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I said it has "barely budged". A few percent in two decades fits that description. I don't understand why you bring up women entering the workforce again. As I

I said it has "barely budged". A few percent in two decades fits that description. I don't understand why you bring up women entering the workforce again. As I mentioned, that's wrong twice: the proportion of women in the workforce is flat over this timeframe, and additional women in the workforce would push median household income up, not down. So we're left with immigrants. Thus my original question way up there: is it all down to underpaid immigrants, then?

Consultant32452 7y ago
I'm not sure I can help you. My point is that you seem to be trying to make a political statement based on a single variable in an extremely complex system that is multivariate. As I demonstrated, it's trivially easy for everyone in the system to make more money but for the median household income and/or median wage to go down. But all of my numbers are completely fake. I don't know what the real numbers are or their impacts. And those are just the kinds of things I thought of off the top of my head. I can neither prove or disprove the thing you seem to be alluding to. I'm inclined to agree with what I'm assuming is your intent, but the data available doesn't actually tell that story. Nor does it disprove that story.
- mikeash 7y ago
  And yet when we considered the variables you mentioned, the conclusion didn’t change. What is the point of mentioning that decreasing household size could make the number misleading, when household size didn’t decrease by a significant amount? What is the point of repeatedly bringing up workforce participation by women? It’s fine to say that a measure might be misleading because of other factors. But when those factors don’t actually make it misleading for the example being discussed, I don’t really get the point. It’s also weird that you focus entirely on the possibility that everyone is better off. Isn’t it also possible that everyone is worse off while the median household income remains flat? Smells of ideological bias.

Consultant32452 7y ago

I'm not sure I can help you. My point is that you seem to be trying to make a political statement based on a single variable in an extremely complex system that is multivariate. As I demonstrated, it's trivially easy for everyone in the system to make more money but for the median household income and/or median wage to go down. But all of my numbers are completely fake. I don't know what the real numbers are or their impacts. And those are just the kinds of things I thought of off the top of my head. I can neither prove or disprove the thing you seem to be alluding to. I'm inclined to agree with what I'm assuming is your intent, but the data available doesn't actually tell that story. Nor does it disprove that story.

mikeash 7y ago
And yet when we considered the variables you mentioned, the conclusion didn’t change. What is the point of mentioning that decreasing household size could make the number misleading, when household size didn’t decrease by a significant amount? What is the point of repeatedly bringing up workforce participation by women? It’s fine to say that a measure might be misleading because of other factors. But when those factors don’t actually make it misleading for the example being discussed, I don’t really get the point. It’s also weird that you focus entirely on the possibility that everyone is better off. Isn’t it also possible that everyone is worse off while the median household income remains flat? Smells of ideological bias.