Think of it this way: There is a smaller percentage that is poor. This is progress. It is even better that the middle class is shrinking when fewer people are poor, because more are getting richer.
^^Of course in the “new” England, Sir will be depicted as a white male from Essex.
Actually, the middle, lower middle, and lower classes are shrinking, while the upper and upper middle classes are growing. In other words, families were “rising out of” the lower middle and middle classes.
That’s good, not bad.
Seriously? There is all of about a 2% drop in poor and near-poor from the 70s to today. Go look again.
And considering the way the number of wealthy has skyrocketed, I am not impressed in the least.
Not to mention that our safety net systems for the poor are much worse today than they were in the 1970s.
“What is different about the USA that holds it together is a common language and a mostly common cultural experience. There is no United States of Europe, nor do I ever expect one.”
There are countries in Europe whose populations don’t even speak the same language (Belgium and Switzerland) and most Europeans are fluent in several languages. Even in the UK - while they all speak English Scotland, Ireland and Wales have their own languages, too.
I don’t think our language and culture keep us together - it’s just too difficult to break apart and there is no escape clause in the Constitution short of war.
@PurpleTitan wrote
Wow, a bit of hyperbole there… So the default outcome of no UK subsidies to the EU is war?
The UK is going to continue to trade w the continent AND to collaborate militarily (last time I checked there was no mention of the UK exitting NATO) because it’s in the interest of both sides of the Channel to do so.
I’m sure they’d love to secede, but we all know that the US gov’t isn’t going to permit that to happen…
So we agree that what I said was sccurate, but you are just not happy about it.
@hebegebe The WSJ piece is about the upper middle class, not the middle class. As the author of the study says:
It is the middle/lower-middle classes which have stagnated since the early 80s, not the upper middle classes. It is this stagnation which, IMO, is at the heart of Brexit and other nationalist movements in Europe and the US.
This link has several graphs which demonstrate the problem. Two I find particularly striking:
Second graph: Take the middle 60% of the population, so you’re factoring out the poor and the rich. In 1970, that middle 60% used to earn about 53% of the national income. In 2014, that same group earned only 46% of the national income. The middle class is earning less than it used to.
Fifth graph: New wealth is not being shared. We are seeing a massive redistribution of income – upward. From 1979 to 2012, the income of the top 1% grew by 181%. The income of the bottom 99% grew by less than 3%.
http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/26/middle-class/
The new economy/global economy has created winners and losers, as change always does. For the last 35-40 years, only a relatively few have been winners, and the rest have stagnated or actually fallen backwards. The problem is that our leaders and policy makers (and Europe’s) have taken great care to protect those at the very top, and have done virtually nothing to mitigate the harm caused to everyone else. And people are rightly fed up with being ignored. Plutocracy never ends well, not even for the plutocrats.
For all the discussion today about the financial and economic implications of Brexit, there’s something even more important at stake. The concept of a European union began shortly after WWII, when the wise heads of Europe decided that something had to be done to prevent the warring nations of the Continent from starting yet another world war, this time with nuclear weapons at the start of it. The Common Market and EU have succeeded at that.
There are few alive today who remember WWII and virtually none who remember the two world wars in less than a generation, both born of a fractured Europe. It’s a damn shame that we can’t learn from history.
@hebegebe:
“In return, the people of Alabama and the south enlist at high rates in the nation’s military, providing the defense that allows the northern economies to prosper.”
Not very different from Europe, then, where, despite having the 6th and 10th largest populations in the EU, Poland and Greece are the 2 EU NATO members that have the most military personnel serving (counting active and reserves) . And Greece has a small fraction of the population of Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Spain.
Yet all I hear is about Greeks wasting money from the North and Poles stealing British jobs. Why don’t they get thanks for defending Europe?
I never understand this “redistribution of income” or “redistribution of wealth” stuff. As if income and wealth is a zero sum game. Some people’s net worth goes up, so in some way that is responsible for others going down. Large gains by those who work in certain sectors, so somehow that must be depressing others wages.
Since “inequality” is so important, I’m sure the poor will be really thrilled if the stock market tanks. They don’t have anything in it, it would greatly lower the upper income people’s weslth, far less inequality. So much better!
@GMTplus7, war is not inevitable if just the UK leaves, but a break between France and Germany raises that spector down the road. Remember one thing in international affairs: Nothing stays static. To blithely assume that the status quo will hold and NATO (which arguably doesn’t even have a reason for being now) will hold if the EU breaks apart is willful blindness.
Another great article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/opinion/brexit-and-europes-angry-old-men.html
"“It’s a victory for ordinary, decent people who have taken on the establishment,” declared Nigel Farage, the head of the U.K. Independence Party. Rubbish. It was a victory for people who have neither the guts nor the imagination to take on the downsides of globalization. Yes, globalization and Europeanization have taken their tolls, both on traditional forms of democracy and on traditional job security. But instead of tackling these problems, the Farages of the world have started the next ideological war.
There was a time when I thought the pro-European ideologues were the ones who were out of touch. I remember, not too long ago, watching one of them in full flight. It was Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, giving a speech at a German university. He started by asking the students in the lecture hall to imagine how many of them would actually be sitting there if this were the year 1945. About half of you would be dead, Mr. Schulz said, as his index finger drew a line across our heads, and many others would be crippled and wounded."
“We — the young, optimistic millions across Europe — cannot lose the West to Mr. Farage and his ilk, to demagogues who have actually much more in common with the scapegoating culture of the Arab world they so despise than with the enlightened, rational tradition of Europe.”
"Yet it is dangerously foolish to believe that, with or without Ms. Merkel’s policies, Europe can somehow shut its doors and ignore the pressing weight of the developing world on its borders — or that European countries are better positioned to respond individually, rather than as a unified whole.
The British vote feels momentous, but we will most likely look back at it as merely the first in a series of fights for the soul of Europe. The outpouring of anger and anti-establishment aggression in Europe has only begun. The next countries where the political bulldozers see their chances to act out their long-kept lust for demolition are the Netherlands and France.
We can no longer think of reconciliation between the opposing views of destruction and progress. The angry old men will not be mollified, their xenophobia cannot be controlled or channeled into constructive cooperation. We, the young, the future of Europe, must push back. Too much time has been lost already."
busdriver, No, it’s not a zero sum game; plenty of wealth is being created. It’s just that virtually all of it is going to the top now. And when the top feel threatened, as they did in 2008 and as they do today, they do things like stop hiring, stop giving raises, even cutting staff, wages and benefits. So a widening income gap suppresses job creation and income growth for workers. That’s how someone who owns no financial instruments is hurt by market losses. And unlike the wealthy, they have no cushion.
@LasMa I would also include include stock buybacks and dividend, These profits don’t get used for increasing hiring, increased wages, or reinvestment back into business. This would be great if you are an insider and were given thousands of shares quarterly based on stock performance. Any one else started buying pound at this level?
Yep, in uncertain times, the wealthy sit on their cash in whatever form. The “makers” don’t make much if they think no one is going to buy it, and that means downward pressure on jobs and wages (which ironically means less money in the pockets of people who will spend it on things the “makers” make.) Remember the $3 trillion that “sat on the sidelines” during the recession?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think any of those tweets are the least bit funny.
As much as I appreciate why the Brits voted to leave, the divorce is still terribly sad.
I don’t agree that the EU was formed to ensure peace. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet and US troops on the ground were very real reminders that if those two countries “had to pull over and come back there one more time” Germany would consist of a whiff of smoke and a fading box of snapshots.
To compete economically with Japan and the US was the goal, but it got bloaty, IMO.
**Let’s look at who’s pulling the cart for defense. **
NATO has a goal for member countries to spend 2% of GDP on defense.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-calls-for-rise-in-defence-spending-by-alliance-members-1434978193
Only 5 of the 27 NATO alliance countries meet that goal:
i *
– US
– Greece, +5,145 million EUR
– UK, -7,088 million EUR
– Estonia, +467 million EUR
– Poland, +13,482 million EUR
The UK really stands apart from all European countries as paying its fair share for defense and paying more than its fair share of the EU budget.
And these are the pansy Western European countries who fall well below the NATO goal and are riding in the cart i*:
– Portugal, +3,195 million EUR
– Denmark, -996 million EUR
– Germany, -17,659 million EUR
– Netherlands, -6,358 million EUR
– Italy, -5,193 million EUR
– Belgium, +1,812 million EUR
– Spain, +428 million EUR
– Luxembourg, +1,468 million EUR
The UK really gets the short end of the stick all around. Meanwhile, the Belgians raked in a 1.8 billion euro surplus in 2014 from the EU budget, while Brussels dictated the suction power of vacuum cleaners.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/anger-as-eu-bans-most-powerful-vacuum-cleaners
Interesting article overall.
But like most stories that talk about increasing inequality, this one also ignores the consider the cost of benefits. For example, health care costs are largely paid for the by the employer and they have grown much faster than inflation. When total benefits are included, the gains are considerably higher than 3%, although certainly less than 181%.
Except the WSJ article states that a full 1/6th of the population has prospered by rising out of the middle class towards the upper class, and there are fewer poor people. So on the whole, most people are doing better than 35 years ago, but some are doing much better. And yet people are in a funk, as fewer people identify themselves as doing better, contrary to reality.
The chart that really concerned me though is the median wealth chart, showing the low median wealth of Americans relative to other countries. I am not disputing its accuracy, but given that the US has one of the highest median incomes and a relatively low cost of living, why are people not translating that income to wealth? That’s a puzzle to me.