posted April 26, 2011 02:24 PM            

But, it's not true. Nope, like most bullshiiit leftists take as absolute gospel truth, it's bullshiiit.

Just thought some here might like to see how all levels of the American economic strata have faired since 1979...or just before Ronald Reagan became President and kicked off one of the longest economic booms in America's history by cutting taxes.

The chart contained within this article tells the true story. That chart shows the bottom 20% started from a baseline of, (Private Market Income) -33% in 1979 and progressed to (Adjusted Total Real Income) of +26.4% in 2007. That's a net gain of 59.4%...and better than the so called RICH did.

Economic study: Despite Obama’s claim, the poor are not getting poorer
By Caroline May
Published: 12:16 AM 04/26/2011 | Updated: 12:08 PM 04/26/2011

In his mid-April speech on the budget deficit, President Obama echoed conventional wisdom when he cited the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer as a reason to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to reduce the national debt.

Research, published at The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, from Cornell economist Richard Burkhauser, Joint Committee on Taxation economist Jeff Larrimore, and Indiana University economist Kosali Simon, however, suggests that the president’s piece of conventional wisdom isn’t entirely accurate. According to the findings, while the rich have indeed been getting richer, for the last 30 years so too have the poor and middle class.

Burkhauser told The Daily Caller that Obama’s suggestion that the poor are getting poorer understates the amount of income to which Americans actually have access. The president does not take into account, Burkhauser explained, tax unit shifts, government transfers, and other sources of income such as health care benefits.

“The bottom line is [conventional wisdom] asks what’s been happening to private personal income over time and they are right if you look at that for tax units, things do not look very good for the middle class,” he said. “But if you take other things into account, the reason the country has not gotten in a civil war is because things are not that bad. In fact everybody has done better.”

Burkhauser’s research shows what has actually been happening to the lives of Americans over the last thirty years — not just counting the amount of money individuals made in the market, but the actual income that people get in their hands to spend.

“This isn’t a zero sum game, where one group wins at the expense of others,” Burkhauser said. “The growth in productivity of Americans in the top twenty percent of tax units increased the size of the economic pie sufficiently to register major gains across the entire distribution of after-tax income.”
http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/26/economic-study-despite-obamas-claim-th e-poor-are-not-getting-poorer/

posted April 26, 2011 03:46 PM            

"Everyone knows" is not an argument.

The chart clearly shows the lower 20% of income earners benefitted most from lower taxes and increased government benefits...supplied from the earnings of the "so called rich"....than did the rich themselves.

posted April 26, 2011 06:11 PM            

Those statistics cover the period 1979 to 2007.

Now acoustic, repeat after me: It's 2011 and demoscats were in control of Congress from January 2007 until January 2011 AND, O'Bomber has been in the White House screwing up the economy...and everything else...since January 2009.

posted April 26, 2011 06:40 PM            

You're referring to the single chart in your article, right? Yes, it does cover the time before Obama was in office, which like I said, was already on record for being worse than the previous generation. The MSNBC article was written in 2007 itself.

Neither your article, nor the MSNBC article blames Obama for a bad economy, nor does either article state anything about the present middle class which has been ravaged by the economic crisis.

Do you want to say something that makes a little sense, or backs up your position in some way?

Now, I'd also like to point out that the sole chart in your article isn't quite as specific as I'd prefer. A 26.4% gain on a poor person's real income is vastly different from a 52.6% gain for the rich. 52% of a large amount is a large amount while 26.4% of a small amount is a pretty small amount. There's no mention of how it's adjusted, and therefore looks pretty damning of the conclusion put forward. Rich people's income is growing by 52.6% of their income while poor people's income is only growing by a paltry 26.4%. That's a huge disparity.

$1,000,000 x 52.6% = $526,000

$25,000 x 26.4% = $6,600

The rich person in this scenario has his real income grow to $1,526,000, while the poor person sees their income grow to $31,600. The poor person's income in comparison has grown only 1.25% as much as the rich person's. Something wrong with claiming this as justification for saying the middle class is making gains alongside the rich. This is over a period of 18 years, too. The poor person is only making $31 grand now? And are they really any better off in spending power? Nope.

posted April 26, 2011 11:16 PM            

It's obvious the poor have been getting richer in real income terms...or, they were up until the demoscats gained control of Congress in 2007.

posted April 27, 2011 07:26 AM            

The "truth" doesn't need your personal agreement to certify it as the "truth" acoustic.

What is true is that the so called "poor" made percentage gains in real adjusted income between 1979 and 2007 which outstripped those of the top 20% of earners in the US.

" Nor do the facts make the facts Marxist or Socialist or Progressive."...acoustic

Never said the facts are Marxist, Socialist or Progressive acoustic.

posted April 27, 2011 10:40 AM            

quote:

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What is true is that the so called "poor" made percentage gains in real adjusted income between 1979 and 2007 which outstripped those of the top 20% of earners in the US.

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Is this some strange semantic ploy? Whatever do you mean by saying that the poor made percentage gains that "outstripped" those of the top 20% of earners. If you mean what I think you mean, your premise isn't even supported by your own article.

quote:

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However the lying airhead twits who have been telling the lie that the "poor" are getting "poorer" are the Marxists, Socialists and Progressive comrades playing the class warfare card.

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posted April 27, 2011 10:51 AM            

Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled.


In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Since it shows income shares, inflation measures don't matter. It doesn't try to measure consumption, it just measures who the money is going to. It includes pensions and government transfers. It accounts for reporting changes due to the 1986 tax reform bill. And it uses tax data to get a cleaner look at the top of the income distribution.

(Drawbacks: It doesn't include healthcare benefits, which would change the shape of the curves slightly. And it uses households as its unit of account. That's not the way I like to look at things, but it's pretty standard in the field.)

posted April 27, 2011 12:37 PM            

That the poor made greater progress, in terms of access to money than the so called rich.

You're just hung up on wages acoustic. But, it's not just wages we're talking about.

Oh, and you're ticked that the lie of the poor getting poorer has been exposed as the class warfare bullshiiit it is.

"Burkhauser’s research shows what has actually been happening to the lives of Americans over the last thirty years — not just counting the amount of money individuals made in the market, but the actual income that people get in their hands to spend."

posted April 27, 2011 01:22 PM            

The poor didn't make greater progress than the rich. You haven't posted anything remotely supporting that hypothesis. Your initial article only suggested that the middle class has made moderate gains instead of losses, and I correctly pointed out that those gains were tiny in comparison with the rich, and I question whether those gains kept up with inflation and the printing of more money.

quote:

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You're just hung up on wages acoustic. But, it's not just wages we're talking about.

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posted April 27, 2011 03:01 PM            

Clearly, you have a comprehension problem.

From where the poor started in 1979, they have had a bigger percentage gain in all forms of "income" than the top 20%. That is, they did up until the demoscats took control of Congress in 2007 and O'Bomber captured the White House in 2009.

posted April 27, 2011 04:07 PM            

From where the poor started in 1979, they have had a bigger percentage gain in all forms of "income" than the top 20%.

Nothing in your article states as much.

posted April 27, 2011 05:26 PM            

There are some who should try using what's between their ears as something other than filler between their ears.

The chart clearly shows the lowest 20% went from a baseline of -33% in 1979 to +26.4% in 2007. That's the largest percentage increase of any group.

During the same time frame, the top 20% went from +32.7% to only +52.6%.

posted April 27, 2011 05:52 PM            

That's not what the chart says at all. Here we go again.

The man is putting conventional economists versus his own work. See how he puts quotes around "Conventional Wisdom"? That's what he is saying is the popular (conventional) view of these income classes. Other economists have found the poorest at a net decrease of 33% over the years of 1979 - 2007. His adjusted data claims that they've actually had a 26.4% gain in the same time period. He's definitely not saying they've gone from -33% to 26.4%.

As I showed previously, the 26.4% gain isn't much since it's 26.4% of an already low number. Conversely, 52.6% of an already huge number is quite an immense boost.

posted April 27, 2011 06:17 PM            

That conventional wisdom you mentioned means..."Private Market Income"....as it clearly states. Can you see it NOW acoustic?

So, while the lowest 20% was at -33% in Private Market Income in baseline 1979...Wages and Salary, their total income from all sources...including government social benefit sources....rocketed ahead to +26.4% by 2007.

posted April 27, 2011 06:32 PM            

The poor didn't rocket from -33% to 26.4%. -33% and 26.4% are measurements of the same time period. It's just a different method of measurement. The first is the typical measurement as seen in articles such as those that I've posted. The second is the new measurement based on what he believes to be relevant factors.