I wonder if our standard
concept of the “middle class” still has any meaning?
You know, the idea of the great
middle, the backbone of society and the economy, the people who live in decent
suburban homes, the folks who do the work of America, the family types who work
hard to give their kids a better life
than they had….
Seems like every economic
analysis I see these days suggests that everybody who isn’t in the top 10% or
the top 1% or the top 1% of the top 10%, in terms of wealth and income, is just
struggling to keep up while incomes and wealth continue to fall.
Yahoo.com reports that some
standard benchmarks of financial well-being aren’t really useful anymore
because the very, very wealthy are skewing the averages and hiding the fact
that most folks are slipping lower on the financial benchmarks.
Yeah, the “average” American
earns $44,000 and saves about 4% of income, and the “average” household has a
net worth of $710,000.
But the averages are severely
skewed by the very wealthy.
For instance, the top 1% of earners save 38% of
their income. Try it: don’t spend 38% of your next paycheck, and that’s 38% of
gross, not take-home, so you’re probably going to have to put aside half of
your take-home pay. Try it.
Median household income—the mid-point
of all households, which isn’t skewed by high earners—now stands at about
$53,000, and that’s 7% LOWER than it was 14 years ago.
This is part of the explanation
for our continuing, go-slow economic recovery, namely, that way too many folks
in America aren’t recovering.
No comments:
Post a Comment