Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
Somehow this post slipped by me. I took a look at it. I'm generally skeptical of graphs like this because income doesn't tell the whole story. I was about to post that and shove it in your grill but it appears they did do a little work comparing costs of living as well. It's still difficult to use simple charts to prove something like this because dollars in 1970 are a lot different than dollars today. I'm not even talking about inflation, just the costs of all goods have changed since then. New needs have emerged. Most people in America have high speed internet, that's a bill that they would never have paid in 1970. It's IMO hard to argue that the standard of living of the American middle class is down from the 70s. It's probably down since the great recession though of course.
The working class today has a higher standard of living and is far better off than the working class of 1910. The working class of today's standard of living is probably closest to that of the upper middle class of 1910. What does this mean? What relevant deductions can we make from this?

Classes are relative to each other. Also you point out that the internet didn't exist, much less would it be a bill that is essentially necessary today. This to me seems to hinder your point. What am I missing?

No doubt folks have been ailing since that time, and no doubt the upper classes are more equipped to recover from it. Those charts don't feel like an exposé to me really. I'm not surprised at what they depict, I'm just not sure there's a lot that the federal government can do to remedy these ails. The housing crash wouldn't have happened to begin with if we used market based interest rates or didn't subsidize the shit out of home-owning. And the recovery from the crash probably wouldn't be so sluggish if we didn't tax the shit out of businesses and income.
What is this in response to? I kinda skimmed the article/charts, I read the thread a bit more carefully, but I'm not sure when anyone suggested the federal government was the solution. d0zer seems to have only asked what people think about this-- whether it's true, whether it's a problem, and what can be done about it. Please kick me in the balls if I completely missed a post or something.