7 ms·

The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class

53 points by bootload 12y ago

bootload 12y ago
source: Brent Staples https://twitter.com/BrentNYT/status/559796286569062400 https://twitter.com/BrentNYT/status/559796286569062400
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
The telling point in this article is just glanced upon - that those who stayed in middle class are covered by Medicare or welfare. That a free health care system helps buffer people against sudden shocks - and without it the hollowing out is worse.
- zaroth 12y ago
  Medicare, and dozens of other welfare programs raise the marginal tax rate in some parts of the curve up to 95% for the middle class. Since earning the money is not free, and you keep virtually none of it, working more you end up with less. Increasing the payouts for earning less, not surprisingly, erodes the middle class. Either you are determined enough to work more to earn less and maybe in a few years come out on the other side of the chasm, or you work less and immediately benefit from it. Check out Figure 1 (page 6) in this CBO report, and note it's worse now than when this was written; http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/11-15-2012-MarginalTaxRates.pdf http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/... It's amazing how little value you actually gain from the first $60k of earnings! If you prefer a more newsy analysis; http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21585010-americas-welfare-state-not-working-nearly-well-it-should-taxing-hard-up-americans# http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21585010-america...
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    The only step in Medicare taxes occurs at $200,000 (or $250,000 for a married couple). Given that those numbers are well above the cap for social security (which provides a nice break in marginal rates), I doubt that Medicare taxes are factoring into decisions to work more or not.
    - douche 12y ago
      Probably not, but all of the other small income-based social programs add up in a hurry, especially for people who are on the bottom end. If you know that working more will cause your earnings to rise just enough to knock you over the line and end the free healthcare, fuel assistance, food stamps and all the other programs, its a huge disincentive. What's the point of working harder, if it means you're going to have even less money than if you didn't work at all?
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Sure, at this point it's pretty well understood that it is bad to build programs with regressive structures. I think the phrasing of the OP threw me off, I had thought they were saying that payments in raised the effective marginal rates, not the loss of the benefits.
  - davidw 12y ago
    The US spends a huge portion of its GDP on health care - more than anywhere else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal... But this sounds like politics, so ... article flagged.
    - Brakenshire 12y ago
      The US even spends more tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than Britain.
minthd 12y ago
Any free links to the content ?
- zaroth 12y ago
  Google search for the title and click through.
sdoering 12y ago
Actually the exact same thing is happening in Europe. A lot of formerly well paying middle income jobs is being automated and rationalized, whereas a lot of new low level income jobs and lot less high level income jobs are being created. Where good education formerly could save you and your family a good living, it now has to be an excellent education, where even both persons in an household have to work, to make ends meet. or in lower income jobs, in the case of Germany, people have to work two or three jobs, or depend on substitutions from the state. It is economically speaking rational, to automate the bulk of the (middle income) jobs, as there lie the most potential savings. So without regulation this trend will continue (it will on the other hand continue even with regulation, I believe). Sadly, I have no idea, what can be done about that.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  You can extrapolate from the article and your comment into the future: in the future few things that we base our current economy on will still have value. This means that we're going to have to radically re-think how compensation should work and how our future economy is supposed to work given that almost any job can be automated to some extent. The 'automated away' segment is expanding both upward and downward, that 'middle class' that is disappearing is not so much a middle-class as a middle tier, those jobs that were easiest to automate away because they dealt mostly with information management. But once you go down that road your interfaces 'up' and 'down' just become 'more complex brains' and 'more capable hands' which in turn are touched by artificial intelligence and better robotics. So that middle tier will get ever wider. This is an extremely challenging problem.
  - Jare 12y ago
    > in the future few things that we base our current economy on will still have value "People" in general is one of those things. We have reached, or are about to reach, the point where it's no longer true that more people = more {wealth, power, progress}.
- nofutureagain 12y ago
  The big difference is that in much of Western Europe, the combination of social security, healthcare, pensions, social housing, eduction costs, public transport etcetera means you don't rapidly fall out of the middle class even if you lose your job. As a result, there's much less talk about the "decline of the middle class" in Europe. There has been no dramatic change.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jusmus88 12y ago
Gosh, if only we had some context instead of trying to push a populist narrative. Oh wait. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q83NyGTLock/UekhmnoX4tI/AAAAAAAABc8/2DTpx4H9Rug/s1600/family+incomes.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q83NyGTLock/UekhmnoX4tI/AAAAAAAABc...
- r00fus 12y ago
  A witty saying proves nothing. That dicing of all incomes into three brackets including the ridiculous $75k+ bracket (for families!) just shows how you can hide truth with graphs.
  - jusmus88 12y ago
    A graph completely debunks the populist theory, yet you continue to push the narrative that the middle class is "falling out" instead of...you know...getting richer? Thanks for the downvote because statistical facts on income apparently aren't your cup of tea.
    - lazaroclapp 12y ago
      Of course people are getting richer in absolute terms, that's not surprising (if you assume technology advances and produces any increase in value at all), but with that comes inflation. Now, the interesting question is not whether people are getting richer or not, not even whether people are getting richer faster than inflation negates those gains. The question is: are the richest X% (for a sufficiently small X) is getting richer much faster than the remaining (100-X)%, and whether that difference in the rate of growth is sufficient to seriously unbalance a country's society? Even if it isn't, does that concentration of capital make the whole economic system less efficient than it otherwise could be or happens at the expense of basic living conditions for people in the (100-X)% group?
      - zaroth 12y ago
        'Constant Dollars' means adjusted for inflation. The bigger problem is there are multiple versions of the same chart floating around and they are significantly different, so methodology questions aside, I no longer even trust the data is sourced correctly.
wsc981 12y ago
I've taken a liking to James Altucher's post on LinkedIn where he also explained why the middle class is dying: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140407131300-5858595-10-reasons-you-have-to-quit-your-job-in-2014 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140407131300-5858595-10-rea...
d4nt 12y ago
I have a theory that the classification of working class, middle class and upper class will disappear as we go through the 21 century. They will be replaced with two types of job: 1. Jobs were you design things (code, graphics, marketing campaigns, franchise models, sales scripts, hedged trades, screenplays, new business models, retail store layouts, art, fashion etc) 2. Jobs were you follow basic instructions (flipping burgers, voice-over artists, uber drivers, sales, retail manager, factory line worker, tax accountants etc) The first category is a subset of the current middle class, but it's much smaller. Everyone in the second category is in for a rough ride. They will be constantly competing with machines, algorithms and millions of other people who can all follow the same manual that they have. Even jobs like sales where you'd think there has to be a human involved will be gradually eroded. Human intuition will increasingly be replaced by scoring algorithms and CRM reports. Their persistence in following up with people will be replaced by lifecycle emails, tracking algorithms and chatbots. And ever more transactions will be pushed online anyway. I also believe that we're at the point of saturating our hierarchy of needs. Some people will try to monetise things like love, acceptance and respect of others (I can already buy a Facebook girlfriend on Fiverr). But I think this will be largely un-monetisable. Meaning we're in for mass unemployment. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, so long as we drop the stigma. People can be kept warm, dry, well fed and entertained with games and box sets, with relatively little cost.
- mytochar 12y ago
  Feel free to tell voice-over artists and other actors that their jobs are following basic instructions. Same with sales, managers and tax accountants.
  - d4nt 12y ago
    So are some aren't. I can buy a voice over on fiverr, I can send them a script and a few notes and get back an MP3 within 24 hours. Over the next 50 years these people are at risk of loosing their jobs to computer synthesised voices. If all Starbucks outlets look the same, sell the same stuff and use the same process, I'd say the manager is largely just following the manual. As for taxes, mine are already prepared by a computer then just checked over by a human. That's not to say there aren't also high end accountants designing company structures and doing financial planning.
q2 12y ago
This is happening in Asia also. A question arise as to why we work and how fast should we work? In the absence of technology, many things (e.g: ability to write this comment) are not possible. But technology is subsuming many activities where people earn just sufficient amount for the peaceful life of their families without bothering about loss of jobs or what position his country stands in the GDP/productivity rankings ...etc. Economic press has created a race among leaderships of nations on who is developed(advanced) i.e. praiseworthy and who is not and many organizations started preaching ways to improve productivity as if productivity only is the ultimate goal of human life. Political leaders cannot dare to advocate alternatives because that is suicidal for them, their countries ...etc. I think, technology's effect on human life is like inverted bathtub curve i.e. technology advancement to certain level is beneficial to society but beyond that we enter region where costs/losses outweigh benefits if we consider entire society. No doubt, there will be winners any time but as a whole society loses and inequality may rise causing law and order issues and impacting even winners indirectly. In that sense, technology is like level of water in river and beyond certain level, it is not good for humanity. World is highly decentralized and innovators or cultures who tasted success in innovation won't agree that progress in certain technologies need to be stopped or efforts need to be directed towards other required activities. So technology progress always happen and jobs also gets destroyed as collateral damage.
- delackner 12y ago
  Political leaders cannot advocate alternatives like a guaranteed income for everyone, only so long as the people fail to demand such measures. The history of technology is a long progression of jobs that we don't have to do anymore, freeing us up to both achieve more complicated tasks, and to require fewer hours of human energy to achieve a certain level of pleasant life for everyone. McDonalds cook, taxi driver, self driver, brick layer, so many jobs today are just on the edge of being unnecessary, and that is a great thing. Those people would be much happier, and society as a whole much safer, if we just gave all these people the money they need to live, and simply ask that they contribute a little civic participation (talk to some old people, supervise children, etc).
  - 12y ago
binarysolo 12y ago
So, takeaway: -Most jobs are computer-solvable, given enough time and resources. -From a cost-benefit standpoint, people have strong incentives for automating higher-paying jobs than lower. -People automating work and people allocating funds to automate said work will reap rewards. -We as a whole really need to think about a world where a majority of people don't work and figure out how society works and maintains stability given those constraints. (Basic income, etc.) -For those who haven't settled on what they want yet, they should prolly find work in something that's hard to solve by a robot (that also hopefully provides meaning and sustenance).
machinebirth 12y ago
I see these articles a lot. They often present similar data and confirm the very long term trend. Without exception, none of the articles ever mention that humans without jobs forever, will simply die out. Humans without means to sustain themselves will simply die out. That is all. It could be different but it is not. This is where we are. And it is natural. Our parents and their parents died before us as we rose to power. Sure dying out and dying of old age aren't necessarily the same but passing your genetic code on is passing your genetic code on whether it is through a machine or a human. Humans are still much better at reproducing our code than machines but not for long. When this line is crossed the discussion will not be about dying middle classes but about massive human population loss through famine and wars. It's inevitable because no one simply gives their power away without dying. This applies to your parents. And their parents. Get ready to die and don't be a wimp about it. Your parents weren't. And neither were their parents.
dpweb 12y ago
This is hyperbole. Yes, there has been some movement low 31-34, middle 45-43, high 25-22, since 2000. But also consider that 2000 was at the height of a bubble where people were artifically wealthy. I wouldn't call a couple of percentage points "killing the middle class". Also, consider the labor participation rate. At a 36 year low. Less people are working. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 Without getting into the whole political argument about whether people should be paid by the government when they do not work, or to the extent robots or cold hearted business barons are killing jobs - or - whether these people can't work or choose not to because they can get by on govt. dole (or working friends/family) - less people working will mean less income. The survival of middle income families is a very real concern, but I don't find the click bait headlines and exaggeration of what's happening particularly helpful. We have too many areas in American life where instead of taking a sober look at the problem, we stir people up by appealing to their base fears and create narratives to scare people.
fsloth 12y ago
Once again, time to suggest Thomas Pikettys "Capital in the 21st century" as highly astute commentary on this.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
So, uh, looking at those charts.... good? When you see low, middle, and high it's pretty clear that most of those loses are moving up to the high class. In fact the high class has grown by as much as the middle class shrunk and then some! The issue doesn't seem to be that people are falling out of the middle class. The real issue looks like, to me, that we're successfully graduating people from middle to high but not from low to middle. The low class has shrunk a teeny bit but is basically flat. If instead low shrunk, middle stayed flat, and high grew that's be pretty great. It'd mean everyone is moving up. At least that's whatmy interpretation is. What do y'all think?
- georgeecollins 12y ago
  From the article: "Until 2000, the reason was primarily because more Americans moved up the income ladder. But since then, the reason has shifted: There is a greater share of households on the lower rungs of the economic ladder." The graphs are 1967-2014. If you look closely you can see that the "high" group goes up until 2000, but not after. That is the point they are trying to make.

53 points by bootload 12y ago

source: Brent Staples https://twitter.com/BrentNYT/status/559796286569062400 https://twitter.com/BrentNYT/status/559796286569062400

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

The telling point in this article is just glanced upon - that those who stayed in middle class are covered by Medicare or welfare. That a free health care system helps buffer people against sudden shocks - and without it the hollowing out is worse.

zaroth 12y ago
Medicare, and dozens of other welfare programs raise the marginal tax rate in some parts of the curve up to 95% for the middle class. Since earning the money is not free, and you keep virtually none of it, working more you end up with less. Increasing the payouts for earning less, not surprisingly, erodes the middle class. Either you are determined enough to work more to earn less and maybe in a few years come out on the other side of the chasm, or you work less and immediately benefit from it. Check out Figure 1 (page 6) in this CBO report, and note it's worse now than when this was written; http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/11-15-2012-MarginalTaxRates.pdf http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/... It's amazing how little value you actually gain from the first $60k of earnings! If you prefer a more newsy analysis; http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21585010-americas-welfare-state-not-working-nearly-well-it-should-taxing-hard-up-americans# http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21585010-america...
- maxerickson 12y ago
  The only step in Medicare taxes occurs at $200,000 (or $250,000 for a married couple). Given that those numbers are well above the cap for social security (which provides a nice break in marginal rates), I doubt that Medicare taxes are factoring into decisions to work more or not.
  - douche 12y ago
    Probably not, but all of the other small income-based social programs add up in a hurry, especially for people who are on the bottom end. If you know that working more will cause your earnings to rise just enough to knock you over the line and end the free healthcare, fuel assistance, food stamps and all the other programs, its a huge disincentive. What's the point of working harder, if it means you're going to have even less money than if you didn't work at all?
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Sure, at this point it's pretty well understood that it is bad to build programs with regressive structures. I think the phrasing of the OP threw me off, I had thought they were saying that payments in raised the effective marginal rates, not the loss of the benefits.
- davidw 12y ago
  The US spends a huge portion of its GDP on health care - more than anywhere else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal... But this sounds like politics, so ... article flagged.
  - Brakenshire 12y ago
    The US even spends more tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than Britain.

minthd 12y ago

Any free links to the content ?

zaroth 12y ago
Google search for the title and click through.

sdoering 12y ago

Actually the exact same thing is happening in Europe. A lot of formerly well paying middle income jobs is being automated and rationalized, whereas a lot of new low level income jobs and lot less high level income jobs are being created. Where good education formerly could save you and your family a good living, it now has to be an excellent education, where even both persons in an household have to work, to make ends meet. or in lower income jobs, in the case of Germany, people have to work two or three jobs, or depend on substitutions from the state. It is economically speaking rational, to automate the bulk of the (middle income) jobs, as there lie the most potential savings. So without regulation this trend will continue (it will on the other hand continue even with regulation, I believe). Sadly, I have no idea, what can be done about that.

jacquesm 12y ago
You can extrapolate from the article and your comment into the future: in the future few things that we base our current economy on will still have value. This means that we're going to have to radically re-think how compensation should work and how our future economy is supposed to work given that almost any job can be automated to some extent. The 'automated away' segment is expanding both upward and downward, that 'middle class' that is disappearing is not so much a middle-class as a middle tier, those jobs that were easiest to automate away because they dealt mostly with information management. But once you go down that road your interfaces 'up' and 'down' just become 'more complex brains' and 'more capable hands' which in turn are touched by artificial intelligence and better robotics. So that middle tier will get ever wider. This is an extremely challenging problem.
- Jare 12y ago
  > in the future few things that we base our current economy on will still have value "People" in general is one of those things. We have reached, or are about to reach, the point where it's no longer true that more people = more {wealth, power, progress}.
nofutureagain 12y ago
The big difference is that in much of Western Europe, the combination of social security, healthcare, pensions, social housing, eduction costs, public transport etcetera means you don't rapidly fall out of the middle class even if you lose your job. As a result, there's much less talk about the "decline of the middle class" in Europe. There has been no dramatic change.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jusmus88 12y ago

Gosh, if only we had some context instead of trying to push a populist narrative. Oh wait. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q83NyGTLock/UekhmnoX4tI/AAAAAAAABc8/2DTpx4H9Rug/s1600/family+incomes.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q83NyGTLock/UekhmnoX4tI/AAAAAAAABc...

r00fus 12y ago
A witty saying proves nothing. That dicing of all incomes into three brackets including the ridiculous $75k+ bracket (for families!) just shows how you can hide truth with graphs.
- jusmus88 12y ago
  A graph completely debunks the populist theory, yet you continue to push the narrative that the middle class is "falling out" instead of...you know...getting richer? Thanks for the downvote because statistical facts on income apparently aren't your cup of tea.
  - lazaroclapp 12y ago
    Of course people are getting richer in absolute terms, that's not surprising (if you assume technology advances and produces any increase in value at all), but with that comes inflation. Now, the interesting question is not whether people are getting richer or not, not even whether people are getting richer faster than inflation negates those gains. The question is: are the richest X% (for a sufficiently small X) is getting richer much faster than the remaining (100-X)%, and whether that difference in the rate of growth is sufficient to seriously unbalance a country's society? Even if it isn't, does that concentration of capital make the whole economic system less efficient than it otherwise could be or happens at the expense of basic living conditions for people in the (100-X)% group?
    - zaroth 12y ago
      'Constant Dollars' means adjusted for inflation. The bigger problem is there are multiple versions of the same chart floating around and they are significantly different, so methodology questions aside, I no longer even trust the data is sourced correctly.

wsc981 12y ago

I've taken a liking to James Altucher's post on LinkedIn where he also explained why the middle class is dying: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140407131300-5858595-10-reasons-you-have-to-quit-your-job-in-2014 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140407131300-5858595-10-rea...

d4nt 12y ago

I have a theory that the classification of working class, middle class and upper class will disappear as we go through the 21 century. They will be replaced with two types of job: 1. Jobs were you design things (code, graphics, marketing campaigns, franchise models, sales scripts, hedged trades, screenplays, new business models, retail store layouts, art, fashion etc) 2. Jobs were you follow basic instructions (flipping burgers, voice-over artists, uber drivers, sales, retail manager, factory line worker, tax accountants etc) The first category is a subset of the current middle class, but it's much smaller. Everyone in the second category is in for a rough ride. They will be constantly competing with machines, algorithms and millions of other people who can all follow the same manual that they have. Even jobs like sales where you'd think there has to be a human involved will be gradually eroded. Human intuition will increasingly be replaced by scoring algorithms and CRM reports. Their persistence in following up with people will be replaced by lifecycle emails, tracking algorithms and chatbots. And ever more transactions will be pushed online anyway. I also believe that we're at the point of saturating our hierarchy of needs. Some people will try to monetise things like love, acceptance and respect of others (I can already buy a Facebook girlfriend on Fiverr). But I think this will be largely un-monetisable. Meaning we're in for mass unemployment. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, so long as we drop the stigma. People can be kept warm, dry, well fed and entertained with games and box sets, with relatively little cost.

mytochar 12y ago
Feel free to tell voice-over artists and other actors that their jobs are following basic instructions. Same with sales, managers and tax accountants.
- d4nt 12y ago
  So are some aren't. I can buy a voice over on fiverr, I can send them a script and a few notes and get back an MP3 within 24 hours. Over the next 50 years these people are at risk of loosing their jobs to computer synthesised voices. If all Starbucks outlets look the same, sell the same stuff and use the same process, I'd say the manager is largely just following the manual. As for taxes, mine are already prepared by a computer then just checked over by a human. That's not to say there aren't also high end accountants designing company structures and doing financial planning.

q2 12y ago

This is happening in Asia also. A question arise as to why we work and how fast should we work? In the absence of technology, many things (e.g: ability to write this comment) are not possible. But technology is subsuming many activities where people earn just sufficient amount for the peaceful life of their families without bothering about loss of jobs or what position his country stands in the GDP/productivity rankings ...etc. Economic press has created a race among leaderships of nations on who is developed(advanced) i.e. praiseworthy and who is not and many organizations started preaching ways to improve productivity as if productivity only is the ultimate goal of human life. Political leaders cannot dare to advocate alternatives because that is suicidal for them, their countries ...etc. I think, technology's effect on human life is like inverted bathtub curve i.e. technology advancement to certain level is beneficial to society but beyond that we enter region where costs/losses outweigh benefits if we consider entire society. No doubt, there will be winners any time but as a whole society loses and inequality may rise causing law and order issues and impacting even winners indirectly. In that sense, technology is like level of water in river and beyond certain level, it is not good for humanity. World is highly decentralized and innovators or cultures who tasted success in innovation won't agree that progress in certain technologies need to be stopped or efforts need to be directed towards other required activities. So technology progress always happen and jobs also gets destroyed as collateral damage.

delackner 12y ago
Political leaders cannot advocate alternatives like a guaranteed income for everyone, only so long as the people fail to demand such measures. The history of technology is a long progression of jobs that we don't have to do anymore, freeing us up to both achieve more complicated tasks, and to require fewer hours of human energy to achieve a certain level of pleasant life for everyone. McDonalds cook, taxi driver, self driver, brick layer, so many jobs today are just on the edge of being unnecessary, and that is a great thing. Those people would be much happier, and society as a whole much safer, if we just gave all these people the money they need to live, and simply ask that they contribute a little civic participation (talk to some old people, supervise children, etc).
- 12y ago

binarysolo 12y ago

So, takeaway: -Most jobs are computer-solvable, given enough time and resources. -From a cost-benefit standpoint, people have strong incentives for automating higher-paying jobs than lower. -People automating work and people allocating funds to automate said work will reap rewards. -We as a whole really need to think about a world where a majority of people don't work and figure out how society works and maintains stability given those constraints. (Basic income, etc.) -For those who haven't settled on what they want yet, they should prolly find work in something that's hard to solve by a robot (that also hopefully provides meaning and sustenance).

machinebirth 12y ago

I see these articles a lot. They often present similar data and confirm the very long term trend. Without exception, none of the articles ever mention that humans without jobs forever, will simply die out. Humans without means to sustain themselves will simply die out. That is all. It could be different but it is not. This is where we are. And it is natural. Our parents and their parents died before us as we rose to power. Sure dying out and dying of old age aren't necessarily the same but passing your genetic code on is passing your genetic code on whether it is through a machine or a human. Humans are still much better at reproducing our code than machines but not for long. When this line is crossed the discussion will not be about dying middle classes but about massive human population loss through famine and wars. It's inevitable because no one simply gives their power away without dying. This applies to your parents. And their parents. Get ready to die and don't be a wimp about it. Your parents weren't. And neither were their parents.

dpweb 12y ago

This is hyperbole. Yes, there has been some movement low 31-34, middle 45-43, high 25-22, since 2000. But also consider that 2000 was at the height of a bubble where people were artifically wealthy. I wouldn't call a couple of percentage points "killing the middle class". Also, consider the labor participation rate. At a 36 year low. Less people are working. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 Without getting into the whole political argument about whether people should be paid by the government when they do not work, or to the extent robots or cold hearted business barons are killing jobs - or - whether these people can't work or choose not to because they can get by on govt. dole (or working friends/family) - less people working will mean less income. The survival of middle income families is a very real concern, but I don't find the click bait headlines and exaggeration of what's happening particularly helpful. We have too many areas in American life where instead of taking a sober look at the problem, we stir people up by appealing to their base fears and create narratives to scare people.

fsloth 12y ago

Once again, time to suggest Thomas Pikettys "Capital in the 21st century" as highly astute commentary on this.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

So, uh, looking at those charts.... good? When you see low, middle, and high it's pretty clear that most of those loses are moving up to the high class. In fact the high class has grown by as much as the middle class shrunk and then some! The issue doesn't seem to be that people are falling out of the middle class. The real issue looks like, to me, that we're successfully graduating people from middle to high but not from low to middle. The low class has shrunk a teeny bit but is basically flat. If instead low shrunk, middle stayed flat, and high grew that's be pretty great. It'd mean everyone is moving up. At least that's whatmy interpretation is. What do y'all think?

georgeecollins 12y ago
From the article: "Until 2000, the reason was primarily because more Americans moved up the income ladder. But since then, the reason has shifted: There is a greater share of households on the lower rungs of the economic ladder." The graphs are 1967-2014. If you look closely you can see that the "high" group goes up until 2000, but not after. That is the point they are trying to make.