Saturday, June 16, 2007
Is the middle class richer, or poorer?
If you are concerned about the declining income of the middle class, perhaps it is because you have swallowed propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Link One. Link Two. And, comparing the relative wealth of the rich, middle, and poor in the United States and Europe: Link Three.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jun 16, 04:50:00 PM:
This whole income gap thing drives me nuts. I think it comes largely from a static world view whereby people think the pie is divided unevenly and wish to slice out new pieces.
What they don't realize is that the whole pie analogy is a weak way to talk about the economy. If you restrict the success of the wealthy, there will be less wealth for consumption and investment.
These protectionist, unionist, high-tax-promoting people should be forced to take a basic class in economics.
By , at
Sun Jun 17, 12:44:00 AM:
The so called caring demacrats saying they want to help the por workers then they send their jobs overseas or put illega; aleins in their place SCREW THOSE LIBERAL WACKOS
By , at
Sun Jun 17, 05:13:00 PM:
I don't know about income inequality, but I'm definitely feeling the pinch from rising prices -- and I think that either there must be somewhere in America where prices aren't rising at all, or our means of measuring inflation are somewhat ... off.
It's not difficult to note that the pizza meal deals at the Wegman's along Route 1 in Princeton is now $5.49 instead of $4.49 as it was two years ago (when I was last in the area for an extended period), that gas is now $3/gallon instead of the ~$2.50/gallon I recorded back then, and that similar rises have occurred across the full range of grocery products, to say nothing of what's happened to bookstore prices in the past few years, for cheap paperbacks and the like.
I'm willing to accept that my spending profile differs somewhat from the standard American household (being a grad student on my own), but my cost of living has gone up, on average, about 5-7%/year on those goods I can reliably track (I exclude rent and the like, since I move around so much that such a comparison would be highly arbitrary).
By 
Georg Felis, at
Mon Jun 18, 10:55:00 AM:
The gap between "Rich" and "Poor" will always grow during an economic growth period because the distance between Zero and (whatever Bill Gates makes) is constantly expanding.
