Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
in the end the only thing that counts is how you are doing or those you care about .
personally i don't give a rats butt about median numbers . they don't do a thing to improve my life nor can i do a thing about them .
better to spend your time developing your own path then looking at data about others or all the things there are in life to complain about .
develop an action plan , you will be better off . .
A lot of people like to start their "See everything is fine" by picking dates like 1970, or 1985.
Go back further. In 1970 income and productivity separated. The median stopped growing meaningfully then . Looking at the current data, the median household income is 53,657. In 1989 it was....53,306.
I'm as skeptical of the "everything is fine" person as I am of the "we're doomed" types.
I can't see a rational person making the argument that there are no problems with the US economy or individual/family personal finance situation.
The middle class is doing just fine. It has seen moderate income growth. What has happened is that the United States has very poor socioeconomic class mobility. The bottom 20% before welfare reform under Bill Clinton had an extremely high birthrate, partly because extra children created extra AFDC money. With the Welfare Reform Act of 1994, AFDC became TNAF with a five year lifetime cap and no extra money for children born to a woman on welfare. The last of that high birthrate era along with our recent massive wave of immigration has dragged down the median. If you were born to the middle class, you're probably doing a bit better than your parents, on average.
]in the end the only thing that counts is how you are doing or those you care about .
personally i don't give a rats butt about median numbers . they don't do a thing to improve my life nor can i do a thing about them .
[/b]
better to spend your time developing your own path then looking at data about others or all the things there are in life to complain about .
develop an action plan , you will be better off . .
The reason I am posting this from the United States is a lot of people in the Ukraine and Russia in 1920 decided they wanted the family farm.
So they shot my grandmother and stole both the farm and horses, making my father an orphan at the age of 10. They then preceded to kill 10 million people just in the Ukraine to make sure they stay in power.
I am doing fine and am old enough that it doesn't matter to me. I don't want my daughter to go through the same experience as my father or mother.
You want a society where everybody has opportunity to move ahead.....or plan on having more guns than they do.
The middle class is doing just fine. It has seen moderate income growth. What has happened is that the United States has very poor socioeconomic class mobility. The bottom 20% before welfare reform under Bill Clinton had an extremely high birthrate, partly because extra children created extra AFDC money. With the Welfare Reform Act of 1994, AFDC became TNAF with a five year lifetime cap and no extra money for children born to a woman on welfare. The last of that high birthrate era along with our recent massive wave of immigration has dragged down the median. If you were born to the middle class, you're probably doing a bit better than your parents, on average.
I think it's the opposite. The a United States has very good to excellent social economic class mobility. I know it's an outlier but I need to repeat here. Where else can you go from welfare to billionaire in one generation like the WhatsApp guy. I believe he is from the Ukraine.
I think it's the opposite. The a United States has very good to excellent social economic class mobility. I know it's an outlier but I need to repeat here. Where else can you go from welfare to billionaire in one generation like the WhatsApp guy. I believe he is from the Ukraine.
Data disagrees. Compared to many other countries our socio economic mobility is lower, and certainly historically its lower. Using outliers (that you admit are outliers) does not make a good argument against the actual research done.
You SHOULD change the definition "because something around it has changed".
The President is running around touting the great economic recovery due to the economic statistics. The American people are so scared that they are on the verge of a political revolution. The disconnect is directly linked to the economic definitions and reporting. He has no clue except the statistics.
This "jobs recession" is the third one since 1990. Each time the GDP numbers have bounced back fairly quickly, but the jobs have lagged behind. This time we are EIGHT years and still have not recovered to the previous level of employment (adjusted for population growth). THAT is a serious problem.
Words and definitions do matter. IF we redefined recession to focus on jobs instead of GDP the discussion today would be different. Particularly, for the elite who are out of touch with everyday America.
The current definition of recession fails to identify the poor condition of the economy. It needs to be changed.
This is quite ridiculous. If a word is incorrect to use in a specific situation, don't use that word. Changing the definition of a word that has been used for centuries makes no sense. You will immediately invalidate thousands of books and millions of academic papers written since the beginning of the field of economics.
The definition of the term "recession" has nothing to do with what the president is doing or what your political views are. It has nothing to do with "job recession" (whatever that thing you just made up is).
The idea that you're trying to correlate the term with this alleged poor condition of the economy is a demonstration of your lack of understanding of economics as a whole. It might be in your best interest to study the field before you start redefining significant areas of it.
All professions have their own language and vocabulary. The problem economics is it uses common words with a precise definition. It is fine when I talk to economists. Doesn't work as well with other folks.
Which is why the definition needs to change.....Recession as a term means nothing in describing current economic conditions in this country. It has a precise economic definition that is out of date in today's world.
The problem is not that the word has the wrong definition... the problem is that you are using the word incorrectly. If you need to describe something else, then use another word.
That being said, there's nothing outdated about how a recession is measured.
Personal Income increased 0.4% in April, Spending increased 1.0%
Personal income increased $69.8 billion, or 0.4 percent ...in April, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $119.2 billion, or 1.0 percent.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Income up - April 2016
