> Macron, and have stopped voting for people like Mitterrand, because capitalism works phenomenally well. You can never boil it down, as politicians of every h

> Macron, and have stopped voting for people like Mitterrand, because capitalism works phenomenally well. You can never boil it down, as politicians of every hue always try to after they won, to simply "because my way", "because capitalism", "because socialism" etc. Or as justification of the unpopular fringe policy that's a major swing issue to exactly none of the electorate. It's as much "because the other guy is an arse", or simply who got the most enaging media smile and presence, or best slogan. Sometimes they are simply the least-worst of the two terrible, terrible choices presented in the election. Simplistically it's a much shallower process than the actual issues. Quite often it is mostly events that swing it. 9/11, and The Falklands, made far, far more difference to election results than economic policies. > Instead it is a commentary on the overall structure of the economy in that it compares low income people in 1979 to low income people in 2007 even though they aren’t the same people ... those 20-31 in 1979 and married ... while 28 years later in 2007, the median of those 48 to 59 and married was Hoo boy, that's a really disingenuous way of presenting it. In 1979, the office junior or trainee something, freshly out of college, goes on a journey through simply "something", and senior something, to head of team, department or one of many Vice Presidents in 2007. Twenties are most people's lowest earning years, and late forties or fifties their highest. There would be something very broken indeed if most did not increase earning power in some sort of reasonable correlation to increasing seniority across their career. It's why we do indeed normally compare the progression of each quintile, or each job role across the years rather than of each person or individual family as they progress through the tiers.