Who's making money these days?

[igneousy2]

When you look at inflation ajusted household income over the last 50 years the average US citizen makes more now days

Check it out

http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

How about we measure purchases in minutes worked?

By that measure, the work-time cost of new homes fell from 7.8 hours in 1920 to 6.5 hours in 1956 and 5 hours in 1970, but then rose to 5.6 hours in 1996. (See Exhibit 4: Gimme Shelter.)

Drivers may grumble when they pull into a service station, but a gallon of gasoline required just 5.4 minutes of work in 1997, compared with 6.6 minutes in 1970, three years before the Arab oil embargo caused prices to surge. If we consider the 60 percent increase in average miles per gallon since 1970, the work time to drive a typical car 100 miles has been nearly halved over the past quarter century—from 49 minutes in 1970 to 28 minutes today. The price of an automobile tire has risen from $13 in the mid-1930s to about $75 today. However, today's steel-belted radials last more than 42,000 miles, a big increase from the 16,000 miles for the nylon tires of the 1950s or the 2,000 miles for the 31/2-inch, cotton-lined tires of the early 1920s. Based on work time per 1,000 miles, tires are now cheaper than ever.

Check it out

http://dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar97.cfm

remember...lies...damn lies...and statistics!

First off your first statement you made a logical leap that gets you into trouble...

"When you look at inflation ajusted household income over the last 50 years the average US citizen makes more now days"

You are making a Apples to Bacon comparison between the two.

Household income does not equal personal income. The number of adults working in the household has also increased over the years. So yes, the average "household" perhaps makes slightly more money, but in the 1950's Ward Cleaver (leave it to beaver) brought home 100% of that income while in the 00's both Raymond and Debra (Everybody loves Raymond) have to work to make a modest life.

How about we measure purchases by minutes worked??? I say Let's not. Measuring the cost of things by "minutes worked" would only work if...

A. You are planning to work until the day you die and you don't care about the wealth (or lack of wealth) you are leaving your heirs.

or

B. You are a government trying to conceal how much it has destroyed the currency by manipulating numbers and confusing the populace.

In addition, this also relates to the above...If in the 50's only one person in the household had to work 6 minutes, but now with two people working in the household they BOTH have to work 6 minutes...that equals 12 minutes...and that is not counting the fact that because both are working they have to pay somebody else 2 minutes each to watch their 1.3 kids. This does not seem like a good deal to me.

All of those other gains, better tires, etc. Would have happened with or without the devaluation of the dollar. Imagine how well off we would be if we had a strong dollar AND better tires.

Later,

 

[pilotyip]

remember...lies...damn lies...and statistics!

First off your first statement you made a logical leap that gets you into trouble...later,

Yea I suppose that is one way to look at it, I think statistics are a relible source of info, they seen to work well when predicting aircraft performance.

 

[svcta]

There are many factors in this thing but "middle class" have put themselves in a position of decline, if one actually exists. I do see doctors, lawyers, <i>airline</i>pilots making less money. In the airplane business salaries are hinged on the what the airlines are paying, historically. Some major airlines have been allowed to survive artificially and drive those salaries down. The marketplace has not been allowed to kill a sick or already dieing airline in decades thanks to bankruptcy laws. So the problem with airlines will continue in perpetuity.

The "middle class" have been sold down the river by...well, by themselves. Everyone has access to college, so a degree becomes less valuable. Especially when you can get a degree in American Studies or Music Therapy. It just means that you went to school for school's sake. Which is just great, but don't come out and expect to extrapolate that in to extra income because you have a degree. You just have....debt!

Which is the real heart of the matter, in my opinion. We in this country have spent decades learning to keep up with the Joneses. At some point in time somebody realized that people would buy a Pet Rock, so they sold us Pet Rocks...and we bought them. It was their job to sell them to us. Pet Rocks are no different than any single other item in the marketplace that we (as a group) bought by the ton. Bigger houses, cars, gadgets, we bought. Then when we slowed down because we didn't want to eat in to our savings, someone extended us a little credit. Layaway turned in to easy credit...take it home now. It was their job to sell it to us...and we bought it. All of a sudden everything could be financed, even your bass boat. People quit asking "How much?" Instead they asked "How much per month?" So bass boats are now amazing. We proved to the people selling this stuff that we wanted it and that we would do just about anything to satisfy our wants as they became more pressing than our actual needs. It was their job to satisfy the demand that we placed upon them. We wanted more stuff, they found ways to get it to us. We wanted cheaper stuff, they found ways to get it to us. We lost sight of value.

Slowly our priorities changed and we became enamored with stuff to the point that we no longer had a claim on our futures. Just each month. All of a sudden this was normal. We were fat with stuff and short on cash but clearly thought that we could still afford it. We looked around and other people had stuff. We saw on TV that the stupid rich people had stuff. They're not better than us, we <i>deserve</i> what they have, and we can afford a $600/mo car/boat/motorcycle/petrock payment. So we leveraged ourselves to get it. Think of it like a donut shop in your neighborhood. The neighbors are getting fat, but they love donuts and you love donuts and if they don't care about being fat then neither should you. So you buy more donuts. Flash forward and everyone on the block is fat. Unsustainably fat. The donut shop owner simply did her job, she sold us the donuts that we demanded.

At some point the mayor of our neighborhood didn't like the fact that there were some skinny people at the end of the cul de sac and put some pressure on the donut shop owner to see that the skinny people got more donuts. So, the donuts went on sale and in some cases were given to the skinny people who otherwise wouldn't have eaten donuts to the point of obesity. And that's just what they did.

Flash forward to now. We are so fat that we can't leave the house and we are furious with the donut shop owner for selling us the donuts that we lined up for. But didn't we deserve to eat donuts?

F*%k us.

 

[tomgoodman]

Household income does not equal personal income. The number of adults working in the household has also increased over the years. So yes, the average "household" perhaps makes slightly more money, but in the 1950's Ward Cleaver (leave it to beaver) brought home 100% of that income while in the 00's both Raymond and Debra (Everybody loves Raymond) have to work to make a modest life.

Perhaps the two-earner family is, in part, a cause of lower personal income. When thousands of "Mrs. Cleavers" joined the workforce, is it surprising that average personal income declined? As we've seen with airline deregulation, increased competition for fares/jobs tends to depress the market price.

 

[waveflyer]

Wave, my brother. I am real. Propaganda machine? No. Just have my eyes open, that's all. Do you really think Government is not too big, too wasteful? It is sucking the spirit and $$ out of this country by over regulation and spending on a bureaucracy that is out of control. It has promissed much more than it can deliver. Americans need to look to themselves, their families and their own immediate communities/church rather than the STATE. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...es-in-america/2011/09/23/gIQABPl50K_blog.html

Read Atlas Shrugged -- Great book.

I've read atlas shrugged, and the fountainhead, multiple times-
Some of the greatest books ever- but you must acknowledge her assumptions and realize she was an atheist, adulterer, hooked on speed- which sounds good in theory but might not be the best imperative to lead our lives as a nation.
Ie: she couldn't maintain the superhuman pace she espoused without pharmaceutical help-

Most conservatives have debunked her objectivism as a be all end all- it is useful as a motivator- and in context- but it is not a healthy balanced spiritual life-
However, I am right with her on productivity being the highest morality-

What you're forgetting to judge is that she was equally as critical of looters at the top end as she was of those on the bottom-

And I see no difference between productive people who take in excess of their productivity, and those who don't lift a finger and take in excess of their productivity.
The problem in America is both- yet when leaders loot, it kills the motivation of everyone working for them-
I'm more than willing to talk about welfare reform (ie: drug testing, madatory schooling, or work for welfare money, etc) -> but not until we reform Leader looting from wall street, made legal through Washington DC

 

[Junkflyer]

DC makes looting legal because they share in it. Probably the worst thing is their exemption from insider trading rules.

 

[waveflyer]

No response dragontamer?

 

[Junkflyer]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-gap-members-Congress-rule-survey-reveals.htm

 

[waveflyer]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-gap-members-Congress-rule-survey-reveals.htm

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[Junkflyer]

go to the page, highlight the address on the section below
and click the google search and it should pull it up. Just tried it and its working for me.