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Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

noahpinion.blog

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Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#61

Post by smt88 »

daniel_reetz wrote: post #15
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exact job title was lost in the US because of Chinese solar manufacturing and mining? By your logic, Tesla (equally dependent on Chinese pollution and mining) wouldn't employ any technologists.

I've purchased equipment from scrapped solar factories in the Bay Area. Tons of people lost jobs and not just technologists.

And I've purchased solar from people who only had jobs because of cheap Chinese panels. Someone in the US still has to market, sell, install, finance, and maintain the panels. Your anecdote isn't interesting by itself, and I was asking specifically about the silly claim made about technologists.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#62

Post by moribvndvs »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #34
MaxPock wrote: post #11

Globalization made America very very rich just that the wealth was not shared with the Americans

The finance sector and those that primarily hold capital got rich... everyone else, not so much. Basically, we mortgaged our future for cash today.

The _real_ American dream. Not building something sustainable, but something more akin to a smash and grab.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#63

Post by gruez »

fooblaster wrote: post #36

I wish the author would have done the due diligence of questioning why his data might not have the full story. - Looking at income without looking at working hours can mask the fact that working more hours looks like income growth at the expense of quality of life. - where is this money going? Housing spending apparently has not grown, but are these same workers building equity or renting? - what amount of income is…

>- Looking at income without looking at working hours can mask the fact that working more hours looks like income growth at the expense of quality of life.

hours worked has gone down in the US in the past few decades, not up.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #44
msandford wrote: post #8

I find this kind of article hilarious. "Numbers go up! You're not allowed to feel poor or think that there's a problem! Our number is bigger so you must be rich!" I saw this 10-20 years ago when economists were telling people that inflation is low despite their feelings about inflation. "Our math is correct and you ignorant folks should be grateful for how this economy is managed." Just because you can produce equati…

In the 70's a middle class family had 1 car, a 1200 square foot house, ate out once a month, had less than a dozen sets of clothes per person (most of which were work clothes). They felt well off, because they were doing fabulously well compared to the 30's which were still lived memory. And because they felt secure. They did not feel in any danger of losing the essentials of housing, food, clothing and health care.…

> They felt well off, because they were doing fabulously well compared to the 30's which were still lived memory.

Also because they were doing well, compared to past experience, relative to those higher on the income distribution.

That is, inequality narrowed throughout the post-war era until around 1980, when it turned around and shot up.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA

While the long stagnant periods in wages (Noah marks the one from the mid 1970s to mid 1990s, but ignores the one from 2001 through about 2012, perhaps because he realizes that marking most of the last 50 years, accurately, as periods of wage stagnation, rather than falsely claiming that that ended in the 1990s, would undermine the rosy picture he is painting) are a problem, the distributional dynamics are probably the thing most closely associated with the perception of a hollowed out middle class.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#66

Post by alihm »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #44
msandford wrote: post #8

I find this kind of article hilarious. "Numbers go up! You're not allowed to feel poor or think that there's a problem! Our number is bigger so you must be rich!" I saw this 10-20 years ago when economists were telling people that inflation is low despite their feelings about inflation. "Our math is correct and you ignorant folks should be grateful for how this economy is managed." Just because you can produce equati…

In the 70's a middle class family had 1 car, a 1200 square foot house, ate out once a month, had less than a dozen sets of clothes per person (most of which were work clothes). They felt well off, because they were doing fabulously well compared to the 30's which were still lived memory. And because they felt secure. They did not feel in any danger of losing the essentials of housing, food, clothing and health care.…

I think you nailed it, but in addition to that I also think social media boosts the lives of few wealthy people and as a result others feel they don't have enough.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#67

Post by xtiansimon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #44
msandford wrote: post #8

I find this kind of article hilarious. "Numbers go up! You're not allowed to feel poor or think that there's a problem! Our number is bigger so you must be rich!" I saw this 10-20 years ago when economists were telling people that inflation is low despite their feelings about inflation. "Our math is correct and you ignorant folks should be grateful for how this economy is managed." Just because you can produce equati…

In the 70's a middle class family had 1 car, a 1200 square foot house, ate out once a month, had less than a dozen sets of clothes per person (most of which were work clothes). They felt well off, because they were doing fabulously well compared to the 30's which were still lived memory. And because they felt secure. They did not feel in any danger of losing the essentials of housing, food, clothing and health care.…

Don’t forget your job was probably giving you heath care and a pension. And if you had a job, you could be there for 10s of years, if not your whole working life.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#68

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

dullcrisp wrote: post #46
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle class of the 1980s/1990s are the poor of today... the middle class of today are different people (and probably would have been upper class professionals in the past)

Well we’re all different people, which is why they’re looking at median incomes. Unless the problem is that these are different people?

Those people who used to be middle class didn't just die off. There still here, a large demographic of the United States, and still very very angry. Our current political situation should make that obvious.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#69

Post by bryanlarsen »

xtiansimon wrote: post #67
bryanlarsen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 70's a middle class family had 1 car, a 1200 square foot house, ate out once a month, had less than a dozen sets of clothes per person (most of which were work clothes). They felt well off, because they were doing fabulously well compared to the 30's which were still lived memory. And because they felt secure. They did not feel in any danger of losing the essentials of housing, food, clothing and health care.…

Don’t forget your job was probably giving you heath care and a pension. And if you had a job, you could be there for 10s of years, if not your whole working life.

I said "housing and health care" in my original post, so I agree with you on that part.

In the 70's, only a large minority of Americans had a pension. There were lots of very poor old people in the US, especially before 1972 when social security got indexed to inflation.

Re: Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

#70

Post by seec »

mystified5016 wrote: post #13
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

Globalization played a role but so did bad policy. When the Obama administration didn’t respond to China dumping below-cost solar on the US, I know many technologists who lost their job and career in the US because they couldn’t compete with companies that didn’t have to follow environmental protection rules. Americans are addicted to artificially low prices that put the burden of costs on future generations who have…

You act as if it's an active, deliberate choice to only buy the cheapest possible thing. The hollowing out of the middle class means most Americans are forcibly dependent on the cheapest possible goods because they don't have disposable income. It's a vicious cycle and the average consumer is not at fault. Most people would like to buy domestically, but domestic goods are either simply not available or not affordable…

I strongly disagree. I have experienced many very well-off people (middle class+) who consistently choose cheap crap because they refuse to think about their choices in any other ways than maximisation of their benefits (at a surface level).

Poor people are not necessarily the ones to make those choices. In fact, sometimes you find out that they are actually poorer than they would be if they would optimise their choices for their own financial benefits. If you look at who's buying expensive local food at your farmer's market it's unlikely to be dominated by rich people. If you go to some discount supermarket, you will most likely find a lot more well-off people, proportionally. Lidl is a supermarket chain that has terrible consequences, from treating their own employees badly to putting extreme pressure on the suppliers and its whole reason for existing is cheaper prices. Their biggest customer demographic is rich boomer.

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