The myth of the stagnating middle class

[Tinark]

The general populist talking point on the left and the right is that the middle class has stagnated in the United States. Income is stagnant. Wages are stagnant. People are struggling. Life for the median or average person is not much improved today compared to the so called "golden era" of the middle class which peaked in the late 70's.

If so, how do you explain all of this? Improvement on almost every economic metric you can think of, as well as many non-economic ones, that has any value to life. If you can think of anything relevant that I have missed, please post it:

Square feet of living space per person:

1985 - Median living space per person/capita - ~650
2005 - Median living space per person/capita - ~750

http://www.huduser.org/publications/pdf/measuring_overcrowding_in_hsg.pdf

Life expectancy:

1980 - 73.66
2015 - 78.74

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN

Total percent of population with high school diploma, aged 25 or more:

1980 - 68.6%
2010 - 86.6%

Total percent of population with bachler's degree or higher, aged 25 or more

1980 -17.0%
2010 - 30.3%


http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/tables.html
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/1981/tab-12.pdf


Homicide victim rate:

1980 - 10.2 per 100,000
2013 - 4.5 per 100,000

Violent crime rate (excludes homicide):

1980 - 6.00 per 1,000
2013 - 3.68 per 1,000

Overall crime rates (violent, property, murder, rape, robbery, aggrevated assault, burgerly, larceny-theft, vehicle theft)

1980 - 5.95 per 100 population
2013 - 3.10 per 100 population

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Suicide rate

1980 - 13.2 per 100,000
2013 - 12.6 per 100,000

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html
https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures

Vehicle ownership rates (per household):

1980-
No vehicles 12.9% One vehicle - 35.5% Two vehicles - 34.0% Three or more vehicles - 17.5%

Median = 1 vehicle

Vehicles per capita - .614

Vehicle miles per capita - 6,707

2010 - No vehicles 9.2% One vehicle 34.1% Two vehicles 37.3% Three or more vehicles 19.3%

Median = 2 vehicles

Vehicles per capita - .801

Vehicle miles per capita - 9,459

http://cta.ornl.gov/data/chapter8.shtml

Airline miles traveled

1980 - 190,776 million - 842 miles per capita
2013 - 589,692 million - 1,863 miles per capita

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/r...ansportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html

Motor vehicle deaths per 100 million miles traveled

1980 - 3.35
2013 - 1.11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

Average hours worked per week - all employed persons

1980 - 35.0
2015 - 34.5

http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/05/art1full.pdf

Much more eating out at restaurants

Equality for homosexuals - less bigotry against them

Less bigotry against basically every minority group, women, African
Americans, atheists, Mormons, and so on.

In summary (reasonable approximation) the typical/median/average person in the United States, from 1980 to today

Lives 5 years longer
Has 15% more living space
Is 33% more likely to own a vehicle
Is 26% more likely to have graduated from high school
Is 94% more likely to have a bachler's degree or higher
Is 60% less likely to be murdered annually
Is 39% less likely to be a victim of a violent crime annually
Is 48% less likely to be the victim of any crime annually
Travels 120% more miles by air
Works .5 hours less per week
Is 54% less likely to die in a residential fire
Is 70% less likely to die from a fatal workplace injury
Is 66% less likely to die in a vehicle accident per vehicle mile traveled
Suffers from 43% less workplace injuries and time-loss illness annually while employed
Has air conditioning, a computer, internet access, dishwasher, and cell phone today, whereas the typical person in 1980 was lacking all of these
Has much cleaner air with 68% less pollutants of the 6 most common air pollutants that can harm health
Dines out much more frequently
If a minority, suffers much less from bigotry, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.

Stagnating middle class? REALLY?

 

[Foxfire]

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~Bobby Bragan, 1963

 

[Mocking You]

Tinark, thanks for posting this. Though it can be slightly criticized for picking selective endpoints (1980, but you've got to start somewhere), undoubtedly the middle class is doing better than ever before.

Politicians typically don't think in long terms like 35 years. Republicans are desperately trying to make wage stagnation an issue, and will likely trot out the same solution--tax cuts and less regulation. The Dems have raised the minimum wage and just yesterday Obama proposed mandatory overtime for salaried workers making less than $50,000.

What are the numbers for wage and salary increases since 2001?

 

[Mocking You]

Love the adoption of technology chart. Good to see my parents were early adopters of air conditioning, microwaves, color TV, dishwasher, and clothes dryer (though I can remember my mom hanging clothes on clotheslines.)

 

[Jose Fly]

The talk of the middle class is about wages.

And their share of the overall national wealth.

And as far as more college graduates go, it's a good thing that more Americans are going to college, but it's costing more. The same can be said for medical care.

It's basically about money. Since the recession, the vast majority of the gains have gone to the top 5%.

 

[Tinark]

The talk of the middle class is about wages.

And their share of the overall national wealth.

And as far as more college graduates go, it's a good thing that more Americans are going to college, but it's costing more. The same can be said for medical care.

It's basically about money. Since the recession, the vast majority of the gains have gone to the top 5%.

Money and wages are just digits on a screen, a bank account, or a piece of paper. What matters is how those digits translate into actual quality of life. This was my best attempt to do so.

If you have some other data that shows actual quality of life for the middle to have stalled since 1980 in some important way, I'm very interested in seeing it.

 

[Tinark]

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~Bobby Bragan, 1963

Much of the data I posted shows how the middle or median is doing in terms of relevant metrics for quality of life.

 

[Foxfire]

Much of the data I posted shows how the middle or median is doing in terms of relevant metrics for quality of life.

Torture numbers severely enough and they will confess to anything.........

 

[Jose Fly]

Money and wages are just digits on a screen, a bank account, or a piece of paper. What matters is how those digits translate into actual quality of life. This was my best attempt to do so.

And when you have less and less of it, as things like education and health care cost more and your wage stagnate as your productivity goes through the roof, things get a bit stressful.

If you have some other data that shows actual quality of life for the middle to have stalled since 1980 in some important way, I'm very interested in seeing it.

What you're posting is "the middle class is better educated, has more stuff, and lives longer than before". What I've posted is that those things are costing more and more, and wages haven't been keeping up for decades. That means the middle class is taking on more and more debt...

 

[Tinark]

Torture numbers severely enough and they will confess to anything.........

I'd be interested in your non-"tortured" numbers that you think are relevant, that demonstrates stagnation in some significant aspect(s) of quality of life for the middle class or the typical person.

 

[Tinark]

And when you have less and less of it, as things like education and health care cost more and your wage stagnate as your productivity goes through the roof, things get a bit stressful.

And yet we see nothing that indicates they are feeling pinched. Are they having to buy smaller living spaces (or even the same sized spaces)? Are they having to purchase older and unsafe cars? Are they unable to afford a car at all? Are fewer of them attending college due to affordability issues? Are they having to take on more dangerous jobs to make ends meet? Are they less healthy and not living any longer? Are they cutting out air travel to save money?

No, to all of these, as my data has demonstrated. The exact opposite appears to be the case, in fact.

What you're posting is "the middle class is better educated, has more stuff, and lives longer than before". What I've posted is that those things are costing more and more, and wages haven't been keeping up for decades. That means the middle class is taking on more and more debt...

In that wage data, many assumptions are made to calculate inflation and it doesn't take into account quality of life improvements that have nothing to do with wages. Money is not the only thing that matters in life.

For example, how does the inflation data take into account more expensive production methods that lead to far less pollution, giving us all cleaner air, rivers, etc.

How does inflation data take into account more expensive worker safety equipment and safe work practices, leading to far fewer worker fatalities and injuries.

How well does inflation data take into account college cost increases due to fancy student rec centers, better student health facilities, and more student services?

How does inflation data take into account the effect taxes have on prices and rents (such as real estate taxes), allowing us to have far more government services, such as more police and better roads, which keeps us all safer (but will be reflected in higher rental prices).

How well does that inflation data take into account brand new technology that never before existed that leads to significant improvements in quality of life?

How well does that inflation data take into account much safer cars, leading to 66% less traffic fatalities per mile traveled?

How well does median household data take into account changing characteristics of households themselves, with far more households containing only a single adult?

These are just a small sample of the things the data you post doesn't capture. What matters is people's actual quality of life and the things that are relevant in determining what that quality is. Digits in a bank account are a means to that quality of life, but they are not the quality life in and of itself.

 

[Buzzword]

Tinark, that data is bunk.

What those of us on the ground are seeing is exactly what Jose has been posting.
Costs continue to rise, while wages remain stagnant.

None of these graphs show the following factors:

1) The growing exploitation by businesses of their employees and price-gouging of their customers.
An example of the former is Michaels' (craft store) firing every full-time employee in the company not filed under "upper management," then "offering" to re-hire all of those employees back as part-time, having liquidated every last pension and 401k and health plan of those employees and turned it into a pay-raise for its upper management.
This is becoming standard procedure across retail, food service, manufacturing, and energy industry employers.

The latter plays out in a variety of industries, but especially medial/pharmaceutical, electricity, and food.

2) The shrinking number of young adults able to even ENTER the middle class.
My generation (born circa '85-'95) is arguably the most educated of any American generation, with hordes of us holding bachelor's degrees or higher.

But we are also the least-gainfully employed generation of adults, due in part to the above exploitation, and fewer and fewer of us can secure full-time employment of ANY kind, much less in our field of education/training.

We are the least-homeowning of any living generation of American adults, and we are the largest group of debtors.


And this isn't even taking into account the fact that many Baby Boomers aren't GETTING OUT OF THE WAY, and are clinging to full-time positions for decades after retirement age out of fear of rising costs, and general economic volatility.

So don't tell me the middle class isn't stagnating when adults about to enter their 30s can't get in, and our elders aren't getting out.

Last I checked, lack of movement = stagnation.

 

[Mocking You]

And this isn't even taking into account the fact that many Baby Boomers aren't GETTING OUT OF THE WAY, and are clinging to full-time positions for decades after retirement age out of fear of rising costs, and general economic volatility.

So don't tell me the middle class isn't stagnating when adults about to enter their 30s can't get in, and our elders aren't getting out.

Ten Thousand baby boomers are retiring PER DAY. They are going away in droves. Why do you think the labor participation rate is so low? It's not unemployment. And you can thank Obamacare for the companies that are eliminating full time jobs in favor of part time jobs as they try to avoid offering the now mandatory health care insurance.

The data doesn't lie. Americans are better off now than at any time in history.

 

[Jose Fly]

And yet we see nothing that indicates they are feeling pinched.

I've shown you the data that indicates middle class wages are stagnant and aren't keeping up with productivity, the middle class owns a smaller portion of the national wealth than at any time in recent history, the vast majority of the economic gains since the Bush recession have gone to the top 10%, student debt is at an all time high, and middle class debt has skyrocketed.

Your response was to say that "money and wages are just digits on a screen, a bank account, or a piece of paper".

There's not really much I can do with a response like that.

Yes, I agree that houses are bigger, we have more stuff, we're better educated, and have better health (although we lag behind other developed countries on the last one). But those things cost, and the data shows they cost much more relative to wages than they did just a generation ago. That's why two-income households are so important now, whereas in the past a single earner could support an entire family comfortably.

But hey, if you think things are just fine and having the top 5% possess more of the nation's wealth since just prior to the Great Depression and stagnant middle class wages coupled with massive debt is no big deal, I guess we'll just have to disagree.