This isn’t my original work. This is coming over from a post at Tigerdroppings. Usually that place is full of stupid ad homiem attacks “no your mom is” etc. This however, is an exceptional post. I am still trying to get through the CBO’s report on income inequality so I cannot 100% corroborate the conclusions below, but they look pretty good. From http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/display.aspx?p=29365385
Anyone notice that politicians who wish to make it quite clear that they are fully embracing class warfare tactics to convince the public that we must let them “do something” to take more money from wealthier Americans so that the poors can get their rightful claim of what is fairly theirs consistently use the category of “household income”?
CNN article showing income disparity by household income
Washington Post article showing a growing income disparity without indicating that it’s based on household income
MSNBC article showing a growing income disparity that mentions household income only once
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the composition of households change over time? Yes, shocking as it may seem, it turns out that if we track household income over time, we will also track how household income gets affected by changes in things like single parent residences.
I wonder if this has actually happened?
CNN article titled “Out-of-Wedlock Births Hit Record High”
Washington Post article titled “Unwed Motherhood Increases Sharply in U.S. Report Shows”
MSNBC article titled “Blacks Struggle with 72 Percent Unwed Mothers Rate
Wow. So it has. This is truly shocking. So maybe we would be vastly misled if we compared the household income by wage brackets over time, right? I’m no rocket surgeon, but it sure would seem that as the rate of unwed mothers increased over time, it just might be reasonable to conclude that household income may possibly NOT grow at the same rate across all incomes since the rate of unwed baby mommas is a bit (and by that I mean vastly) higher among the poors.
Well golly. If only there was a way to look at whether or not the income gap between the rich and poor has changed according to individual income over time.
Holy ####### ####! What is this Google thingy? You must be kidding. I can actually look that up? With Census Bureau statistics? It sure would be sweet if somebody out there on the interwebz actually put the results in a graph.
No difference? Wait a minute...there is no goddamn difference in the individual income gap among rich and poor over the past 16 years? Well #### me. Let’s forget about why they chose 16 years instead of 15 for a moment. Instead, let’s recap. The gap between rich and poor households is actually not the same thing as the income gap between individuals? That’s crazy stuff right there. If only CNN, Washington Post, and MSNBC (and I’m sure others) had only checked their own offices for some indication that the CBO’s figures might actually be misleading.
Something must be wrong. Could be the late hour of the night...or could be this empty glass of fire water messing with my brain. Maybe one of you night owls can glance at this overnight and see what I’m missing here.
Because it would be pretty shitty if the media also had a hand in leading us down this class warfare path if the truth turned out to be the opposite of what they’ve been saying. No change in income inequality? Weird.
To help us dig deeper into the demographics behind the income brackets, .....let’s take a look at the demographics behind income brackets:
Looking at these characteristics, is it right to say that the playing field needs to be leveled? It looks to me like differences in income can be logically explained by demographic characteristics that people have more control over than they think.
We can see that households in the top income bracket have on the average almost five times more family members working than the lowest bracket. This merely signals a reason why there is a growing statistical disparity by household income - the floor will always be 0, while any income level multiplied by any rate of increase will of course show a widening gap above 0.
We see that individuals in higher income households are far more likely than lower-income households to be well-educated. It is well documented (but rarely reported) that the unemployment rate for college educated persons is only around 4% today. We can see in the chart above that each lower income bracket has progressively LOWER percentages of people who have not completed high school.
We see that individuals in higher income brackets tend to be more likely to be married. We also know that divorce rates are higher among lower income brackets. If you have an annual income of over $50,000, your risk of divorce decreases by 30%. If you’ve attended college, your risk of divorce decreases by 13%. LINK We know that divorced women with children are four times more likely than married women to have an income that is under the poverty line. A single mom is nine times more likely than a married woman to have an income that is less than half the official poverty line. Although 10% of families in the U.S. are headed by a woman, 40% of poor families have a female head of household.
We see that individuals in higher income brackets are more likely to be working full time in their prime earning years.
But we also see that individuals in low income households are far more likely to be less-educated, working part-time, and either very young or very old, and tend to be living in single parent households.
What this shows is a trend line of productive decision making that leads to higher incomes. There’s a recipe for success here.
This isn’t my original work. This is coming over from a post at Tigerdroppings. Usually that place is full of stupid ad homiem attacks “no your mom is” etc. This however, is an exceptional post. I am still trying to get through the CBO’s report on income inequality so I cannot 100% corroborate the conclusions below, but they look pretty good. From http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/display.aspx?p=29365385
Anyone notice that politicians who wish to make it quite clear that they are fully embracing class warfare tactics to convince the public that we must let them “do something” to take more money from wealthier Americans so that the poors can get their rightful claim of what is fairly theirs consistently use the category of “household income”?
CNN article showing income disparity by household income
Washington Post article showing a growing income disparity without indicating that it’s based on household income
MSNBC article showing a growing income disparity that mentions household income only once
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the composition of households change over time? Yes, shocking as it may seem, it turns out that if we track household income over time, we will also track how household income gets affected by changes in things like single parent residences.
I wonder if this has actually happened?
CNN article titled “Out-of-Wedlock Births Hit Record High”
Washington Post article titled “Unwed Motherhood Increases Sharply in U.S. Report Shows”
MSNBC article titled “Blacks Struggle with 72 Percent Unwed Mothers Rate
Wow. So it has. This is truly shocking. So maybe we would be vastly misled if we compared the household income by wage brackets over time, right? I’m no rocket surgeon, but it sure would seem that as the rate of unwed mothers increased over time, it just might be reasonable to conclude that household income may possibly NOT grow at the same rate across all incomes since the rate of unwed baby mommas is a bit (and by that I mean vastly) higher among the poors.
Well golly. If only there was a way to look at whether or not the income gap between the rich and poor has changed according to individual income over time.
Holy ####### ####! What is this Google thingy? You must be kidding. I can actually look that up? With Census Bureau statistics? It sure would be sweet if somebody out there on the interwebz actually put the results in a graph.
No difference? Wait a minute...there is no goddamn difference in the individual income gap among rich and poor over the past 16 years? Well #### me. Let’s forget about why they chose 16 years instead of 15 for a moment. Instead, let’s recap. The gap between rich and poor households is actually not the same thing as the income gap between individuals? That’s crazy stuff right there. If only CNN, Washington Post, and MSNBC (and I’m sure others) had only checked their own offices for some indication that the CBO’s figures might actually be misleading.
Something must be wrong. Could be the late hour of the night...or could be this empty glass of fire water messing with my brain. Maybe one of you night owls can glance at this overnight and see what I’m missing here.
Because it would be pretty shitty if the media also had a hand in leading us down this class warfare path if the truth turned out to be the opposite of what they’ve been saying. No change in income inequality? Weird.
The 1% has been increasing its share of wealth for decades.
Is that something that you dispute?
Yes, that’s the whole point of this thread.
Show me one set of data that shows increasing inequality that DOESN’T refer to household or family income. Because those reflect the effect of disintegrating families.
Your highest fifth quintile in the second post shows an income of just $169,000. This has nothing to do with the 1% that Troll is talking about.
Family/household vs individual
Give me a reason why his (family) is the one we should use.
I don’t think it matters. Use either one. Trying to study the top one percent income bears little relation to dividing all incomes into five presumably equal, broad parts. The income of the top 1/5 of earners is going to be much lower than the income of the top 1/100 of earners, and whether those 1/100 of earners’ spouses or children are employed is not necessarily related to whether they are also earners. They can make earnings off of royalties and capital gains without having a 9-5 job.
Your highest fifth quintile in the second post shows an income of just $169,000. This has nothing to do with the 1% that Troll is talking about.
Family/household vs individual
Give me a reason why his (family) is the one we should use.
I don’t think it matters. Use either one. Trying to study the top one percent income bears little relation to dividing all incomes into five presumably equal, broad parts. The income of the top 1/5 of earners is going to be much lower than the income of the top 1/100 of earners, and whether those 1/100 of earners’ spouses or children are employed is not necessarily related to whether they are also earners. They can make earnings off of royalties and capital gains without having a 9-5 job.
Oh my bad; I thought you meant the number was using the wrong data. You mean there is a substantive difference between top 20% and top 1%. Understand.
However, that doesn’t get you anything. Go back to the Ginni index at the top. It is a measurement of overall equality/inequality. No (real) movement.
Now your turn. Show me how income dispartity has grown, without using household or family measures.
I wish you wealth redistributes would be honest with yourselves. If I put up charts of just the decline of the incomes of the wealthy from 2007-2009 would you be wanting to raise taxes on the poor??? You only look at the numbers you want to look at.
The bottom line is that in a growing economy high earners will accumulate more than low earners. A person that makes a million dollar per year will get $100,000 more if his income increases 10%. A person making $10,000 will only get $1000. Conversely when wages decline---in a recession for example--the high earner’s income that falls 10% will fall $100,000.
It is a stupid discussion. It should not be a goal of government to redistribute wealth. There is nothing fair about the government involvement in such things.
I also wish you re-distributors would start making distinctions between people’s wealth and people’s income. What you jealous communist really want to do is to tax people’s wealth. Spain has done so with a tax on all assets and Italy is contemplating doing so.
