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Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

nytimes.com

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Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#121

Post by lliamander »

xxpor wrote: post #105
zanny wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 t…

>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. It's almost like the two are related!

> It's almost like the two are related!

Lol, a fair bit of truth to this. However, I would say that in the past:

- There were places you could go where you didn't have either of those problems because there just weren't enough people around.

- Governments didn't take as much of your livelihood

- There were a greater variety of societies, so you had more options in choosing one that you found least onerous in their expectations.

Of course travel took longer, and life wasn't all sunshine and roses, but once you moved to a new place you could fairly effectively start over.

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#122

Post by twoodfin »

I don't think this presentation gives a useful picture of larger trends without at least some projection of relative population. It puts Barnstable County, MA (population 215,000) on the same representational footing as Washington-Arlington-Alexandria (population 6,000,000).

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#123

Post by lgieron »

zanny wrote: post #86
mancerayder wrote: post #58

That 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 t…

> 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.

You're ommiting the fact that "bandits in a humvee" were there as well - see for example Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

Retric wrote: post #99
dragonwriter wrote: post #16

The 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…

That is a useless definition in terms of policy. We don't care which legal profession people have. We care about the value they produce and the pay they receive. Class has vastly different meanings in the US or India etc. As long as the meaning was clear that should be enough for any reasonable person. Especially when it's a very common definition. Whining about it is little better than trolling. PS: The original def…

> That is a useless definition in terms of policy. We don't care which legal profession people have.

I disagree that its useless in terms of policy, and it has nothing to do with which legal profession people have (no matter what work you do, if you make most of your support from working for someone else, you are working class; if you are supported by a mix of your own capital and your own labor, with neither being overwhelmingly dominant, you are middle class, if you are mostly renting labor to apply to your own capital, you are a capitalist.

> The original definition of middle class even included working class people. Working class people are not serfs and they are not aristocracy so by default they are middle class.

Yes, the meaningful relations to the economy under the feudal economic system are different than under the capitalist economic system [0]. The replacement of the feudal system of property (notably, the end of feudal land tenure making land title a marketable commodity fungible with other forms of capital, as well as conversion of feudal obligations over time from service-based to payment-based obligations) eliminated the distinctions in relationship to the economy represented by the feudal class structure, replacing them with a different set of relevant relations, those of the capitalist system.

[0] As an aside, an interesting example of the period of transition between the two systems is found in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, where Smith talks about the relations of three classes to policy, and they map roughly to the feudal upper class -- which he favors as the class most reliable as both knowing and being able to pursue their interest and having that interest aligned with the common interest, the capitalist upper (and arguably, conflated with them, middle) class -- which he sees as dangerous because their interests will conflict with the common interest -- and the capitalist working class (which he sees as unreliable despite sharing, and arguably defining, the common interest because they are too uneducated to know their own interest, or effectively pursue them if they did).

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#125

Post by zeveb »

xxpor wrote: post #105
zanny wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 t…

>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. It's almost like the two are related!

I can't find the exact quote, but there's one floating about how until about 1910 the most government that average Englishman (outside of London) would experience was the post office. 1890 rural England isn't particularly known for being a lawless hellhole.

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#126

Post by lliamander »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #117
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The joke is that the rural people are oppressing themselves. "Urban elites" have long advocated for policies that would benefit the rural poor but the white rural poor are dead set against any policy that would also benefit black people. http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 and http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-Amer... for more on that.

That book is so totally "OMG, what's WRONG with those people???" Emphasis "those people." While that's one interpretation, there's Long been conflict in the US on the rural-urban axis - see Andrew Jackson's vision versus Alexander Hamilton's vision Race is only useful in this sort of thing as a predictor of rough economic class, and even then it's less than useful. IOW, I don't think it's specifically race. A better…

> That book is so totally "OMG, what's WRONG with those people???" Emphasis "those people."

Indeed. Although I am not (currently) among the rural poor, I can't imagine ever trusting someone who openly refers to me or mine as "those people".

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#127

Post by nostrademons »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #119
nostrademons wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went down: $135K in 2000 => $124K in 2014.

... which leads me to think there's a general growth-lacking/deflationary process at work. And this is due to bad monetary policy.

Not necessarily. According to a sibling commenter, upper end of the range is set at double the median income. If it's dropping, it indicates that the inflation-adjusted median income is dropping. One explanation for that is a contracting economy, but another one is simply that income is becoming more concentrated in the upper end of the distribution. Shift a large number of dollars from the bottom half of the income distribution to the upper half and the mean will stay the same, but the median will fall.

Given the other findings in this infographic and general zeitgeist around income statistics, I think the latter explanation is a lot more likely.

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#128

Post by twoodfin »

nitrogen wrote: post #98
qsymmachus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a grain of truth to this, but it's a frankly smug attitude. It's a bit of a hand wave ("because racism") that allows urban elites like you and me to avoid asking what it is about _us_ and our politics that many white working class people find so repulsive.

So let's ask the question, then. What makes progressive social policies (ignoring loaded issues like reproductive options and gun control) so distasteful to some of those who would most benefit? I'll provide a starting hypothesis for discussion's sake: maybe urban disdain for the suburban and rural lifestyles (exemplified by complaints about "subsidizing" rural areas) turns people off before they hear the good ideas?…

I don't think ramping up to a $15 minimum wage is going to be a practical or effective economic stimulus for small family businesses in rural upstate NY, but that's what they're going to get thanks to their urban compatriots who know better[1].

[1] http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2016/02/poll_two-thi...

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#129

Post by rhino369 »

Retric wrote: post #99
dragonwriter wrote: post #16

The 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…

That is a useless definition in terms of policy. We don't care which legal profession people have. We care about the value they produce and the pay they receive. Class has vastly different meanings in the US or India etc. As long as the meaning was clear that should be enough for any reasonable person. Especially when it's a very common definition. Whining about it is little better than trolling. PS: The original def…

It doesn't really matter what the reasonable definition is because the commonly used definition is what matters for political discourse.

Beyond that there are social aspects to class. The idea that America has a great big class that covers a wide of income levels is key to understanding the culture. I think it's a big part of why America tends to reject a large welfare state. Our middle class doesn't see itself as a low class even if they would be considered that in other cultures.

Re: Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking

#130

Post by thrownaway2424 »

twoodfin wrote: post #128
nitrogen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's ask the question, then. What makes progressive social policies (ignoring loaded issues like reproductive options and gun control) so distasteful to some of those who would most benefit? I'll provide a starting hypothesis for discussion's sake: maybe urban disdain for the suburban and rural lifestyles (exemplified by complaints about "subsidizing" rural areas) turns people off before they hear the good ideas?…

I don't think ramping up to a $15 minimum wage is going to be a practical or effective economic stimulus for small family businesses in rural upstate NY, but that's what they're going to get thanks to their urban compatriots who know better[1]. [1] http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf/2016/02/poll_two-thi...

In fact this is the perfect illustration of how the non-rich are manipulated into supporting the policies of the rich. Lots of people oppose the minimum wage increase on the basis of its impact on small businesses, but the reality is that small businesses have their margins squeezed to zero by their landlords, who raise rents as high as the market can bear. When the government sets a minimum wage they are effectively defining a non-negotiable boundary around the rent-wage-profit function for businesses. Business owners might be willing to pay higher rents and lower wages, but the minimum wage prevents them from doing this. This is better for workers (who get paid more), better for the economy at large because it puts money in motion (minimum wage earners spend 100% of their earnings and save nothing), neutral for the small business owners whose margins were already minimized, and worse for landlords. The only people who should be opposed to this are landlords, but they succeed in manipulating many others over to their side.
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