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And here's some extra info that accompanied this data: "The growth in the rich and upper middle class and the declining proportion of the population in the midd

And here's some extra info that accompanied this data: "The growth in the rich and upper middle class and the declining proportion of the population in the middle and lower classes indicate widespread economic growth between 1979 and 2014, but that growth was not distributed equally. On average, incomes grew 53 percent over the period. If the growth had been equally distributed (figure 3), then the shift upward would have been much greater. At the extremes, the proportion of the poor and near-poor population would have dropped to 12.8 percent, and the proportion that is rich would have barely increased (to only 0.5 percent of the population) because the growth among the near-rich with even growth would have been much less than what happened with uneven growth. With even growth, the size of the middle class would have declined but the growth in the upper middle class would have added another 6 percentage points and reached over a third (35.2 percent) of the nondependent adult population."

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Absolutely. But at the same time I think most people have a fundamentally incorrect view of society. If we just break those classes into rich/middle/poor we have in a very short period of time (1979 to 2014) gone from: - rich: 13% -> 31.2% - middle: 38.8% -> 32% - poor: 48.2% -> 36.9% There has been a major migration of people upwards in society. The poor are becoming middle class and the middle class are becoming rich. I think most people instead think society is remaining stagnant with all the wealth going to the same people, even more incorrectly that society is becoming more poor except for a small handful of people. We are doing some things seriously right. You would never imagine this from how things like inequality are normally framed. Like mentioned I certainly didn't. I found this study looking to confirm my bias that society was actually deteriorating (or at best stagnating) socioeconomically. The problem is that is utterly and absolutely wrong!

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Absolutely. But at the same time I think most people have a fundamentally incorrect view of society. If we just break those classes into rich/middle/poor we have in a very short period of time (1979 to 2014) gone from: - rich: 13% -> 31.2% - middle: 38.8% -> 32% - poor: 48.2% -> 36.9% There has been a major migration of people upwards in society. The poor are becoming middle class and the middle class are becoming rich. I think most people instead think society is remaining stagnant with all the wealth going to the same people, even more incorrectly that society is becoming more poor except for a small handful of people. We are doing some things seriously right. You would never imagine this from how things like inequality are normally framed. Like mentioned I certainly didn't. I found this study looking to confirm my bias that society was actually deteriorating (or at best stagnating) socioeconomically. The problem is that is utterly and absolutely wrong!