Interesting numbers on the changes in American incomes:
As you can see, everybody’s income dropped off a cliff in 2007 (except my personal one. Mine soared but I’m weird that way). I’ll be damned if I ever listen to the stupid pundits again with their “the very rich gained from the recession.”
The graph says it’s “net worth” and not income. That’s a big difference. The wealthiest households seem to have almost doubled (in 2013 dollars) while lower income folks have lost net worth. Didn’t the banking crisis hit in 2008? The rich aren’t quite back to where they were in 2007, but they’re way better than they were in 1992, even.
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Especially in terms of net worth, this chart does not include the very rich.
I’m also surprised to see I have more net worth than the middle income figures they list — and I am middle income. Hmmm…. I guess it’s my age, I’ve had time to come up with some savings. Still, hmmm…
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Z, I think for those of us who are middle income and have some stability, esp if we’ve been able to pay on a mortgage and have some emergency and retirement money put away, it’s hard (but necessary) to realize just how close to the edge most people in our culture are, to realize that most people are one bad car repair from disaster. But there are so many people who just can’t (for all sorts of reasons) save money because they’re just barely getting by.
If you cut my income by 5% or so, I’d get cranky, but I’d still be okay. For people on the edge, that 5% cut, through layoffs, or less overtime, or losing a job, whatever, that’s the difference between making the rent and eating, and not.
PS. The VERY rich sometimes don’t show a huge income if wages are what count because their money isn’t in wages. I don’t know how they’ve defined “income” here.
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All true, Bardiac. It is just that I am closer to the situation of that precariat (the ones you see in the paper: they were middle class and now they are on the street) than meets the eye, largely because of not having a chance to save except to TIAA-CREF. Still, take what I have there, subtract what I owe, net worth $390K which puts me somewhere around the 75th %ile of net worths in the country, shockingly enough. All due to TIAA CREF, really.
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In 2007 the USD was quite weak compared to other leading currencies, since then it strengthened back by about 33%. This graph contains only nominal values, so it doesn’t show the real tendencies. If we remove the effects of the volatility of exchange rates that the USD experienced in the last decade the difference is not that big between 2007 and 2013 in the case of the middle income. The upper income in real value even grew, because the 12% difference between the nominal values of 2007 and 2013 is much less than the 33% growth in the exchange rate (which shows the real value of the USD). The lower income however is quite problematic, they lost a lot both in nominal and in real value. The scissor between the lower and the upper income constantly keeps opening, not just in the US, but in every other states in the Earth.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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