Steve Landsberg points out the flaw in the often-quoted statistic that the median US worker has enjoyed hardly any income gain over the past few decades, with median wages growing from $25,000 in 1980 to $25,700 in 2005:
Each demographic group has progressed, but at the same time, there’s been a great influx of lower income groups — women and nonwhites — into the workforce. This creates the illusion that nobody’s progressing when in fact everybody’s progressing.
Actual growth rates are as high as 75% for white women and 62% for nonwhite women.
I hate the term “nonwhite”. It reminds me of South Africa in the 1960s.
Mr Landsberg has learly not spoken to any “workers” in his research for this article. The middle class families that used to do reasonably well in the golden era of the 1960 -1985 are now watching their children rack up massive student debts , with no jobs security in return. The US has 15% now on food stamps and almost half the workforce a couple of pay checks from the street. So Mr Landsberg if you are interested in feed back from people who actually live in the world you purport to understand then I would simply this. Either improve your research or find another occupation.
Landsburg has shown once again that if you believe all statistical arguments then you can prove that baldness is due to sitting in the first two rows of a burlesque theatre. Statistics are used to prove the point of view of the speaker.
The U.S. worker is suffering a decline in standard of living. This is pretty clear and results in large part, at least I think, from globalization. But it is not as bad as many people make it out to be. Landsberg cites the median wage issue. I think per capita income doubling in the last 20 years proves that not everything is awful. But this doubling has occurred while household income is almost flat. Obviously, people wanting to prove the problems of the U.S. don’t talk about the great increase in the number of single parent households over the period, which comes awfully close to explaining the household income data.
Is inflation accounted for in these arguments?
“….all corrected for inflation”