The Glade 4.0

So what? "It's not fair!" That's all your complaints amount to. That doesn't change the fact of any of it.

Your complaint about no job = no interview is spurious on its face; people don't live or work forever. Eventually a company must hire someone with no current job.

I followed Khross' links, which lead this description of the Gini Coefficient. Based up on how this number is calculated, using it solely as a basis for equality is not valid.

Income inequality in the United States has been rising since the 1970s. What is the most effective way to succinctly convey this fact?

Here is my choice:



The chart shows average inflation-adjusted incomes of the poorest 20%, middle 60%, and top 1% of households since the 1970s. The incomes include government transfers and subtract taxes. For the bulk of American households, incomes have increased moderately or minimally. For those at the top, by contrast, they have soared.

Why This Chart?

Here are what I think should be the principal considerations. Some are obvious, others perhaps not.

...3. Show incomes, rather than a summary inequality measure. Common inequality measures include the Gini coefficient, percentile ratios (e.g., P90/P50 and P50/P10), and income shares (e.g., the income share of the top 1%). They are quite useful. Nice examples from the Economic Policy Institute’s The State of Working America are here, here, and here. But they have two drawbacks. One applies to the Gini index, which is the most commonly-used inequality statistic. It doesn’t identify where in the income distribution the rise in inequality has occurred. For example, suppose the Gini rises over time. Is that because those at the top have pulled farther away from everyone else? Because those at the bottom have fallen behind? Because of a widening spread in the middle? All three? Something else?

To address this problem analysts often turn to percentile ratio or income share measures. These, however, fail to provide information about trends in actual incomes. Suppose, for example, that the 90/50 ratio increases over time. Is that because the incomes of those at the top have risen faster than the incomes of those in the middle? Because incomes at the top have risen while those in the middle have been stagnant? Because both have decreased but those at the top have done so less rapidly? Something else?

Showing trends in actual incomes — adjusted for inflation, of course — overcomes these problems. A potential drawback of doing so is that it may not be obvious from the raw income data whether or not inequality has increased, or by how much. If the magnitude of the rise in inequality is small, it may be preferable to use an inequality measure. For the United States over the past generation, however, the increase in inequality is easy to spot from data on incomes.

Assuming a dual income household, how do you get into the position that are you completely dependent on the full income from both jobs with no emergency funds?

Assuming a dual income household, how do you get into the position that are you completely dependent on the full income from both jobs with no emergency funds?

Seriously? If you assume that both people make the same income, and one of them loses their job and goes on unemployment, (50% of what they were getting before) then the household income is 75% of what it was before. Are you really saying that a household that doesn't save 25% or more of all the money they make is fiscally incompetent? I mean, what is the statistic for average disposable income in the US? Ten percent? Even if you cut all that out (which is not realistic) it's still not going to cover that gap.

I'm going to take a pretty big guess here, but I'd say that under this criteria, at least half of the families in the US that currently own homes, shouldn't.

This is getting into economics I don't understand too well, but doesn't relying on two incomes perpetuate having two incomes? As in, if every family only spent one of their two incomes and saved the rest, removing it from circulation, the economy would shrink until there was only one income per family available. Then up-and-coming families would run into the same problem.

And if that were the case, and if folks planned accordingly, the economy wouldn't be in the shape it's in.

Assuming a dual income household, how do you get into the position that are you completely dependent on the full income from both jobs with no emergency funds?

/facepalm

Savings are not removed from the economy, they are part of the economy. They are future demand.

/facepalm

Savings are not removed from the economy, they are part of the economy. They are future demand.

They only create additional future demand if people start saving less at some point in the future.