Increase prices and negate the new jobs and any increased wages.
Where are you getting your numbers? They’re very different from the graph you posted.
Yes. But Even for middle-income families the inflation adjusted income increased by 42% between 1979 and 2016. So while higher income families fared better, no one can say middle-income wages are falling.
Maybe, but who says that the percentage of families that are middle class isn’t falling?
The CBO defined middle class in this case as the middle 20%.
The middle 20% of what though? I’m guessing earnings not population so the number of those middle class could have shrunk and their figures wouldn’t reflect that.
Can you post the link to whatever CBO source you’re using? I couldn’t find one with your numbers.
1 Like
If the Walton heirs joined this forum our average income would be several million dollars a year.
2 Likes
Hmmmmm, That website should be called just(our)facts.com…
Just another conservative propaganda website. Which is not to say the CBO report data behind the above isn’t from CBO, it’s just about the website presentation, culling and framing is distinctively conservative.
The reports mentioned come from 2017 and 2018, wasn’t that when conservatives said the CBO couldn’t be trusted based on ACA?
Figures for U.S. household incomes comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They’re pretty easy to look up at www.bls.gov/oes.
In 2016 the median household income in the U.S. was $55,775. To give a little more detail, in Louisiana it was $45,727 and in Washington state it was $64,129. You can look it up for any state.
You could look up the numbers for 2018 if you like, but it hasn’t changed much. The numbers come nowhere near $111,100. I don’t know where that number comes from. If it comes from a CBO report, I would look very closely at what the report is actually detailing. The CBO doesn’t generate the data, it interprets it, and interpretation is everything.
The www.bls.gov/oes site is endlessly fascinating. For example:
In 2016 the average annual wage for all occupations in Washington state was $55,810, as opposed to $49,000 for "sailors and marine oilers’, an opposed to $45,410 in Louisiana for that same class of worker. It’s all there at the website, for those who choose to drill down.
2 Likes
The site he used us trying to convince people the US economy is great, Republicans are awesome, and Trump is God. They probably used the mean income, which is a meaningless number in this context.
Hey, now. The US is a great country. I don’t need a Web site for that. As for the rest of your comment, 
Plenty of countries are great when you have the cash. Similarly, not a lot of middle class get to compare lifestyles with other countries, cause of their middle class ness.
And that website is crap, did you know their server is in Calgary Canada? Why would they locate outside such a great country with its first Amendment protections?
I left out a word, check my post now.
But the website says ‘facts’—weren’t those facts included?
Just browsing. No effing way median income is 111,000. more like half that. Last time I look at those ridiculous numbers. What planet is this cat from?
$111K was average income, not median. It is skewed by the high incomes of the 2%.
1 Like
Your own chart says middle class income NOT average income. The “middle class” is statistically skewed by your own admission by the top 2%, actually 1%.
As Mark Twain so accurately observed: “There are lies, damn lies, then there are statistics.”
30 years ago, I could go to sea for about 5 months for a healthy pay check relative to what things cost to buy. I could pay cash for a fixer upper house and renovate it with cash from my seagoing earnings, and sell it for a good profit.
Now a similar fixer upper house costs twice as much as 5 months of seagoing salary. Fix up costs are even higher. The profit that can be made doing it now is much smaller and much less certain.
To put it another way, I use to be able to live fairly comfortably working 4 to 5 months per year at sea. Recently, I have had to work 7 months per year and live less comfortably.
In some areas there is quite a shortage of skilled labor. Guys that go home every night are getting almost the same hourly rate that I get for going away for months.
Skilled mariners with licenses are way overdue for a doubling of wages to get us back to where we were in the mid-80s.
3 Likes