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More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

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Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#71

Post by Ajedi32 »

tdb7893 wrote: post #57
Ajedi32 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Inequality is inherently bad for dynamic market economies. Often the argument is that increasing inequality is fine if the economy is growing and the lower classes aren't losing income but inequality also slows growth as more of the investment goes to consumption for fewer and fewer people. So economically I agree that inequality is not zero sum but it seems like inequality lowers the total productivity of the econom…

> inequality is a hard thing to do good experiments

> the papers struggle to get good data

Note also that I'm specifically talking about inequality in isolation ("as long as it's caused by the rich getting richer and not by the poor getting poorer"), which I would argue is even harder to study.

It would be completely unsurprising to learn high inequality is correlated with higher rates of poverty, which is correlated with all sorts of other negative causes and effects. I don't know how you could control for that well enough to be able to convincingly claim that inequality itself is what's causing the problem and not the poverty (or the underlying causes thereof).

I would also acknowledge higher inequality certainly makes people envious, and that that probably has some negative societal effects. But I don't know I'd go so far as to count making someone envious as "materially harming" them even if there are other significant downstream effects to that.

I'll admit there's a lot more reading up I could do on this, but it would take a lot to convince me of the idea that making one group of people wealthier without hurting anyone else's finances is a net negative on society merely because it "increases inequality".

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#72

Post by guzfip »

materialpoint wrote: post #8

"For the first decade of his career, he lived in an apartment and worried about paying for vacations. Then, in his early 30s (...)" ... here is America, without paid vacation guaranteed by law since the government does not truly care about the middle or working class. It's amazing how serious media can write articles about economy, while the blatant obvious deficits slip right by their nose..

Reminds me of when all the Silicon Valley freaks decided to suddenly care about the fertility crisis, but also would turn around and pronounce how young professionals need to be 996 slaves to survive their brave new world.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#73

Post by tdb7893 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #71
tdb7893 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is inherently bad for dynamic market economies. Often the argument is that increasing inequality is fine if the economy is growing and the lower classes aren't losing income but inequality also slows growth as more of the investment goes to consumption for fewer and fewer people. So economically I agree that inequality is not zero sum but it seems like inequality lowers the total productivity of the econom…

> inequality is a hard thing to do good experiments > the papers struggle to get good data Note also that I'm specifically talking about inequality in isolation ("as long as it's caused by the rich getting richer and not by the poor getting poorer"), which I would argue is even harder to study. It would be completely unsurprising to learn high inequality is correlated with higher rates of poverty, which is correlated…

My point is that inequality in isolation doesn't happen. It's a hypothetical that doesn't exist. It's like talking about sugar and ignoring calories

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#74

Post by laidoffamazon »

HWR_14 wrote: post #63
laidoffamazon wrote: post #28

As someone that thinks of myself as a low-caste, middle class American it's interesting seeing all of these people listed in the article making less than me

A lot of people consider themselves middle class and are wrong in that self assessment. It goes both ways, you have people making a half a million a year and people making twenty thousand who both consider themselves middle class.

I went to a state school, worked at Amazon and didn’t get a 2300 on my SAT - I definitively am lower caste but the caste/class divergence isn’t well understood in culture I think.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#75

Post by mindslight »

pixl97 wrote: post #67
mindslight wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that a similar effect has now moved into traditionally consumer markets as well. It started showing at the grassroots with hoarding toilet paper and whatnot during the first Grump catastrophe, but has now solidified with things like completely fucking up the market for computing hardware. I think I liked it better when the elites mainly conspired while playing mega golf - having that as the social attractor made…

Eh, I won't say buying up of commodities to manipulate markets is a new things exactly. Hell, look up the "Onion futures act". I think maybe the change here is a more of an institutional collapse of government entities that would attempt to stop this.

Another new thing is that the disruption is framed in terms of a purportedly productive-investment purpose, getting more people and capital onboard. Also with the coordinated irrationality there is a lot more momentum for priming a pump that will endure long term. Sure we can fantasize that all of these datacenter buildouts will go bust, leading to a glut of RAM and we can party like it's 2001. But does anybody think that will actually happen?

I'd say the real upstream problem is the lack of new "thick" business creation. Which is a tough thing to analyze in terms of semiconductor fabs, as they are notoriously centralized-capital-intensive regardless. So I'm not looking to flesh out that argument in this context, but it does fit the anti-competitive less-efficient market pattern I've noticed across the board.

The main pressure relief valve on the horizon seems to be China building new fabs, but that kind of demonstrates how our own Western-aligned market has eaten itself.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#76

Post by pixl97 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #68
mindslight wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't account for the growing asymmetry in the CPI. In the CPI, the asset bubble really only shows up as housing and perhaps transportation. Meanwhile consumer goods go down to compensate (as you'd expect from CPI being in the feedback path for the monetary creation "operational amplifier"). So we're left with everyday expenses continuing to be affordable (eg food, toiletries) while life expenses become ever m…

Yes, if you cherry pick a few things that are disproportionately going up in price and say inflation should be calculated based solely on those things then you can make the numbers look worse. Or the reverse if you cherry pick things that are going down in price. I don't think either of those would be a more reasonable approach than looking at CPI.

I mean if those things are housing, medical care, and education that's not really cherry picking at all.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#77

Post by Ajedi32 »

mindslight wrote: post #70
Ajedi32 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you cherry pick a few things that are disproportionately going up in price and say inflation should be calculated based solely on those things then you can make the numbers look worse. Or the reverse if you cherry pick things that are going down in price. I don't think either of those would be a more reasonable approach than looking at CPI.

It's not a "cherry pick" - the critique is specifically about the asset bubble. Owning assets is what it takes to be economically enfranchised in our system. Even though the asset bubble encompasses much more than just housing, I was meeting you halfway by focusing on where the asset bubble connects to the CPI metric. But with this response it seems as if you're intentionally trying to dodge the issue by focusing on…

I guess I would just disagree and say that having money makes you "economically enfranchised" by definition. That's why I'm talking about CPI.

If you ignore CPI in favor of solely looking at who can afford to buy real estate in big cities ("areas with active economies") then yes, perhaps things have gotten worse, but I'm saying that's the wrong metric to be looking at.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#78

Post by eesmith »

RickJWagner wrote: post #69
balderdash wrote: post #29

the thing that doesn't compute for me is that the definition of upper middle class here is 5-15x the federal poverty line, ok, but in 1970 the federal poverty line was like ~$3k (and ~$22k today) 10x in 1970 (~33k/year) in nyc you could buy a 2,000 sqft apt for like 2.75x your salary [1] today, that same apartment is like >10x - so while perhaps more people are earning "upper middle class" incomes, what that gets you…

I remember 1970. Few people had air conditioning. Cars might last 100,000 miles, if you got a good one. They performed poorly, got awful mileage, and crushed the passenger compartment if you got into an accident. Many people smoked, and people died younger. Medicine wasn’t as good. Rich kids might have a giant set of books called an ‘encyclopedia’. It was about the only way to learn things that were outside your circ…

The 1970s energy crisis as a result of issues in Israel and Iran did indeed help improve cars.

We had this thing called a 'library', with 'books', which helped me learn things outside my circle. Our schools even had a full-time librarian to help us with the technology. Even our church had a library, with a bunch of Tom Swift books.

We didn't live in the boonies like you did. On VHF we had 3 commercial network TV stations, an independent station, and PBS. On UHF there were more, including another PBS station, another independent station, and a commercial station in the Spanish International Network (SIN).

My parents could afford to buy a home and raise a family on a single income from my high school educated father. He died 10 years ago. My mother still gets benefits from his pension plan.

It's also true that cheap ass nylon tents are better than the canvas tents we used to camp in. While we metaphorically drown in plastic as the anthropogenic global warming predicted by the 1970s tightens its grip ever more.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#79

Post by Ajedi32 »

tdb7893 wrote: post #73
Ajedi32 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inequality is a hard thing to do good experiments > the papers struggle to get good data Note also that I'm specifically talking about inequality in isolation ("as long as it's caused by the rich getting richer and not by the poor getting poorer"), which I would argue is even harder to study. It would be completely unsurprising to learn high inequality is correlated with higher rates of poverty, which is correlated…

My point is that inequality in isolation doesn't happen . It's a hypothetical that doesn't exist. It's like talking about sugar and ignoring calories

Except in this case we're commenting on a thread about the middle class getting wealthier, and you implied that's a bad thing because, in isolation, the middle class getting wealthier increases inequality. (Apologies if that's not what you were trying to say.) My point is I don't think that's the right way to look at this news.

Re: More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class

#80

Post by bryanlarsen »

ksymph wrote: post #42
balderdash wrote: post #29

the thing that doesn't compute for me is that the definition of upper middle class here is 5-15x the federal poverty line, ok, but in 1970 the federal poverty line was like ~$3k (and ~$22k today) 10x in 1970 (~33k/year) in nyc you could buy a 2,000 sqft apt for like 2.75x your salary [1] today, that same apartment is like >10x - so while perhaps more people are earning "upper middle class" incomes, what that gets you…

The poverty line, as established in the 60s, is simply 3x the minimum food budget. Food as a percentage of spending has decreased, while housing and other expenses have dramatically increased. If the poverty line were to be adjusted to reflect the share that food takes up of income today, from ~30% in 1963 to ~6% today, the threshold for a family of four would go from ~30k a year to ~150k. More in-depth explanation h…

That article is BS, the author even acknowledges that in a later post.

The main reason the share went from 30% to 6% is because people are richer. Poor people spend more money on food than rich people.

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