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Comment by siruncledrew | Hacker News Reader

My takeaway is that the people in the middle get screwed the most (in terms of wages vs. inflation). The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich, and the middle gets thinner as those within the group are either pushed towards the poor side (higher probability) or rich side (lower probability).

I'm not an economist, so feel free to enlighten me further on my speculations.

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I believe you're correct. Also, we've been churning out CS graduates and coding bootcamp graduates like crazy, so the bottom of the labor market is the only place where supply may meet or exceed demand, while the top (highly experienced) is still a pretty thin pool (relatively speaking)

And many of those bootcamp graduates will be a) drowning in work b) be ill equipped to get the skills to join the top 10% where most will be need to be credentialed. That bootcamp certificate is a Wage Slave License.

Can you define "credentialed" here?

Yes, the middle income bracket is shrinking. The lower income bracket is growing. Even outside of SV wages have stagnated in the lower tiers (since 1974 in varying degrees.)

(edit) I should add this is by percentage. A recent study says the percentages have stabilized for now.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american...

The article you linked shows that more people moved to the upper bracket than the lower (5% vs 4%).

In relative terms the earnings growth was even more dramatic -- the upper class grew 27% larger whereas the lower class only grew by 14%.

There are more people moving up than down.

Absolutely. The news isn’t all bad, and I think most reporting has focused on the decline of the middle, instead of the growth of the bottom.

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