The Agenda: A Closer Look at Middle Class Decline - NYTimes.com

The Agenda: A Closer Look at Middle Class Decline - NYTimes.com:

Interesting NYTimes Blog article:

"Since median inflation-adjusted family income peaked in 2000 at $64,232, it has fallen roughly 6 percent. You won’t find another 12-year period with an income decline since the aftermath of the Depression.

Why?  Hard to say, their attempt:

"In the simplest terms, the relatively meager gains the American economy has produced in recent years have largely flowed to a small segment of the most affluent households, leaving middle-class and poor households with slow-growing living standards."

Which does more to explain what happened and not why.  My short attempt at the "Why" in simple bullet points:

• Slow economy means less to divvy up.
• The world is flatter.  Technology, opening markets, and improving world-wide business conditions have increased competition and driven down the "excess profits" that the US grew accustomed to in the past.  (Note excess profits in an economic sense).
• The same factors that have reduced the excess profitability of firms fall especially hard on the middle and lower classes.  For instance, as technology has reduced the need for middle managers, it has reduced the wealth of the middle class.

  

Related articles

• The Decline of the Middle Class in the U.S.
• New York Times series on decline of middle class to run over next few months