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Comment by will_pseudonym | Hacker News Reader

This is a misleading take on the data. A much better analysis would look at the size of the population who was middle class or upper class. If there is an equal increase in upper class population for every loss of middle class population, that just means that our incomes as a population are increasing. All things equal, both the mean and median would increase in that circumstance.

And that's what the data looks like to a large degree. The middle class has shrunk from 61% to 50%, but the upper class has increased by nearly the same amount, 14% to 21%. Yes, that is a decrease in the middle class-or-better bucket, but it's nowhere near dire enough to be described as a tipping point. I agree that the shrinking middle class is something that needs to be discussed, but this article does the discussion a giant disservice.

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The article is just stating the middle class is shrinking - and inequality is therefore increasing. And increasing inequality is a problem.

The problem with increasing inequality is not necessarily decreasing mean incomes. Inequality is a problem because of the increasing class-based polarization of society, the power differential between different families, and a host of other factors. All of which can be present and problematic regardless of whether mean incomes are increasing.

This article isn't even implying that mean incomes are decreasing.

I'm not clear why this article does the discussion a great disservice.

I'm not sure that class-based polarization is inherently problematic. Surely some degree of inequality is an inviolable consequence of a society that values both freedom and private ownership.

Imagine an America in which the poorest families had two cars and a four-bedroom house, in a safe neighborhood with good schools. Would it then be considered problematic if Gates and Buffet became trillionaires?

The problem is poverty; the problem is that the south pole is too far south. It's problematic that many still don't have access to the fundamental Maslow's. The space between the poles isn't.

> Imagine an America in which the poorest families had two cars and a four-bedroom house, in a safe neighborhood with good schools. Would it then be considered problematic if Gates and Buffet became trillionaires?

Yes, it would be very problematic, but not out of any sense of fairness. Unless you can find a way to decouple wealth and power, such an outsized accumulation of wealth (and therefore, of power) would be a threat to democracy. Your hypothetical, even if achievable, is not a stable one because the ruling and capitalist classes would own our government to a degree that would make even our present situation look like a sort of egalitarian paradise. It would quickly become hopelessly corrupt, and without robust representation in government, it would only be a matter of time before the rest of us were remade into serfs.

> I'm not sure that class-based polarization is inherently problematic

The way people behave when there is class-based polarization in the US is inherently problematic.

The simple fact is the lower class has to be subsidized and that money largely has to flow from the upper class. The middle class, for the most part, is a break even proposition once you factor in the cost of Medicare & Social Security for the middle class.

Its a large part of why one party is so quick to blame "entitlements" is as long as they can remain on the offensive, their benefactors are largely protected.

If you have enough inequality in your society it will stop valuing freedom and private ownership. That's the problem.

Yes, but if a chunk of the middle class moved to the upper class, is that in and of itself a bad thing? Is it really preferable that no middle class move to the upper class?

Exactly! If we the entirety of the middle class disappeared and reappeared in the upper class, how would that be damaging to the country? If every member had no change or an increase to their income, it seems insane that that could have anything but a positive effect for the economy.

It's very important (for fairness, and for social stability) that the lower class have at least a somewhat realistic possibility of crossing the gap into middle class. If they have to jump all the way to upper class, does that mean that they're more likely to be trapped in lower class? That's a bad outcome for them. (It's fine for the middle class, of course.)

Yes, but this data tells us nothing about mobility.

People move from class to class all the time.

I'm not 100%, but pretty sure that the largest predictive factor of any US citizens wealth... is the wealth of their parents.

But is it inequality from one person to another, or just unequal life stages for the same individual?

You could imagine a college student from a middle-class background earning very little from 20-30, then being middle-income from 30-40, then upper-income from 40-65, then retired until 85.

Their independent life (20+) is 65 years, of which 30 are low-income, 10 middle-income, and 25 high income.

Valid point, but I believe that you mean that 10 are low-income.

Retirees typically count as low income, so I included the retired years as low income.

Another consideration is household size. Before, retirees may have been more likely to live with their children, but now they live more independently.

cperciva wrote a piece on this a while back:

http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equ...

Unequal life stages certainly contribute to inequality, but the Atlantic published an article this summer discussing research on intergenerational socioeconomic mobility: "Children born to 90th-percentile earners are typically on track to make three times more than the children of 10th-percentile earners." So socioeconomic class is definitely a big part of the equation.

Great point!

Generally incomes and wealth increase with age. If your population is more heavily weighted in one particulat age bracket (baby boomers?), you'll see a shift in wealth distribution, even if everyone's average wealth at a give age remains the exact same.

> If there is an equal increase in upper class population for every loss of middle class population, that just means that our incomes as a population are increasing

If they were defining boundaries by inflation-adjusted income, that would be correct.

They are defining them by ratio to the median income, so more upper "class" at the expense of the middle "class" by the standards used just means increased income inequality, not increased real wealth. (It could accompany increased or decreased real wealth, but its a completely separate thing.)

But if the upper class got bigger (in terms of numbers), they must have come from the middle class based on this data. That's a good thing, no?

For them individually, sure, being farther above the median is better.

Beyond that, I don't see how it's better in some general sense.

Why not? They are paying more taxes than they were before, benefiting society as a whole.

Let me ask it another way. If some moves from the lower class to the middle class, does that benefit society as a whole (ignoring the taxes).

I would say yes.

That's discussed pretty well in the article. The headline is a bit extreme, but the article is not.

The problem is more one of polarization than average wealth.

> If there is an equal increase in upper class population for every loss of middle class population, that just means that our incomes as a population are increasing.

> Yes, that is a decrease in the middle class-or-better bucket

Huh? Wat? Ignoring your contradiction completely, 1.5-2 million people dropped.

2% of ~100million working people is ~2 million people. 2 million people dropped out of the middle class to the lower class. 2,000,000. Two-million individuals. Two commas. Not to mention their kids. Or their retired parent(s).

Yes, and...?

If you're interested in charting broad trends in a very large population, two million people may not be that relevant to your work. That's not any kind of moral judgement of those people or an argument to ignore their problems, it's just a statement of fact.

Why are you assuming they came from the middle class and not the upper class? Populations in each class are not static. Over that time period, folks moved from the lower class to the middle and upper.

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