[f1_champ]

Jan 26, 2006 3:56 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (ALBANY) The disparity between rich and poor is growing in America with New York state leading the way, a new study released Thursday found.

The report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute found the incomes of the poorest 20 percent of families nationally grew by an average of $2,660. Meanwhile, the incomes of the richest fifth of families grew by $45,100, the study by the Washington-based groups said.

The figures are based on comparing the average growth from 1980-82 to 2001-03, after adjusting for inflation.

Trudi Renwick, an economist with the union-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, said wages at the bottom and middle of the scale have grown only minimally over the last two decades while the wages of the best compensated employees have grown significantly. She said globalization, the decline of manufacturing jobs, the expansion of low-wage service jobs, immigration, and the weakening of unions have hurt those on the lower end of the economic scale.

``When income growth is concentrated at the top of the income scale, the people at the bottom have a much harder time lifting themselves out of poverty and giving their children a decent start in life,'' said Jared Bernstein, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of the report.

The poorest fifth of families, the report said, had an average income of $16,780 from 2000-03, while the top fifth of families had an average income of $122,150 _ more than seven times as much.

In New York, the top 20 percent of wage earners had average incomes 8.1 times larger than the poorest 20 percent in the early 2000s. That's up from 5.6 times as much from the early 1980s. New York's growth in income inequality was the second largest in the nation.

The average income of the richest 20 percent of New Yorkers increased by $51,205 to $130,431 a year, while the average income of the poorest fifth of families increased by just $1,901 to $16,076 a year.

``The better off you were to start with, the more your standard of living has improved,'' said Ronald Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University. ``There has been no growth in the purchasing power for those at the bottom.''

The income growth of the richest New Yorkers also far outpaced the growth of those in the middle fifth of the scale with the top earners making 2.7 times as much as the middle 20 percent of families, up from a ratio of 2.1 to 1 in the early 1980s.

New York is not alone.

In 38 states, the incomes of high-income families grew faster than the incomes of the lowest-income families. Texas, with a ratio of 8.08 to 1, had the second greatest income disparity between the top and bottom fifths. Tennessee, with a ratio of 7.72 to 1, was third. Wyoming had the smallest disparity: 5.16 to 1.

``At the bottom of the scale, adjusted for inflation, wages are the same now as they were in 1990,'' Renwick said of the New York figures. ``At the top, wages, bonuses and capital gains have all been skyrocketing.''

``We see that without government intervention, it is going to become more unequal,'' she said. ``The government needs to continue its commitment to correcting the natural outcomes of the marketplace'' by raising the minimum wage with inflation and by tax policies like the earned income tax credit.

Renwick also suggested the state government, when giving tax breaks to companies, insist those companies provide jobs that pay higher wages.

``Our economic development strategies have not been focused on high-road growth,'' she said.

Matthew Maguire, a spokesman for the Business Council of New York state, said the amounts earned by the state's wealthiest residents is ``something that everybody who cares about New York should be pleased about.''

``New York's wealthy pay huge sums in taxes and those wealthy people and their taxes make it possible for New York to provide the nation's most generous social service programs to less fortunate New Yorkers,'' he said. ``It also reflects the fact the state is a magnet for immigrants who come from the four corners of the globe to a state they see as symbol of economic activity.''

[GoneForNow]

Mulder.....If my memory is correct it's your turn to debunk the liberal bullshirt about the "gap". Lets see, I think this is about the 15th time this particular crappola has been posted in CivDeb.

[bassetman]

I wondered how long it would take the new rich to dhow up to deny it!

[sglv]

Originally Posted by gbrumb

Mulder.....If my memory is correct it's your turn to debunk the liberal bullshirt about the "gap". Lets see, I think this is about the 15th time this particular crappola has been posted in CivDeb.

As much as I realize that yes, CEO's are making 24 times the amount the average employee under them is working vs. 8 times that amount 20 years ago, and I am technically poor, the gap is a result of immediate gratification vs. saving. Let's face it, the average person in the U.S. has NO savings. None. No 401k's, no IRA's, no savings. They rely heavily on credit cards and never get out of debt. Period. For the last 8 years, I have consistently saved 10% of my earnings into a 401k, and yes, I somewhat suffer as a result. I've had medical bills up the ying-yang, I've squandered "spare" money that has come my way - I've failed miserably in investments in the stock market and lost far more money than the average person as a result, but I know that I have a retirement building up.

As a society, we do not save. Savings are now at a minus in this country. Why is that? It's because we value having that 52-60" HDTV now, instead of investing that money in our future. We want the luxury car, the luxury furniture, the luxury home, all on credit, none of it paid for, before we have a decent savings to fall back on in case of hard times. The poor are wearing $100/tennis shoes. That will buy my daughter 5 pairs of jeans, and a few shirts if I shop frugally. Does she resent it - you betcha. Her real father, unemployed, living off some woman, is driving around in a Cadillac Escalade while we are living in a crappy apartment and driving a 15 year old car. But ~ and I give my 13 yo great kudos here ~ she can handle a dollar better than any of us. She knows how to save for what she wants, and she doesn't have a problem sacrificing that which is worthless for the main goal that she's seeking. She has lived with us most of her life, with the exception of a few months with her father. She's gone without cable, electricity at times, her favorite foods and she is a survivor. I can't say the same for my son, even though I love him dearly. I feel fortunate she will survive no matter what; he, on the other hand, I fear will not. His father is the end all of being, and he saves for nothing; has to have the best of the best right now, even if he doesn't have the money; he has passed down some "family values" that I strongly oppose but can do nothing about. My son is not abnormal in his expectations, my daughter, however, is.

It's a sad world when saving for the future takes a back seat to immediate gratification and that is what our society is becoming, or may already have become.

[sglv]

Originally Posted by f1_champ

Jan 26, 2006 3:56 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (ALBANY) The disparity between rich and poor is growing in America with New York state leading the way, a new study released Thursday found.

The report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute found the incomes of the poorest 20 percent of families nationally grew by an average of $2,660. Meanwhile, the incomes of the richest fifth of families grew by $45,100, the study by the Washington-based groups said.

The figures are based on comparing the average growth from 1980-82 to 2001-03, after adjusting for inflation.

Trudi Renwick, an economist with the union-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, said wages at the bottom and middle of the scale have grown only minimally over the last two decades while the wages of the best compensated employees have grown significantly. She said globalization, the decline of manufacturing jobs, the expansion of low-wage service jobs, immigration, and the weakening of unions have hurt those on the lower end of the economic scale.

``When income growth is concentrated at the top of the income scale, the people at the bottom have a much harder time lifting themselves out of poverty and giving their children a decent start in life,'' said Jared Bernstein, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of the report.

The poorest fifth of families, the report said, had an average income of $16,780 from 2000-03, while the top fifth of families had an average income of $122,150 _ more than seven times as much.

In New York, the top 20 percent of wage earners had average incomes 8.1 times larger than the poorest 20 percent in the early 2000s. That's up from 5.6 times as much from the early 1980s. New York's growth in income inequality was the second largest in the nation.

The average income of the richest 20 percent of New Yorkers increased by $51,205 to $130,431 a year, while the average income of the poorest fifth of families increased by just $1,901 to $16,076 a year.

``The better off you were to start with, the more your standard of living has improved,'' said Ronald Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University. ``There has been no growth in the purchasing power for those at the bottom.''

The income growth of the richest New Yorkers also far outpaced the growth of those in the middle fifth of the scale with the top earners making 2.7 times as much as the middle 20 percent of families, up from a ratio of 2.1 to 1 in the early 1980s.

New York is not alone.

In 38 states, the incomes of high-income families grew faster than the incomes of the lowest-income families. Texas, with a ratio of 8.08 to 1, had the second greatest income disparity between the top and bottom fifths. Tennessee, with a ratio of 7.72 to 1, was third. Wyoming had the smallest disparity: 5.16 to 1.

``At the bottom of the scale, adjusted for inflation, wages are the same now as they were in 1990,'' Renwick said of the New York figures. ``At the top, wages, bonuses and capital gains have all been skyrocketing.''

``We see that without government intervention, it is going to become more unequal,'' she said. ``The government needs to continue its commitment to correcting the natural outcomes of the marketplace'' by raising the minimum wage with inflation and by tax policies like the earned income tax credit.

Renwick also suggested the state government, when giving tax breaks to companies, insist those companies provide jobs that pay higher wages.

``Our economic development strategies have not been focused on high-road growth,'' she said.

Matthew Maguire, a spokesman for the Business Council of New York state, said the amounts earned by the state's wealthiest residents is ``something that everybody who cares about New York should be pleased about.''

``New York's wealthy pay huge sums in taxes and those wealthy people and their taxes make it possible for New York to provide the nation's most generous social service programs to less fortunate New Yorkers,'' he said. ``It also reflects the fact the state is a magnet for immigrants who come from the four corners of the globe to a state they see as symbol of economic activity.''

So the goal of the average American should not be to accept these jobs, it should be to educate yourself so you're the one on top.

[lighthouse]

Anyone who spends vast amounts of money on anything is fundamentally stupid. (But then the new religion - celebratocracy - quite regularly appear in probably several years worth of my personal income so who's setting the precedent here?) Spend loads on something that is easy to aquire (new) from the shop rather than doing some research and looking around before making the decision. I've never really had a large amount of any money so don't do what all the idiots do and spend a fortune on something.

How much of this increased income gets rolled up and shoved up the nose these days I wonder?

[SIR****TMG]

True................

[thingamajig]

Originally Posted by bassetman

I wondered how long it would take the new rich to dhow up to deny it!

Grumb was quick on the draw to beat down a fifteen-year-old poster. Be careful grumb less your true character be revealed in your posts. What insecurity gives you cause to bully a child?

One cannot deny the numbers and they come from a reliable source (as much as the IRS can be considered reliable). They concern me also. Not for myself as much as the future of this country. The question to which I have no answer is what we should do about it. I think that the obvious choice of raising the minimum wage and taxing the wealthy is artificial and will cause more problems. These just address the symptoms without getting a handle on the underlying cause.

sgvl: The lack of saving and use of credit is certainly part of the culture but again, I believe it to be a symptom of poverty and not a source of poverty. While some have fallen into the welfar trap, the plight of the working poor is real and they cannot save money while their child goes without basic necessities. Money miss-management will happen, does happen, and there is not much we can do about it. It is naive to propose that humans should stop making mistakes.

Let's not deny numbers that are a simple matter of fact. I'd like to see some legitimate proposals on how to solve the problem. I believe anyone who doesn't see it as a problem has their head in the sand.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by thingamajig

Grumb was quick on the draw to beat down a fifteen-year-old poster. Be careful grumb less your true character be revealed in your posts. What insecurity gives you cause to bully a child?

If the kid is going to post nonsense, he needs to be able to defend it.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by gbrumb

Mulder.....If my memory is correct it's your turn to debunk the liberal bullshirt about the "gap". Lets see, I think this is about the 15th time this particular crappola has been posted in CivDeb.

Yeah--let them do the research. The ignorant remain ignorant--always has been that way and always will.

This is the same poster who claimed that conservatives control the education system in the US, so it shows how much credibility he has!

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by thingamajig

One cannot deny the numbers and they come from a reliable source (as much as the IRS can be considered reliable). They concern me also. Not for myself as much as the future of this country. The question to which I have no answer is what we should do about it. I think that the obvious choice of raising the minimum wage and taxing the wealthy is artificial and will cause more problems. These just address the symptoms without getting a handle on the underlying cause.

What kind of professor are you?

You should know as well as anyone that absolute numbers are worthless. This is the same liberal crap people use to trick you Moore-Ons over and over and over and over again. You'd think someone would learn.

Again--a quick example (which is backed up by all kinds of data). A person earning $10,000 a year has his/her income increase by 20% to 12,000 a year. A person earning $100,000 a year would need an increase of $20,000 to $120,000 to keep the same relative purchasing power as they had before. They reamin equal, yet the Moore-On bemoans the fact that the "rich" guy's income has increase by 10 times thant the "poor" guy. Honestly--how ignorant can some of you be? This is basic math we all should have learned in 5th grade. Granted, I am a CPA, but you don't need to be a CPA to understand that!

Even if a the top tiers income grows by a larger relative purchasing power increment, that's not important. The meausure of whether an economic system is successful is the relative purchasing power at all levels--i.e., has it increased. And there is mounds of data all conclusive (you Moore-Ons do the reasearch or search for it here--I've posted it at least a half dozen times) that the purchasing power of all American, including the poor, has increased over time. The "poor" today have far more purchasing power then did the "poor" of 1960 or 1970--those are the facts.

[GoneForNow]

Originally Posted by thingamajig

Grumb was quick on the draw to beat down a fifteen-year-old poster. Be careful grumb less your true character be revealed in your posts. What insecurity gives you cause to bully a child?

Your post assumes that I knew he was a child. I've never interacted with the "child" before. If says he is a child you must assume that he is telling the truth. Further, you're assuming he is a he. Simply put you make assumptions about this poster based upon nothing but his unverifiable word.

[Mulderator]

From the NY Times--certainly no "conservative" source!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/op...eberstadt.html

The most widely quoted federal statistic on deprivation and need in modern America is the "poverty rate" - a measure tracking households with annual incomes below a "poverty threshold" established at the beginning of the Johnson administration's "war on poverty" in the 1960's and adjusted over time for inflation. According to the latest poverty rate estimates - released by the Census Bureau on Aug. 30 - the total percentage of Americans living in poverty was higher in 2004 (12.7 percent) than in 1974 (11.2 percent). According to that same report, poverty rates for American families and children were likewise higher last year than three decades earlier.

On its face, this momentous story should have shocked the nation. After all, it suggested (among other alarming things) that Washington's long and expensive campaign to eliminate domestic poverty has been a colossal failure. So why did that poverty rate report end up mostly buried deep inside daily papers?

Maybe because many news editors, like policymakers in Washington, know the dirty little secret about the poverty rate: it just isn't any good. Truth be told, the official poverty rate not only fails to calculate trends in impoverishment with any precision,it even gets the direction wrong.

The profound flaws in our officially calculated poverty rate are revealed by its very intimation that the poverty situation in America was "better" in 1974 than it is today. Those of us of a certain age remember the year 1974 - in all its recession-plagued, "stagflation"-burdened glory. But even the most basic facts bearing on poverty alleviation confute the proposition that material circumstances in America are harsher for the vulnerable today than three decades ago. Per capita income adjusted for inflation is over 60 percent higher today than in 1974. The unemployment rate is lower, and the percentage of adults with paying jobs is distinctly higher. Thirty years ago, the proportion of adults without a high school diploma was more than twice as high as today (39 percent versus 16 percent). And antipoverty spending is vastly higher today than in 1974, even after inflation adjustments.

In the face of such evidence, what do you call an indicator that stubbornly insists that the percentage of Americans below a fixed poverty threshold has increased? How about "a broken compass?"

The soundings from the poverty rate are further belied by information on actual living standards for low-income Americans. In 1972-73, for example, just 42 percent of the bottom fifth of American households owned a car; in 2003, almost three-quarters of "poverty households" had one. By 2001, only 6 percent of "poverty households" lived in "crowded" homes (more than one person per room) - down from 26 percent in 1970. By 2003, the fraction of poverty households with central air-conditioning (45 percent) was much higher than the 1980 level for the non-poor (29 percent).

Besides these living trends, there are what we might call the "dying trends": that is to say, America's health and mortality patterns. All strata of America - including the disadvantaged - are markedly healthier today than three decades ago. Though the officially calculated poverty rate for children was higher in 2004 than 1974 (17.8 percent versus 15.4 percent), the infant mortality rate - that most telling measure of wellbeing - fell by almost three-fifths over those same years, to 6.7 per 1,000 births from 16.7 per 1,000.

The poverty rate is out of step with all these other readings about deprivation in modern America because it was designed to measure the wrong thing. The poverty rate has always been derived from reported household income. (Exigency played a role here: at the start of the war on poverty 40 years ago, those income numbers were already available from the Census Bureau.) But a better gauge of a household's material deprivation is not what it earns, but what it spends. When we look at spending patterns, we immediately see a huge discrepancy between reported incomes and reported expenditures for low-income Americans.

In the Labor Department's latest Consumer Expenditure Survey (2003), the average reported income for the bottom fifth of households was $8,201, while reported outlays came to $18,492 - well over twice that amount. Over the past generation, that discrepancy widened significantly: back in the early 1970's, the poorest fifth's reported spending exceeded income by 40 percent.

Unfortunately, economists and statisticians have yet to come up with a clear explanation for this gap (which is not explained by in-kind payments like food stamps or other assistance). The divergence may be in part a measurement problem: partly a matter of income under-reporting, partly a consequence of increasing income variability in our more "globalized" economy. But whatever its cause, it does drive home the unreliability of using reported household income as a benchmark for poverty.

For now, however, we should recognize that America has already achieved far more success in the war against want than our sorry poverty rate can admit - and that we need much better guidance systems for the anti-poverty battles still ahead than this one, arguably the single worst measure in our government's statistical arsenal.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, is the co-author of "Health and the Income Inequality Hypothesis."

What this shows (and there is plenty of other similar data and none to refute it) is that purchasing power has increased for the poor not decreased.

[GoneForNow]

Originally Posted by Mulder

What this shows (and there is plenty of other similar data and none to refute it) is that purchasing power has increased for the poor not decreased.

But but but, the gap is growing!!!!! Boo Hoo Booo Hooooo

BMan can I get a

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by sglv

As much as I realize that yes, CEO's are making 24 times the amount the average employee under them is working vs. 8 times that amount 20 years ago, and I am technically poor, the gap is a result of immediate gratification vs. saving.

sglv, I took you to task on this once before. There you used the example that in Germany the gap between worker and executive is less. Of course, Germany has double digit unemployment and a lousy economy!

And honestly, what difference does this make? If all the employees purchasing power has increased over that time (i.e., the are doing better), what the hell do we care whether the CEO is making 8 times as much or 100 times as much? He/she is a non-issue--they are 1 person out of 100,000--they are the anomoly--its like saying our healthcare system is a failure because we have children who die of some rare disease.

This is liberal propoganda used to tug at the emotions of people and unfortunately its far more effective with women (which is why women vote for Democrats in significantly higher numbers than do men). You reallly have to learn to stop the emotional response and look at it intellectually.

What do you want to do? Put a "cap" on CEO salary? Honestly, its a non issue--to me--if the CEO is making 100 times more than me, its irrlevant--all I care about is am I doing better in this company than I did 20 years ago?

The bottom line is these are the people who make the companies successful and provide jobs for the rest of us. You really want to model our economy after Germany or some other socialist country where the standard of living of the average citizen is far below that of the US? Have you considere that in the optimal economy, the averate incomes of CEOs needs to be much higher?