Anarchistbear said:
The last time we had gdp growth over 4% is in 2000, before that it wasn't uncommon.The amusing thing about people fighting about which party is responsible for 2% growth is that they actually consider it an accomplishment. I doubt we'll see 4% again.
If you grew up in the salad days of America anyone no matter the class ( if you were white) could accumulate wealth on a one person income. Now very few young people can live well on a one person income which means more work, less children and more debt than their parents.
There are still opportunities for the educated and this board is educated . If you are uneducated, however, your life, health and prospects are in decline and your future is one catastrophe away from ruin.
78% of Americans live check to check
50% make less than $31K
40% struggle to meet basic needs
3 people have more wealth than bottom 160 million
There is a reason Sanders biggest supporters are youth and fewest supporters are elderly though I'd say even that was misguided considering possible social security cuts
This may be nostalgic, but lacks the reality of business cycles that impact the country and now globally, and reports statistical self-reported statistical table that hasn't changed over time, and therefore is misleading.
The United States is a relatively wealthy country by international standards, but poverty has consistently been present throughout its history, often signficantly worse than today. These numbers don't even touch the Great Depression, and before that the country was constantly in boom and bust cycles.
I'm not sure what time you are talking about, but when you say single earner times it sound like the 50's and '60's (I'm assuming your not over 100 yers old) so here is the charts on poverty, and they simply don't match-up with your thesis.
File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1959_to_2017.pngIf you read the Picketty book on income inequality (Capital in the 21st Century), he attributes the rise in the middle American middle class and eduction starting post WW2 to MILITARY SPENDING. And he is supported in that theory by his economic followers, including guys at Berkeley. LET ME REPEAT THAT, THE ECONOMISTS THAT STUDY INCOME INEQUALITY ATTRBUTE THE UNIQUE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS TO MILITARY SPENDING. Yet this board is full know it alls talking about ending this economic steroid.
There is no doubt that there are now more opportunities for minorities, which may present problems for white voters. And the Great Recession helped to increase poverty levels again. The issue of understating poverty is especially pressing in states with both high living costs and a high poverty rate such as California where the median home levels are off the charts. This is more of a left state issue, but not exclusively (for example Texas is not exempt). Some critics assert that the official U.S. poverty definition is inconsistent with how it is defined by its own citizens and the rest of the world, because the U.S. government considers many citizens statistically impoverished despite their ability to sufficiently meet their basic needs. But the issue of inequality, is less than you think in many other states, and failed to resonate that much in the election 4 years ago, despite many Ivy League liberal arts graduates camping out in public areas. Just look at the states Clinton carried with large majorities. It also explains why there is so much more hand wringing here with so many highly educated people primarily living in California.
Then we get to all the stupid self-reported/assessed studies you quoted.
Of particular nuisance is the recent study you quoted that 40% (actually 39.4%) of Americans can't meet basic needs. The heavy criticized Urban Institute report you cherry picked was based on asking participants if they felt they STRUGGLED to meet what they consider their basic needs, as opposed to what are actually measure of meeting their basic needs that economists use. That report didn't say they didn't get their basic needs met. It said they struggled. And it is not liked they proved how much they struggled, all of which is certainly in the eye of the beholder in country now full of entitlement. So when I hear someone in my country club saying they "struggled" to handle pay increase in their business for increased minimum wages I really start to wonder. ESPECIALLY WHEN I READ THE REPORT AND IT SAYS IN BOLD "
These struggles did not just affect adults with lower incomes, they extended to higher-income families and to families with and without employed members." Wait the people who should be taxed? Or when Michael Karpman, a research associate at the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center and a co-author of the study,
told CBS News (here is the link) says that this illustrates that there "is no guarantee" that a middle-class income protects people from financial struggle. Huh? So it isn't just the poor who struggle its the rich and middle class. The one take away I get (other than a lot of these new type of reports are bullcrap) is that a bigger portion of the "struggle" is on health expenses, the one issue the Democrats should be pushing.
And let's talk about the paycheck to paycheck BS. That 78% number. The often quoted Nielson (the one with 8 in 10) study found that one in four families making $150,000 a year or more are living paycheck-to-paycheck, while one in three earning between $50,000 and $100,000 also depend on their next check to keep their heads above water. Oh and this gets better, one-third of the families making over $350,000 living in San Francisco go paycheck to paycheck. I would say these are life style decisions or that many Americans lack financial literacy skills (or in the case of San Franciscans love to pay too many taxes). Google the Market Watch article - I can't Lin it. Why Upper Middle are Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/091015/why-high-earners-still-live-paychecktopaycheck.asp?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareurlbuttons via @investopedia
We make $325,000 a year and feel like we live paycheck to paycheck"
https://www.fastcompany.com/90338071/we-make-325000-a-year-and-feel-like-we-live-paycheck-to-paycheckThe FED now puts out a report each year on Economic Well Being of Households and reports on these garbage self assessed reports of financial challenges. And guess what? None of this is new. In 2015, 60% of the households couldn't meet their short terms needs, 50% couldn't meet their medical needs, 42% said they couldn't pay their credit card debt timely, 51% percent said the could not meet their retirement needs,
and the topper, was 38% couldn't meet the "basic necessity" of education and the majority of those were from the highest income families. And how many where living from paycheck to paycheck, eight of ten. Coincidence? A lot of this is this new type of self reporting narrative on describing poverty is new from the way economists look at the poverty as described in the charts above. It was only in 1995, that the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting data for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service on "food security" using a special Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Early work focused on the development of a food security scale. In December 2004, 48,103 households answered a series of 18 survey questions about behaviors and experiences with respect to food. In an amazing coincidence, essentially the same percentage of households reported food security "struggles" as in the Nielsen report you cited. Coincidence?
The problem is that poverty tends to vary with business cycle (and race), and your concept about salad days doesn't hold water (bad metaphor, sorry).
