rate, but a long term trend down Some posters here, and the media, and the poverty lobby have seized upon the news that the poverty rate has spiked upward to 12.7% in 2004, up from 11.3% before the recession. This rise was widely reported and condemned, but again this is a short-term phenomenon attributable to the aftershocks of the recession. What was not widely reported was that the 12.7% poverty rate was the lowest coming out of any recession in the last 25 years, and that the poverty rate has been lower than 12.7% in only five of the last 25 years. It certainly is better than the 15.1% rate poverty-rate peak in 1993. Sorry, economic negativists and pessimists. Things are getting better, not worse. Much better.
Oh, by the way, our poor are different than the poor of other nations. They are richer. They have more stuff. http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P140067.asp
This includes 401(k) assets, does it not? That's a shift in corporate benefits strategy and retirement income risk to employees, not really a change in the makeup of the investor class. Would you like to provide this figure in real terms from, say, 10 years ago? How about 20 years ago, or 30? Let's see what we're really talking about here. What's the change in percentage of dual-income families over this same time period? The change in total hours worked? Same question. This isn't even debatable; it's an opinion. And you need to define "long-term". You're arguing total wealth here, not median. You're changing your measures in the middle of the argument. Pick one: either argue that only GDP matters, or the median matters. You're being way too selective with your data to be convincing. 1. You've plagiarized John Batchelor. 2. You -- er, John -- is very dismissive of this group, assuming that you (he) knows who these people are and why they are in their plight. Maybe you should ask some of them before assuming. Again, you're not defining short-term vs. long-term, you're just dismissing it.
From that article. "From 32 years of data on 6,273 families recorded by the University of Michigan's long-running survey, American University economist Tom Hertz calculates that 17 percent of whites born to the bottom 10 percent of families ranked by income remained there as adults, but 42 percent of the blacks did." So this study confirms that even in the worse segment of the population, as far as mobility is concerned, more than half of the population improves their class. I don't see how this confirms that people are stagnant in their earning power. The article points to lots of good reasons why it is more difficult than in the past to inrease your earning power, and Once again I don't see how any of them have to do with the with the people who are getting super rich and widening the gap. Good question, but almost imossible to answer becaue there are so many variables, I don't think you will ever even be able to agree on what "reality" is. True. I certainly would not to tout any economy base soley on the status of the super rich, just like I wouldn't want to criticize an economy bases soley on the gap between the rich and the poor.
I'll address your other criticisms later, when I have a bit more time, but I really want to focus on this remark. And this remark, frankly, is pure crap. This utterance epitomizes a meaningless and unsupportable nostalgia for the past -- there WERE possibilities for improvement back THEN, but there aren't NOW? Where is the proof of this? Where is the evidence? What is the measure? Where are the numbers? It seems to me you're just indulging in feelings...people PERCEIVE that there were opportunities then, and believe that there are opportunities now., but that Obie FEELS that, well, those opportunities just aren't there any more. It's the Obie stagnant model of the US economy (which has proven over and over and over again that it is anything BUT stagnant)...yes, ladies and gents, this is a good as it gets. I am sorry, this is not a debating point based on substantive facts and verifiable evidence. This is a debating point based on negativistic and pessmistic FAITH that we ain't goin' anywhere. Well, I have faith that, economically, things are going to be tremendous in the next 20 years. Absolutely tremendous. I like my positive and optimistic faith much better than your negative and pessimistic faith. And considering how well the economy has performed over medium term stretches -- say, in 8-10 year increments -- my faith has some objective justification. Yours? Very little justification at all.
You are a complete and utter liar, Karl. A plagiarizer, a hack, and a liar. Find me anywhere where I say there are no opportunities for upward mobility. Find me where I say that the economy is stagnant. Find me where I say I'm negative and pessimistic. Don't speak for me, Karl. You have proven yourself to be totally unable to do that. You sad, pathetic troll. You know, every time I respond to one of your posts in detail, I get messages and PMs that say things like "why even try? He's just going to ignore you." And usually you do. But here you're not ignoring me, you're distorting my questions & comments and just plain lying. Go back to Archer's hideaway, where your plagiarism and faux intellectualism goes unchallenged by dittoheads who don't know any better. The really sad thing is that there's a lot of intellectual heft and rigor behind real conservativism, but you -- someone who thinks he's brilliant but has been incapable of providing any evidence of such brilliance -- have become their standardbearer here by default, because all the smart conservatives have left. They, and the rest of us, deserve better than you.
Another way of handling this would be to refer to the chart in post #35. Then, I'd be right about my apple/orange prediction instead of being right about my pissing/preening prediction. Either way, the important thing for you and Karl K to remember going forward is I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO, nanny-nanny boo-boo.
The thing that's not there is where the other half go -- moving from 10th percentile to 40th would be substantial, moving from 10th to 15th is not as much. And, when we're talking just in relative terms, an increase in the number of poor increases the relative standing of the somewhat poor even if it doesn't actually improve their financial standing. We just don't know enough about this group to assume there's real growth. I think the issue of income multiples between top 10% and bottom 10% is overblown as a talking point, except when it comes to using GDP to measure an economy's health. 4% GDP growth looks nice but if 3.5% of that went to the top 10%, it's not as long-term healthy as GDP growth that is more evenly distributed. This is why median wealth and median income are so popular, because what we really care about is not what Bill Gates did this year, but what the average schmo did. Probably not -- and the issue gets worse when you start using non-financial measures such as life expectancy, average work week, average retirement age, infant death rates, crime rates, etc. The US is near the lead in a lot of the money categories (per capita GDP might be the only one where we're not #1) but lags Japan and Western Europe in the non-money ones -- what's more important? Should we prioritize differently? I think one thing is clear: established capitalist economies lead non-capitalists in almost every significant category that measures quality of life. Self-preservation as cultivated by capitalism is probably better for us in almost every way possible. But that doesn't mean that we've perfected the model. One of the key unknowns is what happens as more of the planet becomes capitalist -- we've had cheap access to virtually everything we've ever wanted, but does that change as China and India begin to demand more for their own societies and resources become more expensive? Nobody really knows that yet.
I thought that post pretty much cleared up the deabte question, too, in that, given the statistics the Census and the OMB use, yes, the U.S. is getting poorer,; yes, that fairly clear analaysis also has to do with, as in most cases, how you define a thing (in this case, poverty). But maybe it's me. Not wait, it's not me at all.
No doubt that you win the debate, if everyone is employing the stats we all regularly employ; this is something the FISH index, or the GPI, or the ISEW told us decades ago, in the case of some of the above indicies. And yet we still rely on GDP; why? Who controls that reliance? Who relys on our reliance on solely that measurement, to tell us anything? We're ignorant. It's why, for example, the NFL and its various constituents can tell us that Paul Brown stadium will cost $300 million, it ends up costing $496 million, we - WE - pay $441 million of that, and that doesn't count the interest on the bonds taken out through 2027 ($354,242,008), and the KNOWABLE stadium maintenance through 2025 ($230,115,000)... ...because we might - MIGHT - reconsider paying over a billion dollars for a place that hosts 10, 12 games, and make those making all the money fro mthe enterprise of Americna football build their own stadia, and use that billion, for, I don't know...battling poverty. I'm out of my mind, I know. The issue was NEVER "Is poverty increasing?" Of course it is. The issue is "What - if anything - are we prepared to do about it?" We invest in a ********ing stadium through 2027, but cannot come up with a robust, long-term strategy for tackling poverty? What is the DIFFERENCE between that unwillingness, and a policy-driven and politically mitigated HATRED of the poor? What is the functional difference, for poor folks on the ground? None; none at all.
No, you're not out of your mind. It is ridiculous that a government that is $8trillion + in debt can not sit down and prioritize it's spending accordingly. Granted in the case of stadiums we're not looking at local spending. But at that look at who is putting money together to build stadiums. What is the new baseball stadium in DC going to cost? $500m? $750m? One of the worst school systems if not the worst school system in the country is in DC and while they can't come up with that kind of money to put into their schools, they can for a baseball team. Is the presence of a baseball stadium going to improve schooling for the poor? At best the stadium gets a run down neighborhood to gentrify. But that isn't going to get kids to stop dropping out of school. That isn't going to get the kids a decent education. And we know without a decent education those kids are going to remain living in poverty.
Slightly off topic, but DC does spend a lot on schools. According to this link only NY and NJ spend more per pupil. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/23/school-spending.htm In DC it's not how much is being spent as it is how it is being spent, unfortunately.
Indeed; however, there's much more to it than that number, which is in fact patently deceiving; this should be read and understood in terms of the truth of the complexity of that, and how that number offered in USAToday as ostensible news, is as useable and insightful, in terms of what's really going on, as the GDP is.
And what I meant is that it's not just how that number is being spent, but, as the link I offered indicates, that number is in and of itself illusory. Which doesn't refute your point (i.e. regardless of what the damn number is, HOW that number is being spent is relevant and central), just amplifies it in a different direction, I think, in that comparing that number across the board is as informative as is GDP.
Out of your mind? That's for you to answer. It seems to me that you are just seeing the result of "COLLECTIVISM GONE WILD". We live in a country where politicians control private property. Usually, Mel, you're okay with that, as long as our politicos, "the Robin Hoods" are taking it from the advantaged to the disadvantaged. When it gets reversed, and the advantaged are taking advantage, you squeal like a pig. I happen to agree with you that taxing people billions of $$$ in order to create wealth for a few by building stadia that are used for 12 days/yr. seems barbaric. Unfortunately, it is you and your ilk that help to perpetuate these unseemly acts of thuggery which you legitimized a long time ago and still do today. I would venture to guess that your major problem with deficits and public spending isn't that it gets spent, it's more a debate on who gets the spoils of this war. Frankly Mel, I don't know where it was written that I should UN-voluntarily work for you and your causes. If I get put out of my job tomorrow, I'd go and look for another one as opposed to depending upon BIG BROTHER to provide me with some meager subsistence. As it happens, while I'm working I still actively look for other ways to supplement my income. This is why I don't care for democrats and most republicans. They understand their business all too well. They will rob the nation blind in the name of some ideal, as long as they get re-elected, it's ok. Haven't you figured this game out yet? Come to think of it, I guess you have. You're already lined up at the trough.
I sourced the article directly from the WSJ. I acknowledged that source. I didn't know about the Batchelor reprint or I would have linked that so people could find it. I didn't put quotes around it. Sue me. Go crawl under your pessimistic rock. You don't even remember what you said. Here's a reminder. In other words, there are FEWER opportunities today, according to the grand poobah Obie than in the past, and therefore by THAT measure (assuming we COULD measure it, which, of course, we can't, considering how intellectually incapable YOU are in understanding what we CAN measure) we are WORSE off. In other words, a pessimistic view, capped by your slippery rhetorical question that gives you a nice little dodge, a nice little hedge. But fess up -- deep down inside you REALLY believe that things aren't good, and aren't going to get better, right? Don't think you can best me, are smarter than me, or know more than me, Obie. You have proven yourself to be totally unable to think clearly about any matter of substance. You sad, pathetic lefty, wallowing in your negativist cyncial muck. Of course, you'll exchange PMs with your fellow moonbat dittoheads, as you all gather around in your little leftist sandbox, commisserating together about how big bad Karl is such a mean mean meanie!! I am not distorting your questions and comments, but taking what you say to its logical conclusion. Because you are simply incapable of seeing what the conclusion really is. Why don't you head off to the Democratic Underground, or the Daily Kos, where your shallowness goes unchallenged by the pinheads who don't know any better?? You are right in one thing though...there is a lot of intellectual heft and rigor behind real conservativism, but so many of the conservatives have left this forum because you and your ilk are actually incapable of having a real debate. I say that your remark is crap...your REMARK, the STATMENT, the WORDS, the IDEAS, not YOU (understand that distinction?? hmmm...didn't think so) and you call me a plaigiarizer and a hack. I play the ball and what do you do? You play the man. YOU. That's right, YOU, the enlightened liberal, YOU start the personal attacks. But then, you don't know the difference between an attack on ideas, and an attack on the person. Well, pal, not only can I outplay you on the ball, I can hack you to the tiniest of little pieces.