It seems reasonable for me to assume that many of the problems in the US that are economic issues would be lessened if the US had a middle class majority. Taxation wouldn’t be an issue because most people would be paying about the same taxes. Housing and Health Care wouldn’t be as critical of issues because most people would have access to reasonably priced homes and medicine, thanks to supply and demand equilibrium. The same for education.
And, there are probably many other benefits for having a majority or middle class and small minorities at either end of the wealth spectrum.
My question is this: Is it possible to have a society like this in the US? Or, is a requirement of capitalism (or Human culture, in general) obscene stratification of wealth?
Also, does anyone else want to be middle class? I personally enjoy the lifestyle and wouldn’t want any more or less, but I sometimes feel like a minority.
I once heard that the majority of Japanese citizens are members of the middle class. Is this true, or just propaganda?
As much as I hate to disturb the pleasing symmetry of a thread by zero with 0 responses, I’ll chime in here.
Absolutely! That’s just me, and I don’t think it’s wrong of somebody else to want to be rich, or poor for that matter; but most people I know are middle class, and most of them seem to be happier than the rich or poor ones. Are you saying that the US really doesn’t have a middle-class majority? Does it have at least a plurality? What’s the breakdown by percentages, do you happen to know?
Ok, I am confused. people making over $100k account for 6% of the US. How much income is middle class? What is the current distribution?
Care to give any figures on wealth distribution in the US rather than simply make a broad assertion?
In most natural systems, you are going to get a bell curve in distribution. I would be suprised if wealth were not distributed in this manner in the US.
What I meant to say is a middle class majority where 50% of the population makes 50% of the income and holds 50% of the wealth, and pays 50% of the taxes. I don’t believe that this is the US distribution, but I may be wrong.
It’s common to hear the 10% of the population pay 90% of the taxes, or the top 1% of the population holds 50% of the wealth, etc. I couldn’t find any objective numbers when I seached the web, though.
Oh really. So who owns the businesses? Financially defined classes are relative. If 50% of the country owned 50% of the wealth, we wouldn’t all be middle class. We’d all be poor.
Jayron is right. The reason there are extremes in income is because a few people own large concerns (think of names like Ford, duPont, Rockefeller, Gates.
The original definition of a middle class was small ownership – your own small business, farm, franchise, or a share of a larger company. Without seeing actual figures, my WAG is that the United States not only has the largest middle class, but the largest percentage of people in the middle class, using that criteria.
My criteria are stated above. Or, in terms of a statistical distribution, I’m talking about a standard Normal distribution with mean 50 and standard deviation of 25, or, in other words, a “true” middle class. The first word that comes to my head isn’t middle when I think of a class of people that only control a small portion of the overall wealth of a nation. Unless the median income equals the mean income, it’s not a very middle distribution.
So, restating my question then, is this wealth distribution possible, or is there just a need for disparate classes in Human societies? Why wouldn’t this distribution be the ideal?
Also, why does jayron32 think that we’d be all poor? I seem to think that most of the population would be better off.
PJ o’rourke said it well in “Eat the Rich”: “if wealth were distributed evenly in haiti, with it per capita income of $392/year, everyone would make…well, $392/year.”
IF the per capita in the us is $15k/year, then as wealth is distributed more evenly, the average person will be making closer and closer to $15k/year.
From your other posts on different threads, I think what you are getting at is taking money from those above middle class and distributing it to the rest of us. While you might approach the democratic ideal, you are going to have some other effects. Teh first that comes to mind is that it will create a disincentive to invest and create business…and to work too hard.
For example, say I am looking at an executive position which will increase my household income to $150k, and I am going to make another $100k through starting a new business. This would put me into something like the top3-4% of wage earners. Let’s also say that you decide that the income cap per household should be $100K. You can be darned certain that I am going to stay in my current cushy job and forget about taking the risk of starting that business. Why bother?
According to a previous definition, I guess I was raised middle class. My dad has his own business & it supported the family (and those of his employees when he had them).
I would still consider my self middle-class, with an eye towards upper-middle. I am a reasonably intelligent person, with a well-educated attorney-type husband who could make quite a bit of money in his chosen profession. While we are not making big bucks now, we do have a home, a child, a big dog, a car (used to have two but totalled one), and live a pretty darn good life (shopping, vacations, etc).
So, do we really NEED the $100K per year? It would be very nice, but no, I guess not. I guess what I’m saying is that I am a happy little middle-class camper, and really don’t mind it.
Zero, I admit to still having a little trouble grasping what you want the bell curve to be.
According to the best figures I could come up with (enter “statistiscal abstract” on your search engine, go to the Census bureau and be prepared to slog through a lot of Adobe Acrobat files) the per capita income in the U.S. was about $27,000 in 1997.
Now, are you suggesting that in the ideal model, 50% of the population would be within 50% of that figure ($20,250 to $33,750), or are you suggesting that in that ideal model, people with incomes in that range would control 50% of the total GDP?
I guess I was using some false assumptions in my original post. Basically I assumed that income was more unbalanced than it really is. Still, it’s interesting to note the rise in income share for the top 20% in contrast to the bottom 80% between 1966 and 1998. Overall though I think that although they could use some balancing, the numbers are still fairly distributed.
Share of aggregate income for middle 60%:
In 1966 it was 54%
In 1998 it was 48.6%
Change: -10%
Share of aggregate income for lowest 20%
In 1966 it was 5.6%
In 1998 it was 4.2%
Change: -25%
Share of aggregate income for the lowest 80%
In 1966 it was 59.6%
In 1998 it was 52.8%
Change: -11%
Share of aggregate income for top 20%
In 1966 it was 40.5%
In 1998 it was 47.3%
Change: +17%
One of the problems with the bell curve, is that it doesn’t count the different circumstances. The bottom 20% of income includes part-time workers, students, second-income households who only work a few hours a week, retirees, and others who don’t want or 'need" a full income.
I think on balance, the American middle-class is fairly well represented, but I’m willing to be shown statistically that there is a large percentage of people who are working full-time as the main wage earner and are still way below the curve.
Perhaps the more telling statistic would be family income distribution. Anyone have any statistics on that?
The above statistics were from aggregate family incomes. Here are statistics for aggregate household incomes:
Share of aggregate income for middle 60%:
In 1967 it was 52.3%
In 1998 it was 47.2%
Change: -10%
Share of aggregate income for lowest 20%
In 1967 it was 4.0%
In 1998 it was 3.6%
Change: -10%
Share of aggregate income for the lowest 80%
In 1967 it was 56.3%
In 1998 it was 50.8%
Change: -10%
Share of aggregate income for top 20%
In 1967 it was 43.8%
In 1998 it was 49.2%
Change: +12%
Per capita income for all workers rose from $11,064 in 1967 to $20,120 in 1998. But interestingly the median income for full-time, year-round male workers remained flat at about $36,250 between 1970 and 1998. And the median income for full-time, year-round female workers rose from $21,470 in 1970 to $26,855 in 1998.
one very important stat that was left out was the total amount of the increase in wealth. Teh bottom 80% could have actually increased their wealth, but at a pace much slower than the wealthy.
In other words, you could post identical stats in a country where the overall wealth increased 10 fold, and it would look like the poor are being screwed, when in reality, their lot in life in improved. They could be making more money than ever, but still be poorer than everyone else.
Here’s 1 person.
I work 40hours a week as a secretary for an accounting firm. I only finished 1 year of college, but i’m smart and a good worker. Unfortunately my boss’s are cheap and would prefer that they make $200,000 a year and I make 15,000.00.
I asked for a raise and they said they would get back to me and never did. If you are going to say I should get a better job, this is the only job i could find that was non-hard labor, or retail/restaraunts. If i did switch to retail for example i would make 10,712.00 a year(minimum wage) and that’s before taxes.
To simplify my point: IT SUCKS LIVING LIKE THIS!!! I can’t afford a car (i have a beater, when it brakes down, looks like another beater for me), I can only rent a place to live as i would never get approved for a house.
My SO is faced with the same situation. He’s actually getting paid less than minimum wage now because his boss wants to pay him under the table.
We are moving to a bigger city soon, so hopefully i will have better luck there. BTW we live in Canton,OH now.
[hijack]Minimum wage is dick!! It is not enough! I can’t even afford to go to the doctor. I can’t eat out. Now with gas prices I have to limit my driving. I’m already completely stuck in this town because my beater won’t make it very far. GRRRRrrrrrrr. [/hijack]
sorry
I think company’s should be forced to profit share. That is if a company declares a profit at the end of the year they should be forced to spend a percentage of it (say 10%) split up between their employees. That way at the end of the year McDonalds employees ( and many many others) will get a check for a few thousand dollars. It’s only far. If McDonald’s raises their prices to compensate Guess what?? Their profits will increase too! So a forced porfit sharing wouldn’t be affected by inflation.