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"Paul paints a rosy picture but doesn't mention that incomes for lower and middle-class families have fallen since the 80s." Doesn't look like it: median incom

by dash2 2y ago

"Paul paints a rosy picture but doesn't mention that incomes for lower and middle-class families have fallen since the 80s." Doesn't look like it: median income in 2019 was $44K, in 2001 it was $31K. That's adjusted for inflation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States I don't like it when the facts look wrong after two minutes' googling.

ggg4468 2y ago
[flagged]
willsmith72 2y ago
It is interesting how much easier the stats for 50th percentile plus are easier to find than anything below that. Also only 2 minute of googling, but 6/6 pages I checked provided either median or median as well as 60-99th percentile. None showed anything below. Not speculating on what those stats are, and I'm sure they're out there somewhere, but certainly less available or SEO'd.
ggg4468 2y ago
The left likes to constantly watch and complain of how much money others have. It's amazing how petty they are, behaviors frequently seen in 5 year old children, and in leftist adults. Waaaah waaah, the size of his cake is bigger. Waaaaah
- OKRainbowKid 2y ago
  Building strawmen and characterizing roughly 50% of the population as crying babies on the basis of you not agreeing with their politics sure seems like something a very mature and collected person would do.
  - sgfghr 2y ago
    [dead]
advael 2y ago
Dam, I didn't know the 80s started in 2001. Or is it just that that's the chart you can find with "two minutes' googling" and so that has to be good enough because that's the amount of effort it takes to find something that vaguely seems to satisfy your confirmation bias? Okay, though, let's just look at the chart you link. Let's assume that "inflation adjusted dollars" tracks purchasing power parity perfectly over that period and look at these numbers in relative terms, because that's what actually matters for stuff like "Who is competing to buy the limited housing stock available" or other things that actually matter to people and aren't just numerical games 31k to 44k? Cool. Seems like a lot. That's a 33% increase in the median income over that period! Over the same period, the top 20% bucket on the same chart grew from about 67k to about 103k, or by about 50%. The .0001% income bucket grew from 30m to about 60m, or about 100%. Keep in mind that the marginal value of extra dollars is considerably higher the fewer dollars you're making. So over this period of time, the Gini Coefficient, which measures inequality, has drastically increased, which is what you'd expect given the argument the article is making Now, maybe your point is that the one number, the median income, that you're talking about has gone, I dunno, vaguely up in some period of time. It seems like this misses the point of the article in favor of nitpicking about a minor factual error. "Look!", you might say, "they said median income went down when really it went up!" That seems to be your entire argument here, and it's fucking stupid, because if you're going to fixate on a minor factual nitpick, at least get your facts right. 2001 is generously a whole decade and some change out from the 80s
- willsmith72 2y ago
  let's just do away with any attempt at sticking to the facts, and stick to the vibe of the thing. to me, you are doing the nitpicking. picking 2001 was generous, the growth is far greater if you look back to the 80s.
  - advael 2y ago
    But the vibe of the thing is about income inequality, and it's good that it is, because the value of money isn't fixed. Only rich people staring at a stock portfolio care about "number went up", what most people care about is their real purchasing power. Right now, the income you need to qualify for a mortgage on a house in the US is around the ~80-85th percentile mark of household income, generously. The Gini Coefficient is mentioned by the linked article exactly because income inequality is really important for what someone's effective purchasing power is, partially because some markets, like housing, are priced in a competitive manner, which is why I keep mentioning housing (Also, it's a huge factor in people's material living conditions, and a cost that has risen far faster than "inflation" in all of the periods discussed so far, which is the kind of phenomenon you can't really explain by trying to do big broad averages in "adjusted dollars" but which measuring things like inequality can tease out causal factors for a lot better). If we're just going by vibes, the overwhelming vibe (which is also supported by the numbers) is that income inequality is increasing and that this is a huge problem, and it seems like most of the people who don't feel this way are pretty decidedly in the small portion of the population for whom this is working out. It doesn't surprise me that people here don't vibe with that. Based on the forum alone, I'd bet all the people in this thread are at least in the 80th percentile of US household income (adjusted for local purchasing power if you happen to live elsewhere). If this wasn't the vibe in 2021, Paul Graham wouldn't have been writing bullshit to try to dismiss said vibe, and this person wouldn't be responding to him
xrisk 2y ago
The same Wikipedia article notes that the increase in median income is due to increasing women’s wages and increased participation of women in the labor force. > While wages for women have increased greatly, median earnings of male wage earners have remained stagnant since the late 1970s. Household income, however, has risen due to the increasing number of households with more than one income earner and women's increased presence in the labor force.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
soared 2y ago
Agreed, that is a very weird sentence when the chart clearly doesn’t show the same thing. Not sure what the author meant. > But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%.10 This was considerably less than the 64% increase for upper-income households, whose median income increased from $126,100 in 1970 to $207,400 in 2018. Households in the lower-income tier experienced a gain of 43%, from $20,000 in 1970 to $28,700 in 2018. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... The graphs in the blog posted are from this pew article.
mupuff1234 2y ago
Inflation isn't exactly a single objective truth as you can decide how to measure it. For example looking at the number of median salaries required to buy a house tells a different story.

by dash2 2y ago

ggg4468 2y ago

[flagged]

willsmith72 2y ago

It is interesting how much easier the stats for 50th percentile plus are easier to find than anything below that. Also only 2 minute of googling, but 6/6 pages I checked provided either median or median as well as 60-99th percentile. None showed anything below. Not speculating on what those stats are, and I'm sure they're out there somewhere, but certainly less available or SEO'd.

ggg4468 2y ago

The left likes to constantly watch and complain of how much money others have. It's amazing how petty they are, behaviors frequently seen in 5 year old children, and in leftist adults. Waaaah waaah, the size of his cake is bigger. Waaaaah

OKRainbowKid 2y ago
Building strawmen and characterizing roughly 50% of the population as crying babies on the basis of you not agreeing with their politics sure seems like something a very mature and collected person would do.
- sgfghr 2y ago
  [dead]

advael 2y ago

Dam, I didn't know the 80s started in 2001. Or is it just that that's the chart you can find with "two minutes' googling" and so that has to be good enough because that's the amount of effort it takes to find something that vaguely seems to satisfy your confirmation bias? Okay, though, let's just look at the chart you link. Let's assume that "inflation adjusted dollars" tracks purchasing power parity perfectly over that period and look at these numbers in relative terms, because that's what actually matters for stuff like "Who is competing to buy the limited housing stock available" or other things that actually matter to people and aren't just numerical games 31k to 44k? Cool. Seems like a lot. That's a 33% increase in the median income over that period! Over the same period, the top 20% bucket on the same chart grew from about 67k to about 103k, or by about 50%. The .0001% income bucket grew from 30m to about 60m, or about 100%. Keep in mind that the marginal value of extra dollars is considerably higher the fewer dollars you're making. So over this period of time, the Gini Coefficient, which measures inequality, has drastically increased, which is what you'd expect given the argument the article is making Now, maybe your point is that the one number, the median income, that you're talking about has gone, I dunno, vaguely up in some period of time. It seems like this misses the point of the article in favor of nitpicking about a minor factual error. "Look!", you might say, "they said median income went down when really it went up!" That seems to be your entire argument here, and it's fucking stupid, because if you're going to fixate on a minor factual nitpick, at least get your facts right. 2001 is generously a whole decade and some change out from the 80s

willsmith72 2y ago
let's just do away with any attempt at sticking to the facts, and stick to the vibe of the thing. to me, you are doing the nitpicking. picking 2001 was generous, the growth is far greater if you look back to the 80s.
- advael 2y ago
  But the vibe of the thing is about income inequality, and it's good that it is, because the value of money isn't fixed. Only rich people staring at a stock portfolio care about "number went up", what most people care about is their real purchasing power. Right now, the income you need to qualify for a mortgage on a house in the US is around the ~80-85th percentile mark of household income, generously. The Gini Coefficient is mentioned by the linked article exactly because income inequality is really important for what someone's effective purchasing power is, partially because some markets, like housing, are priced in a competitive manner, which is why I keep mentioning housing (Also, it's a huge factor in people's material living conditions, and a cost that has risen far faster than "inflation" in all of the periods discussed so far, which is the kind of phenomenon you can't really explain by trying to do big broad averages in "adjusted dollars" but which measuring things like inequality can tease out causal factors for a lot better). If we're just going by vibes, the overwhelming vibe (which is also supported by the numbers) is that income inequality is increasing and that this is a huge problem, and it seems like most of the people who don't feel this way are pretty decidedly in the small portion of the population for whom this is working out. It doesn't surprise me that people here don't vibe with that. Based on the forum alone, I'd bet all the people in this thread are at least in the 80th percentile of US household income (adjusted for local purchasing power if you happen to live elsewhere). If this wasn't the vibe in 2021, Paul Graham wouldn't have been writing bullshit to try to dismiss said vibe, and this person wouldn't be responding to him

xrisk 2y ago

The same Wikipedia article notes that the increase in median income is due to increasing women’s wages and increased participation of women in the labor force. > While wages for women have increased greatly, median earnings of male wage earners have remained stagnant since the late 1970s. Household income, however, has risen due to the increasing number of households with more than one income earner and women's increased presence in the labor force.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

soared 2y ago

Agreed, that is a very weird sentence when the chart clearly doesn’t show the same thing. Not sure what the author meant. > But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%.10 This was considerably less than the 64% increase for upper-income households, whose median income increased from $126,100 in 1970 to $207,400 in 2018. Households in the lower-income tier experienced a gain of 43%, from $20,000 in 1970 to $28,700 in 2018. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... The graphs in the blog posted are from this pew article.

mupuff1234 2y ago

Inflation isn't exactly a single objective truth as you can decide how to measure it. For example looking at the number of median salaries required to buy a house tells a different story.