So the news has been full of articles about how the "Middle Class Share of Income Shrinks." (Bulletin, 8/23/12.) But what does one right wing site declare? Oh, that the middle class isn't middle class because they've moved UP! to upper middle class!
Really? They expect people to believe that?
**********
The article on "Bend Restaurants Are Branching Out" (Bulletin, 8/23/12) was notable for one comment, "The former home of Decoy and Bond Street Grill..."..."has gotten plenty of tenant improvement in recent years, which made the property more attractive..."
Yes, indeedy. It's what I've been saying all along, downtown Bend has this great and probably unusual feature of continually Failing Upward. And leaving beautiful corpses.
Oh, the great American urge to expand and open multiple locations. I'm feeling it myself.
And resisting with all my might.
**********
I don't feel like I have many neutral people who I can talk finances with, so it was interesting to talk to my brother Mike. All my siblings are doing well, but the gulf between their situations and mine isn't quite as huge as it used to be.
But in the end, there is always the mixed message. Save for tomorrow. Live for today.
No one has yet adequately explained to me how you can do both.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The one place that has talked about the middle class statistics has been CNBC which of course is owned by that bastion of right wing views NBC.
According to CNBC the traditional size of the middle class was 61% of the population. That is has now shrunk to 51% of the population. However, the upper income group which has traditionally been 14% of the population is now 20% of the population. So clearly the middle class is has lost 10% points in size but 60% of that loss has moved up into the expanded upper income group.
So it would appear to have some validity.
Now if one was to look at income using the historic cutoffs of chopping upper income at 14% of the population and leaving middle at 61% what would the middle income share of income yield. I suspect that it would be rather more in line with traditional norms.
So the middle class is smaller, but the majority of that loss as in 60% is now considered to be upper income. That leave 40% of the loss to have dropped lower, not 100% as the left likes to proclaim.
As another note it would also be interesting to compare the middle class demographics with the relative age distributions. Since we have an increasingly aged population the statistics can be greatly skewed. For example last year I was in the upper income category. Since I retired this year I will probably be in one of the bottom 2 quintiles as far as taxable income. So according to statistics I will have dropped out of the middle class. Most retirees go through similar changes, even those that are rather well off.
"But in the end, there is always the mixed message. Save for tomorrow. Live for today. No one has yet adequately explained to me how you can do both."
You can't, completely. But you can save a prudent amount for tomorrow while spending a reasonable amount to enjoy life today. The definitions of "prudent" and "reasonable" are up to you.
Post a Comment