The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class • Hacker News Board

Re: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

#71

Post by chrisfromto » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 7:50 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #44

gojomo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not writing about 'income distribution' or 'share of national income', he's writing about wages and consumption. (Adopting the same dismissive tone as your first sentence, can we thus conclude your refutation is pretty much geared for people "who can't do reading"?)

You're right, he's talking about wages re: consumption, but as an attempt to address "progressive" concerns about wages re: income distribution. He's setting up a straw man and knocking it down.

No, he's not. He's addressing one of the premises commonly used when making the inequality argument, that middle class wages have stagnated since roughly the 70s. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

#72

Post by chrisfromto » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 7:51 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #52

Over the last thirty years, households have gone from predominantly single bread winner, to dual earner. And at the same time, consumer debt has done up while savings have gone down. Now, if worker compensation was growing significantly faster than inflation, wouldn't we expect the amount of disposable income to be higher, and hence savings and debt to be lower? Why were Americans forced to tap home equity and credit…

"...people started consuming a lot more."

Re: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

#73

Post by chrisfromto » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 8:09 AM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #67

"First, the CPI overestimates inflation by underestimating the value of improvements in product quality and variety" As others have pointed out this is very debatable. Especially since CPI is corrected for that already. Also consider certain goods have gone down in quality due to being mass produced instead of hand tailored. "Fresh" produce are more available but often old and stale because they come from far away. I…

Being able to "afford" n children all depends on your definition of the word. Consumption per child is much higher now than it has ever been.

Re: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

#74

Post by youngtaff » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 9:10 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #19

I am tired of this: "the CPI overestimates inflation by underestimating the value of improvements in product quality and variety" The extreme right-wing has been making this argument since the early 1980s. I used to believe this argument, as it once sounded believable. But Newt Gingrich used this issue (among others) to engineer a Republican resurgence in 1994, and one of the first things they did was force the Burea…

Yeh this bit is bogus too:

"Bill Gates in his private jet flies with more personal space than does Joe Six-Pack when making a similar trip on a commercial jetliner. But unlike his 1970s counterpart, Joe routinely travels the same great distances in roughly the same time as do the world's wealthiest tycoons."

Completely ignores the convenience that a private jet can take off and land closer to destinations, less messing about with immigration and security which all add significantly to journey times.

Re: The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

#75

Post by rdl » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:45 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #27

This article is pretty much geared for people who can't do math (ironically, considering the ostensible target demographic of the WSJ). 1) Pointing out that things have gotten cheaper is specious. Things have gotten cheaper for rich people too. One would expect technological progress to make things cheaper over time--what does that have to do with income distribution within the country? 2) Average worker productivity…

How much of this is fundamental to how technology and efficiency gains have happened, and how much is due to regulatory or other capture by elites?