Gee, let me think. What happened in 1980 that might have had an effect on this?

To paraphrase Babs Bush “things are working out quite nicely” for the 1%ers.

Oh come off it, Jon! Seriously?? We all know very well that if you’re not “making it” these days it’s only & solely because of one or more of the following: a) you are a lazy worthless slacker who’s not interested in “contributing” to the “system” and most likely needs to take a shower, b) you don’t believe/pray hard enough to Big Sky Daddy (bc if you did, you’d get rich quick as a flash… just ask Rick Warren), and/or c) you were too stupid & didn’t get born to mega-rich parents. In any case, if you’re not “making it,” it’s because you don’t deserve to. /s

As regards that … I have this to offer in response !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMgvwUMK314&feature=channel_video_title

Anonymous Message from December 5th…

.

In 1980, the bottom fifth of wage-earners made up 5.2% of total U.S. income. By 2009, however, their share of total income had risen to only 6.1% — meaning most people made little financial headway.

This has next to nothing to do with income mobility. When you do not count wage earners that moved (mobility!) to a higher quintile you are not measuring income mobility.

A true measure of income mobility would measure the percentage of people that change their income quintile over time.

.

It’ll be even harder for those not born with a silver spoon up their ass to move upward when the Corporate Party finally gets rid of the public school system in each and every state. When only children of the wealthy can attend schools that will enable them to go on to college is the goal. As long as the other children can read, write and perform simple math will the elites be satisfied. A cheap, semi-literate labour force.

Most excellent.

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.

Surely their think tanks are exploring the possibility of teaching those minimal skills to chimps.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. And I can SAY that because I am in all three classes of failures, a, b, and c. Excepting that (a) I take a shower every day.

Thanks for the link Nahant. This is a must see video and is filled with the truth we need to succeed. Occupy everything.

Limit inherited wealth to 1 million and watch things fall into place.

The quintiles themselves over 40 years show the exact problem.

While some may have transcended quintiles, statistically speaking the odds of that have become lower and lower. It’s undeniable.

Or robots. Oh wait, it’s already happening.

Huh, the LA Times story doesn’t seem to square with this Treasury Study. Maybe it’s because they looked at different time frames, or had different prejudice going in.

The key findings of this study include:
There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period as over half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile over this period.
Roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.
The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).
Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf

It makes me weep. Truly. My father’s story is an example:
He was from a poor, rural town in Lousiana. Town wiped out in the 1927 Mississippi River flood. His father died when he was 12 yo. Mother gave the kids away — he left and went to work sweeping the floors of a newspaper office in Boyce, La. The typesetters taught him to read and set type. When he was 16 he got his apprentice type-setting card, and left to work in Hammond, La. The very, very kind owner of that paper (btw Hamiton Jordan, Sr.) arranged for him to board at the high school prinicpal’s home and the man tutored my dad at night. He was able to “finish” high school that way and signed up to take one class at a time at Southeastern Junior college in Hammond. He started with Math and kept on one class at a time: algebra, trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, etc. When the war came, he signed up, was accepted to officer’s training and became a B-17 navigator who was (easily!) able to do celestial navigation. Did two tours in the ETO from Bassingbourne in 1943-1945 (the Memphis Belle squadron). Managed to survive! despite a 50% loss of planes during 1943. After the war he got the GI Bill (THE GREAT LEVELER!), went to medical school and raised a family all of whom went to college. IT IS A STORY THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOW! All because he started with a union card! And kind people helping him, and A GOVT POLICY that envisioned opportunity.

Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation.

Might have had something to do with the 247% increase in CEO salaries over the last 30 years?

The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period.

So a third of Americans saw no income growth.

the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

“Lower income groups” v. “Higher income groups” isn’t necessarily defined. We don’t actually know what that means as far as dollars.

Also consider that this study ranges from ’96 – ’05. ending 2 years before the bubble burst and covering a massive income boom as tech jobs were created, but before they were heavily outsourced. Income has shrunk considerably for the bottom 90% since then.

I am glad to see you raising this point. The great privilege and advantage of being born rich or at least the very upper middle class is deadening to the so called American Dream.

I think among with all the other reforms liberals and progressives should advocate for are restoring a rational, confiscatory, inheritance tax and a flattening of access to any institution of learning by massive decreases in tuition and fees through subsidies if we must. The student loan thing as it has become a private business investment has mostly invalidated any efforts to affirmative action and access to the networks leading to prosperity generally.

It is a great lie that anyone gets into the 1% on their own effort. You cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps (that was a sarcastic remark in some case law intended to point out everyone needs a helping hand from time to time) and anyone who claims they did it on their own is a liar or a narcissist. I have never met an Ayn Rand devotee who wasn’t either or both of those.

The same people who worry about income inequality in our country don’t seem to care about income inequality between Americans and the rest of the world.

We all benefit from the great privilege and advantage of being born in the USA.

It is what you do with that advantage that make you a worthwhile human being or a worthless human being.

That’s a breathtakingly & sweeingly broad generalization, Alan, and I think it vastly mis-characterizes most who post & comment here at FDL.

I can agree with you that most, if not all, of the 1%, along with their sycophantic Randian enablers in the 99%, don’t give a stuff about anyone anywhere – whether in the USA or elsewhere around the planet.

You do raise an issue, though, which is that the middle class in Team USA enjoyed a lot of their wealth and privilege at the expense of others around the globe, particularly in third world countries.

But that’s touching on a different topic and not quite in sync with the theme of this particular post.

Countries with an average income near $7,000 include Mexico, Chile, and Latvia. They rank about 40th in the global income table.

People living in rich countries had an average income of about $35,000. The high incomes in these countries make the world average income four times larger than the world median income, which was $1,700.

On the world stage, America (and a few Euro countries) are the 1%.

That’s been true since before WWII. What’s your point?

The same people who worry about income inequality in our country don’t seem to care about income inequality between Americans and the rest of the world

That simply is not true. Aside from the fact that I find most liberals and posters here on FDL to be quite humane and socially conscious; Most of us realize that the reason for our inequality of income is that it iseven is worse in many areas of the world. The cure is to demand equal and fair treatment of labor world wide..

If you’ve an indiv. health ins. policy and a risk factor,
I don’t believe you can move between states, such as to
take on a job or to take advantage of a new home purchase
opty w/o taking on a medical exclusion.

There’s a possibility that will change in stages under ObamaCare
when the health exchanges will more formally institutionize
socializing the cost and privatizing the profit.

The cartel will remain safe from the incentive to just keep
people healthy efficiently.

From the OECD

http://www.oecd.org/document/4/0,3343,en_2649_33933_41460917_1_1_1_1,00.html

“Incomes are more equally distributed and fewer people are poor where social spending is high: the Nordic countries and western European countries, such as Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Social spending on people of working age was 7-8% of national income in 2005 and the share of working-age people in poverty was between 5% and 8%.

At the other end of the spectrum, Korea, Mexico, Turkey and the United States spent 2% or less of national income on benefits and had 12-15% of the working age population in poverty.”

In other words, the policies pursued here since Reagan that have led to income disparity are the same policies, the same ideology, the same shameless greed that has increased income disparity worldwide. To fight those who advocate income disparity here is to fight the same conditions around the world. It is abject stupidity and folly to take an “I’m glad I’m in the lifeboat” approach to this menace, and it is despicable mendacity to accuse those who are against such predation here of not being against it wherever it occurs. This calumny is particularly reprehensible from one who hides with such dishonesty and cowardice his own support of such global brigandage.

It’s shoddy reporting on a shoddy report. The report’s inferences on mobility not only are suspect, they are a distraction from what their data suggests. The data appears to show that in the 68-80 time frame, a modest flattening of income distribution occurred for those “considered families”. In the 80-09 time frame (over twice as long), a more sever flattening occurred but for the poor. In ’09 the middle quintile and the top quintile (from ’80) together had ~18% more than average, most of which came from the bottom quintile.

Their selected sample only had 500 families, so the tremendous gains of the .1% are not captured and this is likely one cause of the flattening of incomes.