Wall Street Protests

[Flint]

Ya, but...

The boogeyman.

[Stormieweather]

The rest of that article:

that slice down to just under 17% for 2009.

While those at the top have seen their incomes soar over time, middle-class incomes have stagnated.

"The higher up the income distribution you go, the more your income rose and the larger the share of total income gains went to your group," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

But as corporate profits and productivity have increased, workers aren't reaping the benefits, said Edward Wolff, a New York University economics professor who specializes in income inequality. That's helping spark the movement, which has spread across the country.

"There is a lot of anger and it's for a very good reason," Wolff said. "If all of the income gain goes to the top, there's not much left to go to the rest of the people."

In 2010, there were 46.2 million American's living in poverty. That is the largest number since the census began keeping track, 56 years ago. 1 in 5 children is now living below the poverty level (22%). How is that acceptable on any level?

[Undertoad]

That's merely Mr. Wolff's opinion, and in my previous post I took his last sentence behind the barn and shot it, and then quartered it for the dogs to eat.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

(Also, these numbers are for households instead of per-capita, which is misleading, as the household income may be a household of one, or an extended family.)

Ok, respectfully, what's your point here by breaking out the per capita numbers? Are you trying to illustrate the idea that in the high earning households that there are multiple earners? Or that in a per capita illustration, the amount that the high earners make is not as much? Both are true of course.

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by classicman

hmm...

"hmmmm..." indeed. Note the year that this gentleman became "sick of living in poverty" - 1996. Those were the days, my friend. Clinton was still in office then, we actually had a budget SURPLUS, zillionaires still had not yet been handed tax decreases, and unemployment was nothing like it is today. Presumably, the man in the picture graduated around 2000 before W. had a chance to launch his various wars and before the Financial Institutions got a chance to tank the economy. How clever of him to have been born at the right time.

Sadly, he is obviously the product of an institution of higher education where critical thinking was neither taught nor encouraged. He is attempting to take credit for being 10 years or so older than the kids coming out of college today. That's about it. Oh, and if he's so smart, why did he wait to have 3 kids before going to college?

And PS - Did he go to a state supported school? GOVERNMENT HANDOUT Did he go to an expensive private school with the help of government backed student loans? GOVERNMENT HANDOUT

Sorry, I am not impressed.

[infinite monkey]

Whether they are the 99%, the 1%, or this arbitrarily stupid 53%, about 75% of all of them are still uneducated, uninformed, and irrelevant morons.

[Undertoad]

I'm saying that I think the original graph producers decided on households because it shows a wider disparity. This stuff is hard for us laymen to figure.

[classicman]

Easy Sam ...
I just thought his was an interesting tale. Primarily BECAUSE of when he went to school. (president at the time irrelevant)

I can associate with him on a couple things. I too went back to school that year and graduated in 2000 with 2 degrees. I worked 3 jobs to support my family and pay my own way at the time. Yet here I sit day after day looking for a real job and trying to figure out wtf I did wrong.


ETA - thanks for helping to support me Mr. noideawhoyouare.

[infinite monkey]

..

[TheMercenary]

That picture rocks....

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

That picture rocks....

Oh, you graduated from that same institution of higher learning which discourages critical thinking, too? That explains much.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm saying that I think the original graph producers decided on households because it shows a wider disparity. This stuff is hard for us laymen to figure.

Ok. I think the original graph producers decided on households and not per capita because that's how income taxes are filed, how the data's collected. Not to show a greater disparity, but neither of us is one of the graph producers nor likely to meet them and ask them, so the point's rather moot.

As for what's hard for us laymen to figure .... figuring the intentions of absent and anonymous graph producers is hard, I agree. Figuring the arithmetic behind such illustrations is not as hard. For example, the arithmetic behind your per capita expansion of the income figures still demonstrates the extremely disproportionate distribution of income. Let's take the values in your chart. Here is what the per capita income numbers work out to:

              Average Per Capita Income by Income Quartile 2010

Lowest fifth  Second fifth   Middle fifth   Fourth fifth   Highest fifth 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   $4,634       $25,636        $38,224        $46,494        $86,108

This breakout *STILL* shows an extreme disparity. It is the magnitude of this disparity that I believe is both a cause and a symptom of the serious trouble in our society. You used the phrase "greater disparity", and I ask you, does this per capita perspective show greater or less disparity? Of course it depends on what you choose as your measure.

Actual dollars is a measure we could agree on, using these figures. By this measure, each of the people in a given household, on average, has this amount of money. At the top there, each member of the household has $86k to spend. That's a lot of coin. At the other end of the scale, just one-eighteenth of that amount. Not a lot of coin. A delta of about 18 times. So when you talk about how much the big fish lose when the line on the graph tips down, like you do in your subsequent post, I would point out that though their dollar loss is great, it is on par with the ENTIRE annual income for the bottom quintile in many cases. So saying "I lost 5% or 10%" gives a comparative value. Saying "I lost $10,000 or I lost $500"... how does that inform the reader? Those are similar percentages, but the impact on the lives of the losers is not the same.

liars figure and figures lie... cute.

But I think a far more important question to ask and answer is about the lowest two quintiles. Forty percent of our population is living on these kinds of dollars. Your table doesn't say gross or net income, even if we take the most favorable position, net income, that's not a lot of money for almost half the population. Half the consumers for the goods and services produced in our economy have just this small amount of money to spend. The more they have the more they'll spend.

TWO THINGS

OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT REPRESENT THESE PEOPLE. Do you see forty percent of our Congress among this economic demographic? Of course not. Do you see anything close to forty percent of our elected representatives talking about this large chunk of the electorate? No. Do you see or hear anything like forty percent of our legislation focused on the segment of our population with such limited means? No way. How is this "representative"? It's not.

IT IS ENTIRELY IN OUR SELF INTEREST, ALL OF US, TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF LIVING FOR OUR FELLOW CITIZENS AT THIS END OF THE SCALE, THE "LESS FORTUNATE". It costs a certain amount to live. That's what we all spend our first dollar on. And our second dollar. And the next several thousand dollars. That is direct consumption all of us make and spend. But for lots of folks, especially at this lower end, the have no more to spend. Isn't that what our economy needs? More spending? Then we should work to get more money into the hands of the poorest among us.

If you're making $4,600 a year, you spend it all, no doubt. If you make $86,000, maybe you spend it all, maybe you save some. Don't we want more people spending more money, or even saving some? Then these are the people who are most likely to spend whatever increase they see.

How do we measure what's valuable, what's important, what is the minimum needed to live? That number will not be zero. That cost will be borne by someone, even if the person who's incurring the costs has NO money. Where will he eat? Jail? Under a bridge? At a shelter? We don't just let people shrivel up and die. We do, some of us, shoo them away to become someone else's "problem", someone else's cost. I don't live in an America where that's done, where that's right. You don't either.

I don't know how best to do this, there's definitely not just one way, no one thing that will make it happen. BUT. No problem can be solved, and we most definitely have a very big, very important problem here, until that problem is acknowledged. We must all acknowledge that having so many so less fortunate than the most fortunate is a problem we must confront and solve as a nation.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by SamIam

Oh, you graduated from that same institution of higher learning which discourages critical thinking, too? That explains much.

No, but thanks for the pic!

[TheMercenary]

The wealth envy protests are not going to change a dam thing.

Wealth redistribution is a failed plan to fix what ails us.

[DanaC]

How is it a failed plan?