American men make 12.5 percent less than their fathers 30 years ago, report on mobility says

[Up2Late]

Source: AP -- San Diego Union-Tribune

American men make 12.5 percent less than their fathers 30 years ago, report on mobility says

ASSOCIATED PRESS

12:28 p.m.(PDT) May 25, 2007

WASHINGTON – The part of the American dream that says a man's children will be better off than he was, has become a dream, not reality, according to an analysis of Census data released Friday.

A generation ago, American men in their thirties had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.

That's a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project. To be sure, household incomes rose during the same period although the main reason is because there are more full-time working women, a new report on the project said.

While income is not the only measure of economic mobility, the findings challenge the historical presumption that each successive generation will be wealthier, said John E. Morton, the report's co-author. “Today's data suggest that during a 30-year period of economic expansion, a rising tide did not lift all boats,” Morton said in a release accompanying the report, “Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?”

Read more: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070525-1228-economicmobility-report.html

---

This is from the "Did they REALLY need a study to figure this out" Department. Duh.

[JackDragna]

1. This is the direct result of a war on the middle class.

Busting labor unions, shipping jobs overseas, replacing skilled workers with know-nothing temps merely happy to have a job..it all adds up. We're turning into a first-world country with a third-world standard of living.

[Bozita]

2. Hello GOP America ... Ya' you in that fucking Hummer. How's your kids doing?

Tell 'em to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

Bunch of lazy-ass fuckers.

[noamnety]

3. so thrilled to see

women footnoted into obscurity in this article.

[Up2Late]

5. Well, I'm sure if you stay tuned to Fox "news" this weekend, the "journalist" there...

...will probably load all of the blame on "Working Women" or "non traditional households." It's difficult to predict what the WH "talking points" will be on this, they almost always take 3 days to get those out to Fox "news," but rest assured, some of them will blame the rise of the 2 income household, I guarantee it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Is this comming from the Departmtn of DUH!

and as is, really... lets play connect the dots, shall we?

Or perhaps freepers really don't want to

Oh and to see this in my fishwrap is shocking

[Up2Late]

6. Here's a link to the pdf of the study.

<http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP%20American%20Dream%20Report.pdf>

(From Sec. 1:3)

Income inequality has been widening for nearly three
decades in the United States. Amidst a flurry of new data
and media reports, President George W. Bush addressed
the issue for the first time in January 2007 during remarks
to Wall Street: “The fact is that income inequality is real
— it’s been rising for more than 25 years.”3 As the data
in Figure 2 indicate, the Congressional Budget Office
finds that between 1979 and 2004, the real after-tax
income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans rose by 9
percent, that of the richest one-fifth by 69 percent, and
that of the top 1 percent by 176 percent.

Focusing on the familiar story of rising inequalities
between CEOs and their employees yields figures that
are perhaps even more striking. Between 1978 and
2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times to nearly
262 times the average worker’s pay. Said another
way, by 2005, the typical CEO made more in an hour
than a minimum-wage worker made in a month.

[Lasher]

19. Productivity and Income Gap Widens Dramatically 2000-2005 (Figure 9)

Tax cuts for the richest 1% and out of control senior executive salaries had to come from somewhere. All boats are not being lifted with the rising tide. Just all the yacts.

[19jet54]

7. 1929 fast approaching - Stock Market Booming - News Flash

Oh wait, that is 2009 not 1929 - Or is it?

[sam sarrha]

8. i am SOOOOOOO screwed..!!!

[pampango]

9. Did American women make 12.5% more than their mothers

did 30 years ago? Or did they make less, as well?

[bemildred]

10. Yes, this is obvious.

Don't think that all this outsourcing and transnational claptrap is not affecting the viability of Social Security and other things too. When all that money goes overseas, it's not here anymore to be taxed. In fact I think that one of the points of moving stuff overseas is avoiding taxation, eh? It's not just the wage cuts, it's a twofer for the CEOs.

[rocktivity]

11. Runner up for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

The threat of U.S. upward mobility has been around for at least TWENTY-FIVE YEARS!!!

:eyes:
rocknation

[Solo_in_MD]

12. This will add to the generational warfare issues that are already looming

more and more young people are viewing Social Security and other support for the elderly as transfer payments from a poorer group to a more wealthier group.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

13. temporary help INDUSTRY has been destroying the worker for 30 years

TEMPORARY HELP IS A TAX DODGE, UNION DODGE,
SENIORITY DODGE.

[slampoet]

31. It is also a dodge for ......

Sick days
Raises (if you don't like the wage get annother job)
Training

I have also seen businesses that don't hire anyone who hasn't already worked as a temp through a temp agency that has an exclusive relationship with the company, thus insuring that the employee will work for crap wages for an assigned time long enough to pay for the fee that the temp agency charges to hire one of their temps full time.

Essentially the temp works to pay for the cost of their own hiring.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. You can see this if you go to your library and look at a newspaper from 1970

Keep in mind that the minimum wage at that time was $1.25.

Sounds poor, but then look at the prices of the items being advertised and calculate them in terms of how many hours a minimum wage worker would have to work to afford them. Compare them with the prices advertised in today's newspaper.

Calculate as a multiple of the minimum wage, food is more expensive in real terms, clothes are more expensive in real terms, housing is more expensive in real terms, college tuition is more expensive in real terms, and cars are more expensive in real terms. The only category that is cheaper now is electronics, and they're insanely cheaper. (Stereos with detachable speakers started at $200 when I was in college, and pocket-sized calculators were an incredible $300.)

That's why the conservatives are able to say, "Today's poor aren't so poor. They almost all have DVD players." Well, yeah, you can get a cheapo DVD player for $39 at a discount store. But in many, if not most communities, the working poor are unable to follow the traditional advice of spending no more than 1/4 their monthly income for housing.

[Odin2005]

17. $1.25 was around $9 in today's dollars

[DBoon]

28. Paul Krugman calls this the "Tchotchke Economy"

Cheap junk is increasingly affordable, but the items necessary to maintain basic existance - housing, medical care, and education - soar out of reach.

Right wingers like to talk about how poor people can afford DVD players. They don't like to talk about rents, health insurance, or college tuition. Guess why?

[slampoet]

32. Finally a name for that fact that i can afford to Overeat but i can't afford Health Insurance......

....We recently got a dog because we know we will never be able to afford to have children before my partner's eggs run out.

If i had gotten regular raises from the companies i worked for since 1997 I would possibly be able to afford children, but the amount of total raises i have received in my 22 year working life are a grand total of $3.78 per hour spread over 7 different jobs that i spent 2-3 years at apiece.

[HughBeaumont]

30. Back in 1969, the average price of a house was twice that of a median income.

Now, it's 3 to 6 TIMES as much on average.

Also, a good reliable NEW car didn't equal a year's income in value like it does now.

In the book Perfectly Legal, there are graphs that show median income only rising about 4% (adjusted for inflation) since 1973. And we work longer hours than our 70s counterparts.

Corporate America is slowly driving the middle class out of commission.

[Nikki Stone1]

15. What they need to add is that this amount is only 1/2 the family income

When their fathers were making more in real dollars, most were the sole support of their families (back in 1974 or so). Now both parents are working.

Any idea on what daughters are making comparative to their fathers?

[gravity]

16. This could be because more women enter the workforce

When you increase the supply of labor, the price of labor(wages) will go down.

A report of household income would be a better indicator of the wellbeing of Americans

[slampoet]

33. That stat is plummeting too......

[tinrobot]

18. In other news... the rich are far richer than a generation ago.

...could there be a connection?

Nah.

[BootinUp]

26. yep. its disgusting

the way the middle class voter was taken for a ride the last 3 decades.

[Fiatjustitia]

20. Post-War Family Wage Policy

One of the great managed news secrets of the last sixty years is that post-war American workers were the beneficiaries of a governmental "family wage" policy that assured a decent income for male workers so their wives could leave their wartime factory jobs and raise their children. The policy was apparently backed by tax breaks and other favorable treatment to the companies that complied with it.

Along came the Viet Nam war and the Congressional domestic budget lost out to funding for the war and poof went the family wage. Women who had heretofore been able to remain at home were forced into the workforce in order to maintain the family's standard of living. At which point great political hay began to be made from vilifying women for abandoning their children in order to go to work. That process continues, as evidenced by Rick Santorum's complaint in his book last year about mothers who work.

Along came cheap and easy credit via the "credit card industry" to ease the squeeze on family income and allow continued access to the "American Dream". Now, with NAFTA and eased foreign trade agreements and the new world order's mandate toward globalization, we are becoming an "information economy" and losing our manufacturing base that had sustained and supported families since WWII.

Into the breach came the Wal-Marts with cheap affordable goods reputedly made available for workers victimized by downsizing to afford on the lowered incomes on which they now have to live as sacrifices to the policy of globalization and the fleeing of their former employers to cheap labor infested off-shore locales. Ironically, the country has been invaded by 12 million illegals who are providing cheap labor in numbers never heard of before on these shores. The stigmatizing of unions via managed news has obliterated a once powerful countervailing force against corporate and governmental power to implement policies to the detriment of the American workforce.

Following the beginning of the War in Iraq, the GOP Congress enabled credit card companies to increase their interest rates and double the required monthly payments - with the "news business" spinning the enactment as a "favor" to consumers that would enable them to pay down their balances earlier. Nevertheless, this policy has since driven hundreds of thousands of formerly middle income wage earners into bankruptcy and even more to the brink of filing for bankruptcy and enduring the drudgery of a hand to mouth existence of breaking even financially from day to day.

Is there a connection between our government's ability to wage war and policies allowing business to depress the ability of the American worker to live on a decent income? There is also the mystery of why American labor has continuously voted on wedge issues instead of in their own economic interests through all of the foregoing pro-business and pro-banking policy changes. Do the leaders of our government feel that a cowed and financially fearful population will support such policies because they are terrified of losing even more? If so, this policy too seems to have worked brilliantly in their favor.

[cyberpj]

21. Excellent Synopsis. Thank you for posting. And welcome to DU.

:hi:

[Fiatjustitia]

23. Thank you!

Thank you very much, cyberpj. It took me a while to find the place and I am very happy to be here!

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. Well-said and welcome to DU.

[conspirator]

35. Rec. We are slaves of paper money an the monetary system which is all a big conspiracy nt.

[question everything]

22. First posted in the Economy forum

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x25245

[muntrv]

24. This is the result of union busting by the repukes and the Bush crime family's

efforts to bring back the robber barons.

[DBoon]

27. all thanks to Saint Ronnie

begining the long decline of the American middle class.

When you look at very basic quality of life indicators, they all seem to drop for the US at about this time as well - Ranking in terms of average lifespan is the one that comes to mind. We were #1 in the world in 1970, now we rank with Costa Rica in a 20-something position.

[conspirator]

29. being middle class SUCKS big time. I am even thinking of quiting IT.

Its not worth the stress anymore. Too many geeks willing to work for nothing.

[RBInMaine]

34. Don't buy the propaganda about how great the economy is!!

Some people talk about how great the economy is. B.S.!! Look at the cost of higher ed, of food, of insurance, of fuel, of housing, one in five jobs now comes out of a temp agency, including part-time and seasonal jobs in the unemployment numbers and not including those who have stopped looking for work altogether,
millions more below the poverty line, 47 million without healthcare, workers (like those at Circuit City) fired for making "too much" money,
illegal union-busting that goes unpunished, people having to work multiple jobs to survive, unfair trade laws rigged for the corporations and the rich, tax laws rigged for the corporations and the rich and which reward companies to move overseas, oil company profits through the roof while we get to pay $3 to $4 a gallon for gas,....the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, those in the middle get the shaft. Dump the corporate R's in '08 and get more progressive Democrats in there!!