
July 2018 Median Household Income in the U.S. - alecco
https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2018/08/july-2018-median-household-income.html
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cygx
Personally, I like to check the ratio of median to mean household income as a
crude measure of socio-economic polarization.

It's not pretty:
[https://i.imgur.com/58MIBxB.png](https://i.imgur.com/58MIBxB.png)

 _edit:_

here's an alternative version for those who think letting the y-axis start at
70 is too confusing:
[https://i.imgur.com/zSNjZY2.png](https://i.imgur.com/zSNjZY2.png)

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ekianjo
So rich guys are getting richer faster. Big news! They have access to
instruments folks with median income dont.

You are missing the point that everyone s situation seems to be improving -
the median income is a better metric to measure that.

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hammock
You believe access to special financial instruments (such as..?) is the reason
rich people can get richer? Can you expand on that

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molsongolden
Not OP but some might be: illiquid alternative investments with lockup
periods, investments that require investors to be "accredited investors",
funds with large minimums, outright purchases of investment real estate.

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endymi0n
Looking at the graph, an at least equally accurate headline would be
„inflation-adjusted median US income stays flat since the last 20 years while
share of expenses for medical, housing, childcare and education costs
skyrockets in the same time“

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Shivetya
What do those four areas have in common, incredible levels of government
manipulation and funding. Seriously, the areas where the government
subsidizes, buries under regulation, or bleats about during election season,
are all areas that suffer higher than normal costs increases.

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seibelj
Yes, and a lot of left-leaning people continue to think that “just a bit more
government regulation and subsidies” and they’ll get it right - this time for
sure!

Housing - build more and higher density.

Healthcare - price transparency and make it easier to shop around. Incentivize
frugality.

Education - stop letting 18 year olds take out $200k in loans for poetry
degrees.

It’s almost like industries protected from essential market functions become
disasters! Who would have thought?

~~~
chmod775
European view here. We're pretty much all left-leaning from an US-perspective.

> Housing - build more and higher density.

Zoning is an incredibly hard science. Hardly any country on earth manages to
get this right. Solutions are often also highly specific to local parameters.
Though admittedly, the US has glaring issues with some housing areas being
super spread out and low density outside of city centers.

> Healthcare - price transparency and make it easier to shop around.
> Incentivize frugality.

The problem of making healthcare universal and affordable has been solved
plenty of times around the globe already. Obama's administration made a huge
leap in the right direction, but there's more track to cover and issues to fix
before the US's healthcare system becomes comparable to a say, European,
equivalent. They never got the chance to finish this though.

> Education - stop letting 18 year olds take out $200k in loans for poetry
> degrees.

Generally having education governed by free market forces, thus giving the
best education to the highest bidder, kind of goes against the US's slogan of
(equal) opportunity. Not to mention all the other issues with that idea.
Again, just copy any of the plenty of countries with a better system.

And don't give me any of that "But the US is a larger country and thus those
solutions wouldn't work". What happened to divide and conquer? Just have
administration sit at state level and you get to pretend the US is really 50
smaller countries - divide further as needed (some countries like Germany use
this strategy to divide administration of their education system as well).
Also there's plenty of countries with a number citizens in a comparable order
of magnitude with working systems.

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randomdata
_> kind of goes against the US's slogan of (equal) opportunity._

No more than the government not providing access to private yachts to all
citizens. Equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal buying ability.

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chmod775
Wow. This is _incredibly_ disingenuous.

You don't need a yacht to compete with others.

You do need education though.

~~~
randomdata
You may need education, but certainly not school.

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rory096
Required reading for any discussion on median _household_ income. Note in
particular compositional effects - household size and mix have changed over
time.

[https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-
region/where...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-
has-all-the-income-gone)

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rayiner
It’s fascinating to me how much of our discourse is based on “facts” that
simply aren’t true.

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rory096
I think it's overstating the case to say there's "no there there" in income
stagnation - other and more recent data point to alarming trends in total
individual compensation and in overall inequality. But it's important to take
into account the flaws in certain metrics we use.

~~~
rayiner
I’m not suggesting there is no “there there.” Just that here is this basic
shibboleth, trotted out multiple times a week by the media, that’s just not
true. Does it mean everything is fine? No. Does it suggest that we’re living
with the mixed results of various well intentioned policies, rather than the
outcome of actual cartoon villany? I think so.

~~~
rory096
Agreed. Didn't mean to suggest that's what you were saying, just to address
the general point.

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politicalcalcs
Here's the update for August 2018:

[http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2018/10/august-201...](http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2018/10/august-2018-median-
household-income.html)

~~~
alecco
Excellent job there. Thanks.

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zaroth
It’s entirely expected that unemployment this low will increase wage growth.

What’s different this time is that inflation has been so tame this far into
the process. At this point in the 2000s boom cycle we saw inflation was
ticking over 5%, whereas today it remains tame under 3%.

This means for the first time in a long time the higher wage growth is
actually making a significant difference in people’s real income.

Another factor that’s not widely reported is that the insurance marketplaces
seem to be stabilizing and rate increases for 2019 are single-digit and some
areas are even seeing decreases. Compared to the 20, 30, 40% increases in the
early years of the marketplace that makes a huge difference.

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adventured
Student borrowing has also flattened off to single digit increases, similar to
healthcare cost increases.

Either those things have nearly maxed out their cost potential, or it's the
strong dollar (the dollar imploded during the disastrous Bush years, which
sent nearly everything priced in dollars skyrocketing that wasn't nailed down
(consumer prices and wages were largely nailed down)).

Might be a combination of those things. The average student debt acquired for
a four year degree, has been nearly flat for six years, after soaring from
$20k to $30k in six or seven years (between the years '05-06 and '11-12). This
six year span is the longest period of flat growth in individual student debt
accumulation in a quarter century.

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TangoTrotFox
Two important dates that clarify your accurate observations:

2005 - As part of the 'Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection
Act' student loans from for-profit and non-governmental entities were given
immunity to dismissal in bankruptcy. [1]

2012 - College enrollment flatlined. [2]

It's basic supply and demand. The widespread deregulation of university
tuitions paired with lifelong debt even from private creditors removed all
cost barriers to education. And so the only weighting factor in the
supply:demand relationship was how many people were willing to take the
poisoned fruits of ever-larger life long loans. And so universities kept
ratcheting tuition up under spurious justification. Until the number of people
entering university flat lined.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act#Dischargeability)

[2] - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-
enroll...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-
and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/)

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dis-sys
trump is going to take full credit of that and mention it many many times.

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xienze
And he'd be right to get mileage out of it. The media would certainly hang it
around his neck if the opposite were true.

Can you imagine the media saying "now let's be fair to President Trump, the
current economic situation is due to Obama-era policies" if we were in the
middle of a recession right now?

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claydavisss
Like what? TARP, for example, came out of the tail end of the Bush
administration (literally and figuratively)

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droidist2
Uh oh, better raise those interest rates. Can't have inflation creeping up.
Now that the middle class is starting to get a bit of the gains, the business
cycle needs to be reset.

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prolikewh0a
Don't make any mistake, the middle class still isn't getting any gains.

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hak8or
How isn't it making any gains? Anyone who has retirement savings invested
properly (in stocks, not under a mattress or in a bank) is making use of these
gains.

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prolikewh0a
They don't have stocks and probably not much of a retirement. Those things are
reserved for the already wealthy.

[http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-
ric...](http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/)

