Why 3.5M Americans in their prime years aren’t working
marketwatch.com
marketwatch.com
> If men and women from the ages 25 to 54 took part in the labor market... [t]hat would be more fuel for the U.S. economy and a bigger source of workers for businesses crying out about a shortage of labor...
> Trade with China flooded the U.S. with cheap imports, forced domestic firms to shift operations overseas and put downward pressure on wages of less-skilled Americans.
There's an obvious capitalistic answer to this problem: If you're "crying out" for labor, then you may need to offer more money. This will encourage more people to work, or to acquire the skills you want—look at all those coding bootcamps, for example.
Claiming that there's a labor shortage and downward pressure on wages is an extraordinary claim, and it requires a detailed explanation. Otherwise, the obvious assumption is that somebody wants specialized skills for below-market prices. If markets are good at one thing, it's adjusting prices to balance supply and demand.
If you can substitute foreign labor then there is no shortage. If you can't substitute foreign labor then it's irrelevant.
You can't have a shortage of workers and falling wages. You can have uncompetitive US companies, but they are very profitable so the only thing left is irrational behavior.
Or insufficient capital investment and bad management holding down productivity. You can't pay a worker more than their productivity, but if the best you can get out of them is too little, it may not be worth their while. You could then plausibly see a shortage of workers, wage suppression, and stagnant productivity statistics at the same time.
But that can not be reconciled to "labor shortage".
A more fruitful line of research focuses on the growing power of monopoly, and the collapse of new business formation in the USA. Why don't companies with huge profits reinvest their profits? Why are most of the tech giants sitting on piles of cash? Monopoly could explain that, and would also explain a limit on wages that otherwise seems to defy market sense.
One thing which has substantially changed between '99 and now is employer expectation of availability. In '99, you may have worked 9-6, but when you left the office, you left the office. Sure, some tech folks, some traders, etc. may have had pagers back then - but now, the mobile phone is ubiquitous, and the universal expectation is that you are available and ready to work, even if it's 4am on Sunday and you got married yesterday.
It's purely anecdotal, but I am "in my prime", and have opted out of being a productive member of society for now, as being broke beats being broken. I'm not alone in this - in the past 18 months of peripateticism, I've met many others, mostly tech folks, in the same boat.
Bluntly, market price isn't enough to completely sacrifice any semblance of an existence outside of work.
Maybe among Silicon Valley startups. That has absolutely not been the case at any of my jobs at companies ranging from 5 to tens of thousands of employees.
There will always be some suckers who are pushed to work overnight and week end.
Companies with poor working conditions usually suffer from poor management, which causes burnout and high turnover. The problem is that poor management is so common that many people think burnout and high turnover are normal.
Employees tend to leave the job or the workforce altogether. The ones who did not yet are in short supply.
I know it's not an option open to everyone, and I'll be honest and say that a lot of the folks I've met have trod a similar path - startup, decade of unsustainable grind, total burnout, with maybe 0.1% of what we dreamed of to show for it.
I have however also met folks on the road who've thrown the towel in with no capital, who are finding ways of making it work - one couple even had two under-ten children, and were travelling, gigging, and educating their incredibly worldly and well informed kids, with a view to "maybe finding a ruin somewhere". It takes all sorts, but I think there are an increasing number of people "opting out".
So you became a farmer? How's that working out?
I also wouldn’t call myself a farmer - rather a smallholder experimenting with permaculture. Cost of living here is low if you buy food from local markets, etc., so I’ve a few years to make it work before I end up totally broke.
That’s just off the cuff though.
And this is after we swore we would never let another Rwanda or another Serbia happen.
Actually, this raises a very interesting point to parallel the author’s. By the same logic, a pacifist society must be willing to go to war to protect that pacifism.
What on earth does this have to do with health insurance?
US government spends more per capita on healthcare than eg UK government, and doesn't have universal coverage and has worse results across a range of indicators.
https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-does-uk-healthcare-spending-co...
US tax-payers are subsidising the US's terrible healthcare.
One possible explanation is that a lot of money is spent on healthcare toward the end of life, and much of it is just chasing a sliver of hope. In a system where people spend according to their priorities, instead of to improve some statistical indicator of system-wide efficacy, 'irrational' spending like this could be much higher in the US.
The landscape is changing so fast that any competitive advantage that unfolds over multiple years, such as treating your employees well, fostering junior developers etc, doesn't have much of an effect. There's too much chaos and reinvention going on.
Trump would be right to constrict access to H1B1 visas for foreign workers in the US, in this case.
But we also have a problem of access to those coding bootcamps - everyone has a smartphone, not everyone has a modern desktop/laptop. As far as coding bootcamps, there's also this: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-deve...
The same in the field of law: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/opinion/too-many-law-stud...
Here's what employers are saying: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/28/surveys-find...
But a realistic explanation? Monopsony: too few employers competing for workers with any given skill set. https://slate.com/business/2018/01/after-all-the-talk-about-...
Monopsony is getting some attention: https://www.thenation.com/article/does-monopoly-power-explai...
And here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/ask-the-headhunter/ask-...
The overall conclusion was that automation (and, we can assume, globalization) was essentially digging away at "middle-skilled" jobs, like manufacturing. These are jobs where employees must invest a certain amount of time and training to be paid well, and then they find that their entire industry is drying up. They are faced with a few choices, and many of those lead towards a less attractive, lower-paying job than they had before.
With a social safety net, many are simply exiting the job market and relying on disability or other means to get by rather than take a crap job at crap wages.
Although the age group here is different, a lot of the same forces are likely at play. US employers do not see labor as an investment, and haven't for a long time (if ever); they are generally unwilling to hire lower-skilled employees and invest in training them. Instead, they cry constantly that there isn't a large enough pool of skilled labor to draw from (and in the tech sector, this is why they think they need lots of H-1Bs).
Meanwhile, potential employees are faced with a market where, if they work very hard and teach themselves some skill at their own cost, they might be able to get a job working for an employer who will pay them as little as they can get away with paying them (the wage pressure), and potentially also having to pay off student loans. Alternatively, they can forego this rat race and get some middle-skill job -- something between food service and senior software developer -- and make enough to get by, and with less debt, and spend whatever extra money they've got left over on cheap entertainment.
They certainly aren't going to be able to afford a house on their wages, that hasn't been possible since the 60s.
This is a complex issue with manifold causes and effects and, as the article I linked points out, nobody seems to have a solid handle on all of it yet. There's lots of ideology but not clear enough data yet.
When I see teenagers with iPhones and their parents buying Tesla cars I can see why they will never afford a house. Average American is unable to save money, most overspend. Combine this with poor education and unwillingness to learn or relocate.
I have been openly asked about my politics at an interview for a Y Combinator startup (Starsky Robotics). "We need to make sure you are not a horrible person." One of my references later told me that the co-founder was on the phone almost 20 minutes asking probing questions about me. No offer, no feedback. Who stands a chance with that level of scrutiny?
However since this is the case everywhere I think it's better to think about ways to mitigate this problem than try to solve it via some sort of gatekeeping. Even Google with their rigorous process has this problem.
Personally I think the inability to fire-fast because of lack of a social safety net is a core part of the problem.
Yeah ok guys, that's pretty inflated, innit /s?
A ground worker is the PC term what's known in civil engineering as a "navvy"
Oh and the ground worker would get OT
What exactly are the requirements for a "web developer" with 3-5 years experience? More or less than a registered nurse with 3-5 years experience (~$60k)?
If you want to fill a shortage, you need to start by raising wages substantially. If for no other reason than to at least allow new students some hope of ever repaying the always-increasing college costs required to enter these fields.
Many of the new positions being created in startups have no defined market rate, which causes more malinvestment (overpaying workers who don't produce well enough) or shortage of labor due to insufficient perceived compensation.
Businesses will almost always err on the side of shortage of labor and keeping costs down when they can (though you could argue otherwise in the current ridiculous VC-backed industry), so this will always be a "problem" in the market.
- graduated college early
- graduated law school early
- was a judicial law school
- co-developed and sold a patent pending business method for the automated calculation of fees in statutory litigation
In my specific case, especially in law, one thing holds me back (essentially placing me on a do not hire blacklist) I have a blemish on my criminal record for a possession of marijuana charge when I was 21 years old. Law is an old school industry that doesn’t generally overlook that type of thing, I even had 1 interview end immediately right when that was asked/disclosed during the interview itself. But even outside of Law I have applied to hundreds of jobs without ever getting interviews, I have applied to all the tech companies (in legal positions) without an interview. I have probably even applied to a dozen or so YC companies and never a single interview, YC even invested in a start up that is supposed to help people with criminal records get jobs and I reached out for assistance and was told they couldn’t assist me. This brings me to my second point, like there are “blacklists” and policies against candidates with criminal records, there are just plain old blacklists and I bet most of this 3.5 million are on them.
It’s not just People with criminal records either, people with poor credit are on blacklists, people with employment gaps are on blacklists. These blacklists are both internal company policies but also in some cases real shared lists between recruiters and other lists HR checks. I’ll personally be alright because I can make money without a job but most can’t and need traditional emoloyment. And they will never get a job because they are in in this endless cycle of employment gap and poor finances (bad credit) that can never be rehabilitated because of mindless policy. This also explains a class of people ready and willing to be exploited in the gig economy.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/convicted-of-a-marij...
That’s really the reason I never took that step, though as a current member I can now take that step.
These people are no longer competitive because they failed to innovate. They're priced out because their own government is and has been unwilling to do anything to help the non-wealthy and alleviate the level of income inequality.
Good for them (probably a step up from 3rd world conditions), but bad if you want to maintain some quality of life.
Without resorting to identity fraud, its nearly impossible for undocumented immigrants to find work because most employers require a social security number for payroll purposes. Even though they use a fake identity, they still get a paycheck, they still pay payroll taxes and pay into Medicare and Social Security. However, they get none of the benefits. Undocumented immigrants have no other choice but to commit identity fraud. Unfortunately for them, its a necessary evil. Their intent is not to dodge taxes.
I'm not saying all undocumented immigrants pay taxes but most are not opposed to it. A little google search will bring up plenty of research into this topic.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/oct/02/...
https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf
To your point about them breaking housing laws, all I can say is that its true but this isn't something that is limited to undocumented immigrants. Just take a look at the hacker houses in the bay. Maybe what is needed is more affordable housing.
I see where you're coming from but blaming undocumented immigrants for lowering the quality of life is a disservice. The US benefits immensely from undocumented immigrants but its something few want to admit.
That means no taxes, no insurance, no worker rights, no unemployment benefits, abuse, theft and violence are rampant.
The dark side of open borders.
And there's your explanation for how immigrants become cheaper. If you have nothing to lose, you steal, abuse and definitely don't pay taxes (by which I mean those actions become rational despite the risk)
I don't believe it. If you are a skilled landscaper or tradesman you are able to earn a good wage.
* licensing restrictions that exclude amateurs and small businesses from participating in various industries (e.g. securities laws that prevent non-public-companies and unaccredited investors from issuing stock to the public and buying stock from non-public companies, respectively)
* occupational licensing
* high tax burdens
* government deficits crowding out lending to the private sector
* zoning restrictions causing housing costs in core economic regions to increase
FTE at a startup is high risk low reward. You might think with funding a startup is not high risk. It is. You are giving up the huge salary you'd get a a megacorp. And don't even get me started on the common stock issue.
FTE at a megacorp is medium risk medium reward. Not high enough reward until you get to the higher levels - difficult to do.
And also the dull monotone reward signal of direct deposit every two weeks is so incredibly boring.
So now I'm left bootstrapping. The only thing left with high reward. It's hard. My insurance sucks. Trying to work with other companies is obnoxious. Every app store takes 30% and thinks they have employees without the paperwork. One app store I built something for requested(demanded) never ending meaningless changes then released a copy of my idea without telling me. It wasn't even that good of an idea in retrospect.
The game is rigged and not optional. People everywhere hate rigged games.
Yeah right. It's my experience that companies do not care about picking up anyone who is not already perfectly tailored for the role needed. If that person hasn't been found, the req just sits there. Sometimes for a year or more. That there is some "unfilled gap" of jobs is a fallacy.
All these things are issues, part of the reason many people can't work.
With all that in mind, some (largish?) percentage of people not working are simply unemployable. As in, they won't be able to do a job. Or they will make more trouble than they will put out so are net negative to have employed and thus don't stay employed. I don't know what can be done about this, probably feed them and call it good. Not sure everyone is owed a job, at least the way the system is set up now.
>After declining in inflation-adjusted terms from 1998 to 2007, minimum wages rose almost 11% in real terms between 2007 and 2016, Abraham and Kearney estimated. Firms may have outsourced jobs or spent more on automation to offset the higher costs of low-skilled labor.
Is it just me, or is this a shockingly misleading paragraph? That minimum wages rose in real terms tells us nothing. They may have kept in place with inflation, or they may have even continued to fall in inflation-adjusted terms. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison at all.
As long as america continue to allow free trade our wealth and jobs will flow out of the country as countries seek cheaper labor and sell it right back to America with no restrictions. The standard of living is raising in other countries while lowering in the US. Labor is already getting too expensive in China for cheap goods so companies are beginning to look at other countries for cheap labor, or bring manufacturing back to the US and us automation to make up the difference.
The US really has no incentive to allow this to happen. We have the largest market in the world and could very easily do what China does if other countries want access to it. The US allows anybody into our markets while China bends them over the bargaining table requiring them to give up IP and form joint ventures with Chinese companies. What incentive does the US have to do "fair" trade? We have all the leverage in any negotiation but for years haven't used that leverage. At some point we're going to have to or the citizens are going to either rebel or accept lower standard of living, lower income, and lower life expectancy.
I'm starting to believe that the reason Washington DC does nothing about the opioid crisis is because it benefits them. If thousands of unemployed, heavily armed rust belt men were not strung out and dying from addiction they probably would have organized and marched on DC a long time ago and got payback on the politicians who have sold them out for personal gain.
The US really has no incentive to allow this to happen
Except that it has opened trade for US companies, and the reported numbers are often laughably misleading. Apple, for instance, nets almost all of the profits from an iPhone, yet in the trade balance an iPhone magically counts as a $1000 deficit with China. Further, it yields cheaper goods for Americans, and more efficiency.
The US was literally built on free trade, and sits right near the top because of it, so to read these nonsensical "but what if" arguments borders on parody. It is just a profound ignorance of history and even the most rudimentary of economics. It is one of those amazing things where people really, really don't understand what they have until they lose it.
What good does Apple's record profits do for the US? Apple is owned by shareholders across the world, and Americans benefit only insofar as they actually own Apple stock.
A smaller scale example is restaurants open late. If you wanted a meal at 4am, a 24-hour restaurant is providing you value because otherwise you would have gone hungry. The value to you is fulfillment, even if you don't own any of the restaurant, or even if the restaurant didn't pay any taxes.
There is real value in companies moving the world as a whole forward. You don't have to own part of them to get the benefits.
From 1871 to 1913, “the average U.S. tariff on dutiable imports never fell below 38 percent [and] gross national product (GNP) grew 4.3 percent annually, twice the pace in free trade Britain and well above the U.S. average in the 20th century,” notes Alfred Eckes Jr., chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission under President Reagan.
US trade balance: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade
How to read that graph: if the line is above zero, it's a net benefit to the US to allow free trade, if it is below, it's a net cost. In the last 50 years, not once has it been positive, and it's systematically gotten worse.
TLDR: free trade is a massive cost to the US economy. It is in fact clearly at a level where if it wasn't for the dollar's status as global reserve currency, it would be completely intolerable.
The US must be a 3rd world country then, right? 50 years being apparently looted like that. Oh wait, it is actually right at the pinnacle of strongest economies in the world.
How can that be?
Because maybe, just maybe, it isn't zero sum. As I mentioned the trade balance is largely a myth (Apple brings hundreds of billions home, while China nets tens of dollars per iPhone, yet the whole gets attributed to China. This goes across every major US manufacturer), and the US has been an enormous beneficiary of it, not only in economic power but in quality of life.
What is so wrong about using our leverage as the world's largest economy to protect the interests of our citizen's, just like China does?
It's just a thought experiment. I understand the US constitution vests the power to regulate interstate commerce with the Federal government.
Let me put it another way. If it would be advantageous for the US to erect trade barriers against Chinese exports, why would it not be advantageous for California to erect trade barriers against Mississippi, where average wages are dramatically lower, there are far fewer environmental regulations, etc.
It would totally benefit California because they could do whatever they wanted and companies couldn't just up and move to Mississippi if things got too bad.
California (and all other states) consumers, on the other hand, would not benefit as prices would rise as a result of this protectionism.
Not really sure what the point of this red herring is but the theory of protectionism applies equally well at all levels from the mom and pop grocery store opposed to a new Walmart to continent sized economic blocks.
I agree that the effects would be largely the same. The point of the thought experiment is that protectionists never clamor for interstate trade barriers.
Almost universally, protectionists accept and even marvel at the US single market and interstate free trade, but they somehow lose sight of the benefits when trade becomes international.
I would say it's because the states have a generally level playing field due to federal laws/regulations while foreign countries can do whatever they want to reduce prices. It's not like Ohio can make child labor legal or something like that.
Though I will admit most protectionists aren't really known for their ability to construct a rational economic argument to support their position.
For example, I recently heard from a friend with family in China that Americans who go to China can make $50 an hour private English tutoring rich Chinese kids. How can wages be rising so much in China and they are still wildly undercutting us?
The other weird thing is Americans who move to low cost south east Asia locations and run dropship ecommerce stores that make $2000 a month and live like they were making 10 times that in the bay area.
The friend of mine who makes his living expenses for two years in Argentina in two months doing webdev.
The bottom line is someting is wrong with prices for things in America. Prices for education, price for health care, prices for rent. Everything is so expensive that people can't live on low wages and be content. When they just change their location all the prices wildly change relative to each other and it all makes sense.
I don't have an easy answer, but some unusual economic phenomenon is going on that transcends national politics and it is important for a individual who can operate internationally to take note. of it.
I live on low wages and am content.
I work a hundred-something days a year at a job any idiot can perform and manage to keep a roof over my head in a pretty decent neighborhood and food in my belly. If I really want something all I have to do is work a few extra days or weeks until I earn enough to buy it then go back to my regular slacker schedule.
The quality of life is equalizing across the world and this is how. Those who were higher have to go down, those who were lower will go up.
China is a country of HUGE income inequalities. You have a few people that make millions and you have few hundred million people make $500/year. The middle class for them makes only $800/month. Money all flows to the top to the government/state firms, and much eventually flows out to Canada/Australia/US.
> The other weird thing is Americans who move to low cost south east Asia locations and run dropship ecommerce stores that make $2000 a month and live like they were making 10 times that in the bay area.
Living abroad is good for young singles, bad for anyone else. There's bad weather, dirty food, dirty water, food poisoning, no access to good healthcare, lots of noise and pollution. Not to mention if you're an entrepreneur, you are not putting down a root, not making network connections you need for sales, not going to meetup events and learning new technologies, etc.
What an incredible nonsense. America has been pushing free trade all over the globe to be able to sell American products into other markets. They're not 'allowing' free trade, they have been pushing it for all it's worth and then some.
Exhibit A: copyright law. Exhibit B: patent law. Exhibit C: privacy/data protection law.
Anywhere they have an edge, the US aggressively arm-wrestles third parties into submitting themselves to trade deals that makes them keep subservient to whatever, and present their accomplishments to voters as "free trade" deals. It's not.
It's a bit like "peace process". It's code word for whatever American interests align to. Try to find any reference of the US being against a peace process. You won't.
Free trade is based on merit (quality) and production capability, America has made some costly mistakes with both.
Sanctions will hit the American consumer harder than the exporters.
Rossignol is a French company by the way.
But I don't see anything exceptional there, it is similar to the nonsense America engages in vv Canada when it comes to dairy, beef and lumber.
Why are trade deficits necessarily bad? The trade deficit represents the spread between savings and investment. If net foreign investment in America is very high, then there will be a trade deficit. This is an accounting identity.
Household debt as a percentage of GDP has been declining in the US for the past decade. This leads one to believe that the trade deficit currently represents high foreign investment in the US.
For years we've been exporting our inflation to other countries for actual physical goods and they keep buying it under the auspices of "reserve currency".
How many trillions of dollars of US debt does China own these days which they happily exchanged to fuel our consumerism?
This is fundamental economics, and why tariffs exist.
I think you're mincing words and avoiding the main argument. Wether or not the US government is "pushing" or "allowing" doesn't alter the affect on the US manufacturing sector and jobs overall. I suspect from a corporations' point of view, they are "pushing" it, from labor's point of view, they are "allowing" it. Both political parties embrace it and as it is today, it benefits corporations immensely at the expense of the US manufacturing sector.
This resulted in lower prices but was a net negative for the American job market.
America was totally free to engage in free trade by exporting their local products abroad, and by accepting foreign products to be sold in their own market without gutting their production capacity.
Settings aside the fact that the US currently enjoys very low unemployment, with a steady rate of job creation that is now the longest jobs expansion in recorded US history, why do you believe other countries are willing to manufacture things and give them away to Americans for free?
Dollars are only valuable as a medium of exchange for American goods and services. Chinese companies will export goods and services to America because there is a demand for US dollars to purchase American goods and services, which are generated by labor and sold for a profit.
The idea that wealth and jobs could flow out of the country as a result of trade - whether free trade, or otherwise - is literally impossible.
The promise that outsourcing didn't matter because goods would be cheaper was a lie, Corporations are instead enjoying record profits on the difference in labor costs.
You can keep spouting the same talking points that economists and politicians have for years but there's a reason people like Trump and Bernie Sanders were able to have so much success, people are hurting. The phrase "Don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining" comes to mind.
The only reason people would vote for anti-establishment politicians is because the current establishment isn't doing it's job. If things were great someone like Trump would have never stood a chance.
Those disproportionately benefiting, are those invested in the stock market, and work as top tier management of those companies. As defacto owners and operators, their company gets cheaper labor without honoring the labor rights of the home country, and have become wealthier because of this. Ironically, perhaps, the home country benefits from this as well via tax collection.
The idea that that reverting to prior trade paradigms will be more fair is just stupid. Regression will be worse because it will deprive so many more people of what wealth they do have. It would destabilizing economically, and politically. Bilateral trade is as dead long term as petroleum. A silly president, who transparently favors bilateral trade either because he lacks the mental acuity to understand multilateral trade, or he's malevolent and wants to take advantage of others without being held accountable (his long standing business m.o. is split between the two), should have no say. And in practice the senate, American business, foreign leaders and businesses, nod and smile just so he doesn't poop his diaper again. Not because bilateral trade has a realistic chance.
Instead of taking an unserious person's advice, we need to double down on mutilateral trade combined with strong competition, anti-fraud, and ethics. And a lot of rational constructive arguing. The more who benefit, the wealthier and safer we all are. I win you lose is Trump's idea of winning strategy, and everyone knows it. His followers love the bully mentality, they think it works, and his detractors see it for what it is: shitty behavior you expect from shitty people best avoided as much as possible.
[1] A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery Ben Skinner
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/05/26/trump-right...
Oh, bs. There's plenty plenty access to cheap labor (intra EU migration, external immigration, asylees with work permits). The minimum wage is low enough to not matter much in most cases.
Yep, I'm a cynic.
Then, there's this:
"After declining in inflation-adjusted terms from 1998 to 2007, minimum wages rose almost 11% in real terms between 2007 and 2016, Abraham and Kearney estimated. Firms may have outsourced jobs or spent more on automation to offset the higher costs of low-skilled labor."
I was unaware there were many minimum wage jobs that could be outsourced or replaced. Most are in the service industries, right?
The Medicaid expansion population is up to 138% of Federal Poverty Level, so it's not “available only if you don't work”, and the vast majority of states participating in the expansion impose cost sharing requirements (which work like deductibles, though at least the ones I know well are monthly rather than annual), so it's mostly not “with no copay or deductible”.
The ACA subsidy minimum income in Medicaid expansion states is the exact minimum amount that fails to qualify for Medicaid expansion in the first place, so such an exclusion is irrelevant to the expansion population (the ACA minimum is lower—100% of FPL—in states that don't expand Medicaid, but that's obviously immaterial to the effect of Medicaid expansion.)
Medicaid cost sharing is, in case you are unclear, also a completely different thing than the recipient paying a subsidized ACA premium, it's being on Medicaid and paying the first $N/month for Medicaid services, where N is income dependent, out of pocket.
On the other hand, it seems like the lower class has barely budged, and has remained in place and their quality of life has suffered. They have been losing manufacturing jobs to China and other countries (20M at the height in 1970, 12M currently http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/07/news/economy/us-manufacturin...). However, now with an administration dedicated to bringing jobs back from overseas (with focus on manufacturing), and enacting tariffs on countries that competes by flooding the market and destroying local competition, the jobs for lower class should be growing starting this year. The current solar/washing machine tariff, and upcoming steel and aluminum tariffs against China should help.
What if you have a family?
You can have natural experiments, but I don't see any. Did they try kidnapping Congress and forcing them to do a total embargo on China? Seems a no.
"Asteroid from deep space kills millions. Asteroid causes death of millions."
No experiment is possible. Causation is clear.
With exceptions, physical statements have predictive power. With exceptions, economic statements don't. So that's why I say that causality in economics is not generally understood.