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Have they been stagnant? How come the number of people living in households with over 6 figure incomes has reached 60 million and is growing rapidly?
Lots and lots of Americans are doing well financially. It is the bottom of the middle class and the lower class that is declining. These are the people with limited education and limited skills. Automation, computerization, large scale agriculture, changes in retailing and other changes are splitting the middle class into those who doing well and those who are not. This trend is only getting worse for those at the bottom. Competing for jobs with unskilled and illegal aliens has only made it worse.
Have they been stagnant? How come the number of people living in households with over 6 figure incomes has reached 60 million and is growing rapidly?
Lots and lots of Americans are doing well financially. It is the bottom of the middle class and the lower class that is declining. These are the people with limited education and limited skills. Automation, computerization, large scale agriculture, changes in retailing and other changes are splitting the middle class into those who doing well and those who are not. This trend is only getting worse for those at the bottom. Competing for jobs with unskilled and illegal aliens has only made it worse.
Lots and lots. About 17%.
You ask me if wages are really stagnant then go on to say that everyone except the top 17% of households are doing poorly. Thus, 83% of households get ignored in your example of people doing well. Because they make six figures.
If you want to base how the economy is doing on only people making 6 figures then yeah, everything is just fine, there is some fat there that helps a lot. That wouldn't be an honest assessment and only a fool would argue it.
Let's not even get into the fact that even on the top end wages have stagnated in many industries. So yes, to answer your question, wages have stagnated and it has been a problem and exasperated by certain segments of the economy experiencing rapid price increases over and above normal inflation.
It is possible to have wages that are much less than six figures, stagnant (in terms of increasing only with inflation) while still being financially sound and living a reasonable enjoyable life.
Have they been stagnant? How come the number of people living in households with over 6 figure incomes has reached 60 million and is growing rapidly?
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Real median household income has been more or less stagnant for quite a long time. In contrast to that horizontal metric, the vertical sees individual families moving up in income over time as they find success in their careers. With a growing population, it may seem in absolute terms that more and more people must be doing well, but a deeper look may reveal a different picture.
Do stagnant wages equate to doing poorly? It is possible to have wages that are much less than six figures, stagnant (in terms of increasing only with inflation) while still being financially sound and living a reasonable enjoyable life.
In addition to inflation, wages should be rising due to productivity increases. That's where people have been falling down over the past 35 years or so. To a greater and greater extent, returns to labor from increasing GDP have been falling while returns to capital have been rising.
This thread was amusing to read.... food prices have been decreasing for about year now.
I was going to say if you pull out household items from our grocery budget for a family of 3 we spend about $300/month, add in another $75-$100 for eating out and we spend around $400/month on food for 3 people. That doesn't really seem that expensive at all.
This thread was amusing to read.... food prices have been decreasing for about year now.
In what location? I was just in the store last night and noticed that a good number of things I bought had increased ~12%. Specifically, chips, baby food, and milk. Most of the other I items I bought have also increased in price. My neighbor showed me the other day a picture he took at Sam's club of some sort of beef roast that had almost doubled in price. The unit cost had gone from ~$6 / lb to almost $10 / lb.
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