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This is all wrong. Focusing on “gaps” doesn’t make any sense. The upper middle class has greatly expanded over the last 50 years (from essentially not existing

This is all wrong. Focusing on “gaps” doesn’t make any sense. The upper middle class has greatly expanded over the last 50 years (from essentially not existing to making up 30% of the population today). The lower class has shrunk. Yes there is more variance in the middle class and upper middle class but the middle class is absolutely mobile into the upper middle class while impoverished people basically don’t exist anymore. Appalachia in the 60’s is a whole lot different than today. The blue collar middle class life is absolutely accessible. But you have to get up on time and do a job. Skilled trades have a huge labor shortage. Factories struggle to hire while offering good wages. Because you need to reliably show up sober and be willing to work. I have numerous friends that supervise modern factories (these are not repetitive widget jobs - they train you abd you have a growth arc) and they are constantly short labor while offering good pay and benefits. It’s hard to find responsible people that want this work - an elite over production of responsible people via universities I think. Same with skilled trade - plumbers, etc. a huge shortage today. Prices are insane to contract these people, the market clearly indicating we need to allocate there. There’s a good middle class life out there if you’re willing to accept it. Capital works.

christophilus 6y ago
I mostly agree. I think we need a free(er) market in education. The Joel Greenblatt charter schools would soon be available everywhere, if market dynamics were allowed. We also are undeniably in need of healthcare reform, and on that front, I think we need to just make up our minds and choose between a single payer system or a free market. The Frankenstein we have today is the worst. And we need to break up monopolies, starting with cable companies / ISPs.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  Laissez-faire in education will create an even greater gap as schools will not have a shared curriculum by definition
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    Most importantly it will drain funding from the already hurting schools in poor areas, while the job "market", or rather employers, will demand ever better, more specialized education in many areas to have a job that provides a living wage. Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise. Companies do not even run schools if they can help it.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      > Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise Yep... and they never should be. Public utilities should never be profit centres
- beej71 6y ago
  Pure free-market healthcare is something nobody wants. Even now, the vast majority of people want to be able to buy insurance even if they have a preexisting condition. So we've already seriously meddled with the free market and we're unlikely to go back. And that's not even counting the multitude of other places in the system where free market forces do not apply appreciable pressure. For non-emergency, non-chronic health conditions, the free market is great. Otherwise it kinda blows. There's no competition for emergency services. You don't choose your hospital or ambulance or helicopter. You can't shop around--not that it would help since they don't tell you prices ahead of time. No competition, no prices, no free market. And if you want to change that, you have to regulate--which also means no free market. Not everything has a free market solution (e.g. flood insurance). But there are plenty of other systems in between these two extremes that work quite well. We don't have to go all-in on one or the other. I will agree, though, that the Frankenstein we have in the US is actually the worst. We pay more tax for healthcare than almost every other country and we get a lot less back for it than they do. And in addition to paying the most tax, we pay huge prices for poor quality insurance. And our prices for care are among the highest in the world. We could definitely do better.
  - bumby 6y ago
    Can n you elaborate on what you mean by the healthcare taxes being paid? Is this the taxes to fund programs like Medicare, the ACA etc.? Or the more generalized notion of aggregate healthcare costs?
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  Education isn’t a profitable enterprise, unless you skew the input or cut corners. We need to teach everybody, regardless of their needs, and pay the teachers well to do so. (This is actually one of the cruxes of the article) Monopoly has invaded every area of our lives, and we’re worse off for it. We need the opposite of “free” markets in order to deal with this. Companies need to be broken up, sectors need new regulation, and we need to prevent mergers while subsidizing competition.
beej71 6y ago
It sounds like you're saying that these trends can be explained by a general increase in American laziness over the last 50 years. Is that accurate? And, if so, do we have data on that?
- nemo44x 6y ago
  There’s data on how many people are drug addicted. There’s also data (to my other point) on how many more people go to universities now VS then and wouldn’t consider value collar work today. There’s probably data on how baby more men live at home today than 50 years ago. Regardless, there’s plenty of opportunity for blue collar when. Why do you think almost nobody that does it votes for leftists anymore? Why Amazon will fail to unionize? Those that do, know there is an abundance of good laying work if you’re willing to be responsible and work hard.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  What you have is increasing productivity, not laziness, according to these same economists, while wages stagnate. So one working person produces ever bigger share of GDP, but is not getting paid for it. More importantly, also a shrinking working population. Still not laziness unless your definition of laziness includes people with chronic medical conditions deemed typically unfit for work.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The upper middle class essentially didn't exist in 1970? On that particular detail, I call baloney.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Was less than 10% of the population. Today is around 30%. Meanwhile the lower-middle and lower classes have shrunk. https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappearing-into-the-upper-middle-class-but-theres-more-to-the-story/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappe... We are eliminating poverty and making more people rich. People in the middle might feel poorer since there’s more people “above” them today, but they aren’t.
  - bumby 6y ago
    As the WSJ article referenced in the link says, there is no codified definition to upper/middle class. Most other references I’ve seen define it as the the upper quintile, minus the top percentile or few. So by that definition, it’s always around 15%-19% of the population. It’s a bit odd to me that the Census Bureau uses a hard income level instead but it is useful in putting inequality in a different light. Not saying it’s wrong, but it could open the door for statistical shenanigans. I do think it may be bad form that the researchers focused on income rather than wealth to define class.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      I think what it means is 50 years ago you had to be a doctor, lawyer, or high level business exec to be in that group. Today most of this forum is in the upper middle class as it has expanded into many professional occupations like software engineers, etc. We have grown the pie and created more opportunities for individuals to claim a larger piece of it (regardless of race, gender, or sexuality) all while eliminating abject poverty.
      - bumby 6y ago
        I agree in part, but to play devils advocate I don’t know that it fully encapsulates the problem of the shrinking middle class. 50 years ago you could be middle class with just a high school education, largely fueled by the manufacturing sector. I don’t think those equivalent cohorts in today’s economy moving up to the upper middle class in the methods you describe but rather they are left to fill the lower strata.

christophilus 6y ago

I mostly agree. I think we need a free(er) market in education. The Joel Greenblatt charter schools would soon be available everywhere, if market dynamics were allowed. We also are undeniably in need of healthcare reform, and on that front, I think we need to just make up our minds and choose between a single payer system or a free market. The Frankenstein we have today is the worst. And we need to break up monopolies, starting with cable companies / ISPs.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Laissez-faire in education will create an even greater gap as schools will not have a shared curriculum by definition
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  Most importantly it will drain funding from the already hurting schools in poor areas, while the job "market", or rather employers, will demand ever better, more specialized education in many areas to have a job that provides a living wage. Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise. Companies do not even run schools if they can help it.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > Schools in poor areas are not a profitable enterprise Yep... and they never should be. Public utilities should never be profit centres
beej71 6y ago
Pure free-market healthcare is something nobody wants. Even now, the vast majority of people want to be able to buy insurance even if they have a preexisting condition. So we've already seriously meddled with the free market and we're unlikely to go back. And that's not even counting the multitude of other places in the system where free market forces do not apply appreciable pressure. For non-emergency, non-chronic health conditions, the free market is great. Otherwise it kinda blows. There's no competition for emergency services. You don't choose your hospital or ambulance or helicopter. You can't shop around--not that it would help since they don't tell you prices ahead of time. No competition, no prices, no free market. And if you want to change that, you have to regulate--which also means no free market. Not everything has a free market solution (e.g. flood insurance). But there are plenty of other systems in between these two extremes that work quite well. We don't have to go all-in on one or the other. I will agree, though, that the Frankenstein we have in the US is actually the worst. We pay more tax for healthcare than almost every other country and we get a lot less back for it than they do. And in addition to paying the most tax, we pay huge prices for poor quality insurance. And our prices for care are among the highest in the world. We could definitely do better.
- bumby 6y ago
  Can n you elaborate on what you mean by the healthcare taxes being paid? Is this the taxes to fund programs like Medicare, the ACA etc.? Or the more generalized notion of aggregate healthcare costs?
adamcstephens 6y ago
Education isn’t a profitable enterprise, unless you skew the input or cut corners. We need to teach everybody, regardless of their needs, and pay the teachers well to do so. (This is actually one of the cruxes of the article) Monopoly has invaded every area of our lives, and we’re worse off for it. We need the opposite of “free” markets in order to deal with this. Companies need to be broken up, sectors need new regulation, and we need to prevent mergers while subsidizing competition.

beej71 6y ago

It sounds like you're saying that these trends can be explained by a general increase in American laziness over the last 50 years. Is that accurate? And, if so, do we have data on that?

nemo44x 6y ago
There’s data on how many people are drug addicted. There’s also data (to my other point) on how many more people go to universities now VS then and wouldn’t consider value collar work today. There’s probably data on how baby more men live at home today than 50 years ago. Regardless, there’s plenty of opportunity for blue collar when. Why do you think almost nobody that does it votes for leftists anymore? Why Amazon will fail to unionize? Those that do, know there is an abundance of good laying work if you’re willing to be responsible and work hard.
AstralStorm 6y ago
What you have is increasing productivity, not laziness, according to these same economists, while wages stagnate. So one working person produces ever bigger share of GDP, but is not getting paid for it. More importantly, also a shrinking working population. Still not laziness unless your definition of laziness includes people with chronic medical conditions deemed typically unfit for work.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

The upper middle class essentially didn't exist in 1970? On that particular detail, I call baloney.

nemo44x 6y ago
Was less than 10% of the population. Today is around 30%. Meanwhile the lower-middle and lower classes have shrunk. https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappearing-into-the-upper-middle-class-but-theres-more-to-the-story/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappe... We are eliminating poverty and making more people rich. People in the middle might feel poorer since there’s more people “above” them today, but they aren’t.
- bumby 6y ago
  As the WSJ article referenced in the link says, there is no codified definition to upper/middle class. Most other references I’ve seen define it as the the upper quintile, minus the top percentile or few. So by that definition, it’s always around 15%-19% of the population. It’s a bit odd to me that the Census Bureau uses a hard income level instead but it is useful in putting inequality in a different light. Not saying it’s wrong, but it could open the door for statistical shenanigans. I do think it may be bad form that the researchers focused on income rather than wealth to define class.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I think what it means is 50 years ago you had to be a doctor, lawyer, or high level business exec to be in that group. Today most of this forum is in the upper middle class as it has expanded into many professional occupations like software engineers, etc. We have grown the pie and created more opportunities for individuals to claim a larger piece of it (regardless of race, gender, or sexuality) all while eliminating abject poverty.
    - bumby 6y ago
      I agree in part, but to play devils advocate I don’t know that it fully encapsulates the problem of the shrinking middle class. 50 years ago you could be middle class with just a high school education, largely fueled by the manufacturing sector. I don’t think those equivalent cohorts in today’s economy moving up to the upper middle class in the methods you describe but rather they are left to fill the lower strata.