Inside the Middle Class (bankrupt, insurance, foreclosure, pension)

[Wild Style]

interesting study on middle America

As of 2006 (the last year for which trend data are available), real median annual household income had not yet returned to its 1999 peak, making this decade one of the longest downturns ever for this widely-accepted measure of the middle-class standard of living. Over a longer time period, the picture is much brighter; since 1970, median household income has risen by 41%.

link

[tallrick]

Yes and in south Florida, a house that sold for 30,000 in 1970 is appraised at 600,000 now. I just don't see the wages rising that much.

[bhcompy]

Originally Posted by tallrick

Yes and in south Florida, a house that sold for 30,000 in 1970 is appraised at 600,000 now. I just don't see the wages rising that much.

same thing in socal

[Wild Style]

yeah, I read through this report. I think a lot of their "findings" are full of boo boo. Much for the same reason you have pointed out.

Originally Posted by tallrick

Yes and in south Florida, a house that sold for 30,000 in 1970 is appraised at 600,000 now. I just don't see the wages rising that much.

[azoria]

1999 Peak? Income hasn't increased much since 1979. Excerpted from “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” by Steven Greenhouse from the New York Times.

"Since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private-sector, nonsupervisory jobs) have risen by just 1 percent, after inflation. The average hourly wage was $17.71 at the end of 2007. For male workers, the average wage has actually slid by 5 percent since 1979. Worker productivity, meanwhile, has climbed 60 percent. If wages had kept pace with productivity, the average full-time worker would be earning $58,000 a year; $36,000 was the average in 2007. The nation’s economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece. The squeeze on the American worker has meant more poverty, more income inequality, more family tensions, more hours at work, more time away from the kids, more families without health insurance, more retirees with inadequate pensions, and more demands on government and taxpayers to provide housing assistance and health coverage. Twenty percent of families with children under six live below the poverty line, and 22 million full-time workers do not have health insurance. Largely as a result of the squeeze, the number of housing foreclosures and personal bankruptcies more than tripled in the quarter century after 1979. Economic studies show that income inequality in the United States is so great that it more closely resembles the inequality of a third world country than that of an advanced industrial nation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/bu...rkexcerpt.html

[Wild Style]

azoria

Thank you for that! I thought I read some where that income levels hadn't increased given inflation since the 70s. I didn't really look into it (figured my memory was misleading me).

[Mathguy]

From about 1947-70, about 2 decades...the US went through a boom time where pretty much anyone could get a job that required minimum skill or training that paid a high enough wage to live very well on.

I guess it depends on your frame of reference as to whether this should be "normal" and we should return to it or that it was an "exception".

Today in the US, you can still make a good wage if you get training\education.
Income disparity can certainly occur but the bottom line is that in the US the definition of "poor" in no way approximates that of most countries.