<p>okay im pretty sure you can find an opinion article to support any opinion you’re trying to prove. just like how religious cults use bible passages to support their radical thinking.</p>
<p>and considering it’s a MEDIAN line, not a MEAN, it is not affected by increases up top. thats like saying that if you have a class of 20 with a median grade of 75, one person increasing his score to 100 if he already has the highest grade will affect the median. median is independent of increasing outliers, unlike the mean. classic statistics.</p>
<p>as your most recent chart demonstrates, income has increased steadily.</p>
Note the hard statistics coming from the IRS, which is the whole chart.</p>
<p>
I did give you mean stats, though, no?</p>
<p>*In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans – those making $380,000 or more – have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust. *</p>
<p>Mean went down. Rich went up. Poor/Middle went down more than the mean, because the mean also includes the gains of the rich.</p>
<p>
Wait, now it went from being crazy cultist opinion to demonstrating your point? Because, you know, cost of living has also increased, yet nearly all of what you call the economic growth is concentrated in a boom for the rich; the rest, however, aren’t doing so well.</p>
<p>all of your charts indicate median. the article mentions average, which, to your credit, could be mean. the article itself is more opinion than not.</p>
<p>and yes im just showing that while you can use one piece of “evidence” to argue a point, it could just as easily be used to argue another.</p>
<p>Regardless, it has been an honor battling with you. You have my respect and I wish you many years of happiness and success.</p>
Whether it’s mean or median, going down is bad for the people, no? And whether it’s mean, median, or both going down, the rich are still skyrocketing.</p>
<p>
Except the body of evidence (stats from the IRS) still points to the rich getting richer and the rest of us… not.</p>
<p>Hey goldring, you claim middle class incomes have grown…well they’ve actually stagnated. The poor’s wages have been decreasing. Meanwhile, the wealthiest income earners have been gaining higher wages. This is not a good trend as it provides the lower classes less opportunity to succeed. And though there is a fine line between regulation and over-regulation. It is not sane to argue that banks should be allowed to use fraudulent schemes and risky financial tools like derivatives to make profits. Canada has much more restrictive regulations on the banks and they recovered from the recession much quicker than the U.S. is now.</p>
<p>dblazer, the charts with median show a middle class slight increase. sure it’s not the best situation, but it’s not bad.</p>
<p>i agree that banks should not be fraudulent, but the government has not made that legal. some of the business leaders have just been irresponsible.</p>
<p>and about opportunity, I believe that anyone can make it into the upper middle class with education and hard work.</p>
<p>my working class grandparents immigrated to nyc in the fifties and my mom went to an inner city school. she eventually got into bronx science hs and Penn.</p>
<p>i agree though that education could be better. it’s kind of sad to hear of stories like the atlanta cheating scandal. kind of a complex issue.</p>
<p>Obama’s financial regulation bill was filled with loopholes that left derivatives practically untouched. I second Dolorous’s point. And are you sure your charts are adjusted for inflation? Regardless, the rich are gaining income at a significantly higher rate than the middle class. The context is important.</p>
<p>Nobody’s criticizing the Republicans for taking a stand. The Republicans are being criticized for unilaterally creating a debt crisis that could potentially spell economic disaster just so that they have negotiating leverage.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Raising the debt ceiling isn’t a problem, raising the debt is. Obviously deficits need to be controlled in the long run, but failing to raise the limit now does no good.</p>
<p>
Throwing out meaningless buzzwords doesn’t help your case.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Reagan was responsible for massive deficits. He’s a large cause of the current debt problem.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, rushing a bill through is bad. But the Republicans are doing it this way because the debt limit issue gives them the leverage to extort big Democratic concessions.</p>
<p>basically the republicans have brought to attention the fact that any deal needs spending cuts and reform to prevent the growing debt/deficit issue from continuing.</p>
<p>while the deficit did grow during the reagan period, this was more due to the large defense budget bc of the cold war. eventually, once the cold war ended, the favorable economic conditions ended up eliminating the deficit in the 90s.</p>
<p>And they’re using the debt limit and the crisis failing to raise it would cause to get a budget reform deal in their favor. They are holding the welfare of the country hostage.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Cold War lasted over 40 years and 8 Presidential administrations. How is it that Reagan had so much more trouble than all the others?</p>
<p>clinton did not change much of the implemented economic policies of reagan. he supported nafta and welfare reform, two measures associated with deregulation. moreover, the house and senate gained republican majorities in the 90s. reagan’s deregulation of the 80s paved the way for the technology boom in the 90s and 2000s.</p>