*gasp* Class War!

[zsquirrelboy]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the senator-elect from Virginia:
The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is

Comments

[lhn]

Though the same stats could be cast as: excluding the top 1%, national income (adjusted for inflation) has increased by 50% since 1980. (But we've had the relative distribution vs. absolute improvement discussion before.)

1980 also seems like a particularly odd baseline for a Democrat to choose for an economic argument. (Unless voter nostalgia for the days of unemployment half again as high as the present and double-digit inflation and interest rates is greater than I'd expect, bringing up the last time the party held all the branches of government for a full term seems potentially counterproductive.) I'd think 1994 would be a friendlier vantage point (though I don't know if the numbers work out as well for the senator-elect's soundbite).

[zsquirrelboy]

Interesting. What are the numbers if you exclude the top 5%? 10%? What is the change in the median household income over that period

[lhn]

Interesting. What are the numbers if you exclude the top 5%? 10%?

Got me-- I just used Webb's numbers on the national income for those respective years. (I.e., 84% of current national income vs. 92% of 1980.)

What is the change in the median household income over that period?

Both in 2005 dollars:

1980: $39739
2005: $46326

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2005. (Which also gives some income distribution data, though not AFAICT keyed to percentage of national income.)

Consumer debt is definitely higher-- debt service obligations were about 11% of personal income in 1980, and are about 14% now. For whatever it's worth, despite the sharp rise in real estate costs homeownership is slightly up (64.4% in 1980 vs 68.9% in 2005) as is vehicle ownership (between 1980 and 2000 percentage of households with no vehicle dropped from 13% to 9% and the percentage with one dropped from 36% to 34%, while those with two or more went up

[harimad]

The really short summary is: credit card companies* lobbied Congress to relieve the companies of the predictable results of their own business strategy

[zsquirrelboy]

Lack of effective bankruptcy relief also has the potential to drive people (especially on the lower end) out of the formal economy, with all of the attendant problems that would engender.

[voxel]

Not necessarily - if the top 1% took 8% of national income in 1980, and 16% today, total national income doesn't have to increase at all. Differences in share do not necessitate differences in amount.

[lhn]

Taking the percentages alone, sure. But Webb's not making an abstract claim, but an empirical one about US national income in 1980 vs. now. Running the national income numbers for 1980 through an inflation calculator and comparing them to now (well, 2003), multiplying each by Webb's ratio, gets the indicated result. (Assuming I didn't bobble my figures, which is certainly possible-- cross-checks are always welcome.)