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Comment by hodwik | Hacker News Reader

Sure it has, although trickle down is a completely inaccurate way to describe it.

Real adjusted income per capita is skyrocketing. The only reason it looks like it is going down is because Liberals always quote the household income. Of course household income is going down, households are getting smaller and smaller.

A mere 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in '75 were still there by '91.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZTj_GfalJo8/UCGLgI8nDII/AAAAAAAAFt...

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That's average income. Look at the median income for men and things look less exciting. Then add the increase in tuition fees and housing cost in urban areas.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aTB7SNmJgkY/UCPmRNHaUxI/AAAAAAAAFw...

Why just men? Aren't we glad they have to complete with women in the labor market now?

Because the primary increase in median salary for women are their increased participation in the workforce and not actually higher salary? If you look at median real income per hour you find a similar results as men.

Yes: As supply doubles, prices go down. Again, what's wrong with that?

Exactly.

There's so much stuff like that going on it's hard to know where to begin with these people.

For example, demographics. If you have a large young population and a large elderly population you will have a median income pushed lower than when your demographics skew middle aged.

Also, when you have large immigration influx, that forces down your median income as a percentage for the whole population, even if the people who were there before the influx are doing considerably better in real dollar terms.

Or if retirees are doing part-time "fun" work for small amounts of pay, when they wouldn't have been 50 years ago, that'll force down median income since they're not competing for higher wages.

It goes on and on.

In this case, the increased labour participation should create some supply of its own.

First, no, that data is only for full-time, year-round employees. https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/peopl...

Second, employees are working less hours now than before, so if you think that line of argumentation flies, it actually supports my position -- adding an additional 12.5% to per capita median income per hour. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRU...

You keep missing the point. Women traditionally worked low paying jobs, like housekeeper or nanny. The increased participation of women in the workforce mean that women now work higher paying jobs. It does not mean that that someone has gotten more real pay for the same job. The numbers you linked to on worked hours still hasn't had meaningful change since the '80s. If your point is that things got better until the '70s or '80s but not since, well then I agree with your point. But like I said there are of course many factors, like men are probably working less hours, but on the other hand underemployment has gone up.

Who is "we"? It's beneficial for employers, but for those selling their labour (i.e. most of us) there is no reason to be glad about their work being devalued.

For those who couldn't sell their labour before (women), it's beneficial.

Those are roughly 40% and 55% increases. How is that not exciting?

And inflation adjusted home prices have only gone up a few % nationally. Sure, there are areas people want to live and pay a premium for, but that has always been true. Those places have just moved from rural areas to the cities.

As for education, we're in a bubble, it's to be expected. Stop the government from giving easy access loans to kids who don't know any better, stop forcing kids into college, stop college-focused hiring practices, and that will go away overnight.

"Those are roughly 40% and 55% increases. How is that not exciting?"

Why are we even discussing this if you can't see that it's been essentially unchanged since the '70s? Similarly rents has gone up as percentage of income and housing prices just went through a boom and bust cycle and has been far higher on average the last decade than before.

Sure, there are other factors to look at, but you are very much skewing the numbers to you liking as you accused others of having done in you first post in this thread.

Uh, what? There's been an almost 25% growth in median real income from 1970 at 21k to 2007 at 28k.

And it's not exactly like we're really pushing the Republican economic vision. We have the highest corporate tax rates in the entire OECD.

http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/corporate-tax-rates-...

You're reading the wrong line on the graph because you're not reading the comments you're replying to. The median income for men is what was cited as being essentially flat since 1970. You can't simply pretend that a different argument was made and refute that.

I didn't think the focus was men. I keep hearing how there has been no wage growth since the 1970s and this data seems to indicate that's not true.

It doesn't, since annual income and hourly wage aren't the same thing, and are related through a variable (hours worked) that has changed significantly since 1970 for women. If the only income increases are largely due to working more hours, then that is obviously a trend that's got major downsides and must soon hit a limit. The luxury of having a stay-at-home parent only provided a limited amount of slack.

From above -- First, no, that data is only for full-time, year-round employees. https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/peopl...

No one is arguing that real household income has not risen sine 1945. The problem is that it's stagnated and even decreased since 2000, which is exactly what that chart shows.

We're facing much more competition globally now. Sure, it's a small loss for us, but it's a huge gain for the world. Things had to equalize, we couldn't ride off WW2 forever.

And I don't mean that in a Keynesian sense. I mean that in a 'the rest of the first world was bombed to a pulp so we had no global manufacturing competition' sense.

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