Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

bfi.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#21

Post by gizmo686 »

imtringued wrote: post #14
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means it's now harder for families to make it on a single income that used to be the responsibility of the father. This drives wages lower as we're seeing and makes it harder on everyone.

Logically speaking, it doesn't make any sense. It should be easier to start families because families earn twice as much. Practically speaking, people will spend their money on limited resources like land and basically lose out on most of the gains. That's the primary way "housing as an investment" earns money, by extorting the wages of future workers. If there are more workers (women and men) then you get to earn ev…

Part of the story is that doubling the size of the workforce does depress wages; and it does cause inflation on assets that do not see an increase in production with an increase in workforce size (such as land).

The other issue is that "women entering the workforce" is not really an accurate description of what is going on. Women have been entering the formal workforce. This means that family now need to pay for what was once done for free by the wife. The most significant expense here is childcare (the cost of which is often cited as a major barrier to women "entering" the workforce); however there are all sorts of little expenses that could be avoid at the cost of additional time, so not heaving an unpaid homemaker increases your living costs in a bunch of little ways.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#22

Post by frankbreetz »

Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income"

What is the solution? Obviously, we would like to keep moving forward and allow anyone that is willing and able to do the job they want, but if anyone would like to be with their children, or take time off while a spouse works, that should also be able to be done.

The solution to me seems to forcing the gains in production and efficiency to the people. With what mechanism I am not sure, but a society that increases output while the lifestyle of average people decreases is not a successful society. Obviously, companies are not going to do this on their own, so I think this should be governments main role, to ensure companies act in the people's best interest and fill in the gaps where companies fail or are not efficient.

It seems to me the increases of efficiency should allow all people a minimum quality life(i.e. a place to live, something to eat, a doctor, education), no matter their contribution to society. I think this can turn people that are a strain on the system to contributors (and if not, we should still do it. What is the point of society, if not to take care of people and give them a better life?)

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#23

Post by mdorazio »

prennert wrote: post #6

I was hoping to see how much people earn in their lifetime. And how that changed over time. I was wondering the other day other how many years are high earners are actually earning a very high income. In-equality wise it is very different if people in the 2 percentile of income stay there for a decade or more or if they are in that income bracket only for a few years while doing a specific job and drop down to lower…

For your second question see [1]. Average income tops out for most people around age 40 and they stay at that level for most of the rest of their main career.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t03.htm

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#24

Post by lotsofpulp »

nend wrote: post #20
brk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that most high income earners stay at that stage for the majority of their career after reaching that level. While I know there are exceptions and odd examples, IMO people in general have little desire to take a large pay cut, so if you manage to get yourself to the point you are in the top 2% of earners, why would you step back?

If I had to guess, I agree most people probably continue to earn high wages once at that level. But I don't think it's a question of how often people decline high wages to take a lower paying job (although this obviously happens as well). It's whether they can continuously be offered high wages as their career continues.

At least part of that is probably a function of how hard the work is on one’s body. A hard labor worker with a high income in 30s/40s is presumably more likely to lose that income in 50s/60s/70s than a non hard labor worker (e.g. office job).

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#25

Post by dukeofdoom »

imtringued wrote: post #14
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means it's now harder for families to make it on a single income that used to be the responsibility of the father. This drives wages lower as we're seeing and makes it harder on everyone.

Logically speaking, it doesn't make any sense. It should be easier to start families because families earn twice as much. Practically speaking, people will spend their money on limited resources like land and basically lose out on most of the gains. That's the primary way "housing as an investment" earns money, by extorting the wages of future workers. If there are more workers (women and men) then you get to earn ev…

Owning property, like rental property is not free money. Loan interest, property taxes, landscaping, and cleaning up after tenants. The maintenance expenses are constant. Due to the number and the declining standards of very many things put into houses now. Fixing things approaches a part time job.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#26

Post by elliekelly »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #15

Its interesting that earnings and inequality worsen around 1965/1970, which is also the year that immigration into the USA began a rapid increase: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm... At the same time as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which essentially opened up immigration to anyone in the world instead of just people from North Western Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im…

Given that immigrants who aren’t from north western Europe are often subject to discrimination and treated as second-class citizens it should come as little surprise that inequality increased as immigrants became more diverse.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#27

Post by bhupy »

frankbreetz wrote: post #22

Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income" What is the solution? Obviously, we would like to keep moving forward and allow anyone that is willing and able to do the job they want, but if anyone would like to be with their children, or take time off while a spouse works, that sho…

An idea that I really like is to do what countries like Singapore and the Scandinavian countries do: create a public sovereign wealth fund, and then do what States like Alaska do: divert the dividends from the fund directly to the people.

Alaska's Permanent Fund is only allowed to invest in Alaskan companies and is "only" $75B in size (https://www.alaskajournal.com/2021-02-24/fund-continues-bull...), and even then an Alaskan resident would have received $2,000 in 2015 simply for existing: https://pfd.alaska.gov/Division-Info/Summary-of-Applications...

By scaling up the size and scope of the fund, you can conceivably get to a place where the dividend can work out to $10k+ per person per year.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#28

Post by phkahler »

frankbreetz wrote: post #22

Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income" What is the solution? Obviously, we would like to keep moving forward and allow anyone that is willing and able to do the job they want, but if anyone would like to be with their children, or take time off while a spouse works, that sho…

>> Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income"

That's kind of expected. Our society/economy/marketing are designed to get people to spend 100 percent of their income or more. So when families get 2 incomes it causes inflation or enables people to buy more stuff (iPhones) or whatever until they're spending the same percentage. Aside from not actually saving the extra income, the obvious downside is to screw single people by raising prices without raising their income.

No idea what the solution is. I think in general we need better ways to save for retirement and also need to reduce the cost of living/rent. Doing both those things together seems to go against nature - if people have it they will spend it. BTW by "people" I mean in general, there are obviously individuals who live differently.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#29

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #15

Its interesting that earnings and inequality worsen around 1965/1970, which is also the year that immigration into the USA began a rapid increase: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm... At the same time as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which essentially opened up immigration to anyone in the world instead of just people from North Western Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im…

The chart you linked to doesn't support your own point. Immigrants as a percentage of population is no higher after the rise in absolute number of immigrants shown there. In fact for the first few years there, it's signifcantly lower. What I get from that chart is that as a proportion of the population immigration has been relatively constant except for the baby boom period, where local demographics were briefly enough to supply the labour force.

As for your second link, I have no idea what you're trying to get at, but it frankly sounds a bit racist.

Given that for the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century immigrants could basically get off a boat in New York and enter the US or Canada without much restriction and get citizenship quite easily compared to now, this is beyond silly. Literal boatloads of eastern Europeans and Italians (not "north western Europe") arrived in the first part of the 20th century. And built the backbone of the US and Canadian economies in that period.

Finally, northwestern Europeans stopped wanting to _come_ to North America after the early 60s. There was no need for them to emmigrate. My own father's economic fortunes would have been far better off if he'd just stayed in Germany.

Re: Lifetime Earnings in the United States over Six Decades

#30

Post by bdcravens »

frankbreetz wrote: post #22

Who knew such an admiral goal: "having women entering the workforce en mass" would have such a depressing result: "it is now much more difficult for a family to survive on one income" What is the solution? Obviously, we would like to keep moving forward and allow anyone that is willing and able to do the job they want, but if anyone would like to be with their children, or take time off while a spouse works, that sho…

Freelance can create a lot of schedule freedom.
Post reply on HN