Comments on: To Hell In A Handbasket?

By: Steve T.

Steve T. — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:55:52 +0000

Hey Matt-
Just talk to him the same way he talks to you. It really pisses him off, trust me.

By: David

David — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:43:35 +0000

It seems to me that “cherry picking” is a pretty useful tool which you’re equally prone to use inasmuch as you tend to focus only on those things that support your cause. There is no denying, however, that your point was not about the releative wealth and income of the lower and middle classes over time but about the “gulf” in income between the wealthy and everyone else. So I suggest you’re as guilty as me in yur seletivity. Pot, kettle, black!

By: Matt Singer

Matt Singer — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 20:26:49 +0000

Enjoy your cherry picking. I don’t even know why I bother coming over here any more.

By: Dave Budge

Dave Budge — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 04:32:58 +0000

You’re comparing apples to oranges. If your point is that we are less egalitarian that we either were are should be, then we should be discussing Rawls, but we’re not. We’re discussing the relative wealth of the median ideal over time – which, by most measures, is better off in absolute terms.

My opening sentence anticipated your thoughts it seems.

By: Matt Singer

Matt Singer — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:09:05 +0000

Of course, another problem with all of this is the metric we’re looking at excludes net worth. Debt has a massive impact here. CampusProgress.org notes,

More and more students are delaying major life decisions as a result of increased student debt. Thirty-eight percent of college graduates delay buying their first house because of debt, 14% delay marriage, 14% delay having kids. Compared to 1991, those figures have risen by margins of 52%, 75 % and 100%, respectively.

Now, this is just college grads, so it excludes a lot of other folks and a shift from 7% to 14% delaying having children probably isn’t quite enough to explain everything going on here.

Part of what is happening is simply more widespread use of birth control and condoms — not too horribly surprising. Part of what is going on is probably a rise in two-income families — with attendant increases in costs.

My point was simply that the real causes of the changes in these numbers is more complicated than a single explanation.

Finally, I think it’s worth noting that if I was to have a discussion with a number of economists discussing the key metric for determining changes in either inequality or class mobility, median family income adjusted for family size is probably not going to be the central item.

The rather startling figures comparing changes in productivity to changes in median worker income and the widening gulf between median executive compensation and median worker compensation do plenty to highlight that for better or worse there is a growing gulf in this country.

No amount of cherry picking statistics will make that gulf disappear.

By: David

David — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:36:15 +0000

Maybe so, but the correlation between family size and income has been negative for several generations. One might conclude, then, that as wealth and income have increased people are making a rational economic choice to have less children and have them later.

I think you have a hard time making the argument that people would have more children earlier if incomes had increased faster. If one assumes that the “market” was in equalibrium in 1964 then the average size household would be bigger today than it is.

Also, it seems to me that the issue of home ownership and home quaity are also significant. Hence, I stand by the analysis are good (as good as economic analysis can be.)

By: Matt Singer

Matt Singer — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:55:54 +0000

That’s one way of reading that data. Another reading is that people are delaying families and keeping them smaller in part because of financial reasons.