Here is the best article I could find on the topic. If you have not read Piketty's book it is a good summary:
http://scalar.usc.edu/works/growing-apart-a-political-histor...
Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
81–90 of 180 posts
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not accurate, $125k household income only puts you in the 84th percentile according to the 2014 census. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... , link to actual census results in footer.
Thanks for the correction, my numbers must be older (or just wrong).
Or, the income rank among "American workers" (which you referred to) and that among "American households" (which the person "correcting" you referred to) is different. Which is not merely plausible, but expected.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#83In some places the middle class is losing pop to the upper class, in others it's losing pop to the lower class. It's also a moving target. It's based on relative income rather than a set point of achievements (ability to send offspring to college/uni). On the other hand we can infer that it's not as easy as it once was to become middle class through union/blue collar jobs, except in some government spheres. Beset by…
Or maybe a small political movement. Much of our family traces back to the Midwest or southern New England factory towns. It's been quite astonishing seeing the professional and geographic migrations that happen as a new generation comes of age. The starting point is just as described: Rust Belt parents with fraying big-company jobs that were predicated on medium incomes, mid-level skills and high expected levels of…
I don't think it's going to get easier for new grads for a while, if ever. We're automating and offshoring jobs to remain "competitive" i.e. retain more profits. Not all kids, white or black will be getting advanced degrees in a large enough volume to counteract this trend.
While many people think of this as a blue collar white people issue, it's actually a poorly educated people issue which affects blacks and whites of poor backgrounds. Men and women.
We're not going to age out of the conundrum.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gr8 point. Also, cost of living is not adjusted for in federal taxes especially if one falls into the standard deduction. Living in the bay area as a renter on 125K, you probably end of paying about 20K in Federal taxes and 30K in rent.
That does give you a free-and-clear net income of 75k, which is better than a lot of households make before taxes and housing in other parts of the country.
Yeah, $75K is nearly 1.5 times median household income. So its substantially more than most households make.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a 60% developer / 40% small team lead. Do it all remotely with trips to California every two months or so. Plenty of positions are available for remote workers. From what I've seen, it's not the employers, but rather the employees. For some reason, the convenience and distractions of cities are lifestyle requirements, not employment requirements. Which is fine, but I take issue with the widespread delusion that l…
Well, I live about a 45 minute drive from Vancouver BC. It's still part of the "Greater Vancouver" area, but it's not like we're living right downtown. The area I live is pretty much all residential. We're not exactly living a fast paced fancy high life. Yes, living here is a choice we make. I could move to the middle of nowhere , buy a house, and have lower expenses. Heck, I could move to a third world country and l…
Curious what part of BC you are in? My wife and I had dreams to move to Vancouver one day but seems impossible given that we just had a baby, and housing prices. We looked at Surry but seems a bit gritty and at the border of affordability. We're sick of Toronto. The traffic, the cost of houses and the weather all suck (TO has fantastic ethnic diversity and all our family lives there). We have friends buying run-down semidetached houses for a million dollars in Toronto ... we're saying no to that.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#86That the income distribution is shrinking in the middle distribution of the population of the U.S. is a critical data trend with a number of unpleasant implications. From an ideological perspective, it damages the traditional worship of hard work and the idealization of middle class life. Idealistic visions (as reflected from the movies, the shows, the social policy of the era around the middle of the 20th century pr…
> "Ask HN: Which remote island can I escape to and live comfortably and cheaply?"
This is really the fundamental problem in the modern world. The interconnectedness and shrinking of the globe in terms of distance means there is absolutely no where to escape to. Anywhere you would consider going there will be some government trying to dictate how you live your life and take a portion of your livelihood, and anywhere that you might avoid that you are usually risking that in conjunction with a humvee full of armed militants storming your home and murdering you.
Even a hundred years ago there were vast swathes of Australia, the central US, and South America generally uninhabited yet arable land, and the distances of the time made it infeasible for anyone to effectively police all of it. Today, not so much.
About the only hope left is setting up floating colonies in the Venusian atmosphere, but the problem is well before despondent settlers can migrate on a colony ship there will be governments establishing absolute control and monitoring of any habitable space someone could try to flee to.
It is like the "right to be forgotten" on Facebook - the right to be left alone was, fleetingly, a valuable thing that relatively few could enjoy, but in the same way the middle class shrinks the number of people capable of being in that state is also in dramatic decline.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#87The article makes the extremely common media error (which is also present in the source research, or at least the press release from Pew announcing it -- the article uses "class" pretty exclusively, the Pew release uses "class" in the headline and much of the body, but also uses "income tier" in some places) of conflating income (which is simply a measure of the amount of money received per year) with class (which is…
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Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sad to say, there are many areas of the country where living on $125,000 still definitely sucks. Only by truly decadent standards could an income of $125,000 be said to "definitely suck". $125k is 2.4x median income and puts you in the 97th percentile of all American workers.
Attempting to answer the question a different way... I presented three fictional "couples" and their career choices that would easily get you to the $125,000 point in today's labor market. None of these pairing would be considered "highly compensated" or upper class. Middle class would be a more appropriate designation. With regards to the "suck" factor - try running a household in SF, LA, or NYC (with kids and spous…
I don't think owning my own home and having good schools is a particularly decadent expectation.
To the GOP, your just greedy.
To the GOP, your just greedy.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#89Ugh - while I agree with the conclusion, the statistical definitions here don't have any connection with reality. $125,000 is "upper class", you say, regardless of location? Let's translate that into the real world, shall we? $125,000 Household Income.... Who makes it: - IT manager or Senior Dev with stay at home spouse - Mid-level Dev ($90K) married to a K-12 teacher ($40K) - Two junior software developers (co-habit…
> Sad to say, there are many areas of the country where living on $125,000 still definitely sucks. Only by truly decadent standards could an income of $125,000 be said to "definitely suck". $125k is 2.4x median income and puts you in the 97th percentile of all American workers.
Location still matters, though. At a Silicon Valley software company you'd expect around $100k starting salary with a bachelor's degree and you could get a modest place to live. Working in the mid-west or the south you'd almost cut that figure in half and would end up living in a larger house with a nicer car. I graduated with the highest starting salary that I know of out of anyone in my class but I still ended up living in a very "low-class" area and struggling to make ends meet. I lived far more comfortably before with less than half the income while paying my own tuition in a different state.
Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sad to say, there are many areas of the country where living on $125,000 still definitely sucks. Only by truly decadent standards could an income of $125,000 be said to "definitely suck". $125k is 2.4x median income and puts you in the 97th percentile of all American workers.
Attempting to answer the question a different way... I presented three fictional "couples" and their career choices that would easily get you to the $125,000 point in today's labor market. None of these pairing would be considered "highly compensated" or upper class. Middle class would be a more appropriate designation. With regards to the "suck" factor - try running a household in SF, LA, or NYC (with kids and spous…
Obviously you are correct that $125k does not go in far in SF, LA, or NYC as it does in Cleveland. But these cities are extreme outliers, and my main point remains that you need a little more perspective about what "definitely sucks" in America.
I make right around $125k and live in SF. I have the luxury of not having to think much about how I spend my money, and yet I still have $2000-$3000 left over every single month. For perspective, half of all Americans would not be able to afford a single unexpected $400 expense[1]. That's what definitely sucks, not the fact that I can't afford a house in Bernal Heights.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/03/tn...