Incomes of young in 8-year nose dive

[Warpy]

The incomes of the young and middle-aged — especially men — have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found.

People 54 or younger are losing ground financially at an unprecedented rate in this recession, widening a gap between young and old that had been expanding for years.

While the young have lost ground, older people have grown more prosperous over the years and the decades. Older women have done best of all.
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One bright sign: Women have boosted income by holding half the USA's jobs, working longer hours and narrowing the gender pay gap from 2000, when women made 25% less than men, to 2008, when they made 23% less. Older, college-educated career women have had the biggest gains.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-09-17-young-people_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

It has to be noted that, while COLAs have increased the incomes of oldsters on Social Security, they started off poor and have stayed there even though the age group shows a net gain because of it. The article seems to want to pit the old against the young, and the numbers just don't bear it out.

[jwirr]

1. Don't forget that the COLA for the elderly is often matched with a raise

in the cost of Medicare. I for one have hardly ever gotten anything out of the COLA except the payment to Medicare.

[Warpy]

3. Yes, but it's still regarded as increased income for articles like this one

My caveat that a tiny increase in a poverty income is negligible compared to the increases in incomes elsewhere in the economy and probably negligible compared with the huge hit working men have taken in the last 10 years stands.

The tone of this article is unmistakably ageist for not pointing that out.

However, the statistics are enlightening. Adding the massive deflation in assets would have made them even more so. Older boomers looking at the end of their working years have been hit very hard by those, so the overall rise in income undoubtedly comes from that second job taken through fear about the day they won't be able to work, at all.

It also needs to be said that rising wages across the board have been diverted to company insurance plans for the past several decades.

It's really a pity the bagger crowd is too stupid to put this all together. They have very good reason to be angry at the government for doing nothing. They just don't have what it takes upstairs to be able to figure out what they should have done and why they never did.

[endless october]

2. i was thinking about that myself.

i entered the workforce in 1999, and most of the gains in income have been offset by increases in health insurance / gas / general inflation. there are people my age still living at home (with parents), and i'm in my 30s. not to mention this latest meltdown and unemployment.

NAFTA, outsourcing, and tax breaks for the rich have been massive failures for the average working person. they had better get health reform right.

[OHdem10]

4. Oldsters get no Cola this year. Notification has been out some time now.

Thank the Free Traders for the Income Drop. We are in a Globalization
Crisis. No one seems to want to discuss this, I wonder why?

The goal of Globalization is equalization of pay scales around
the world. Instead bringing the third world up, oops they
screwed up--the First World Countries are losing ground to
meet Third World pay scales. For years our pay scale was so
high,made our products too expensive to sell to poor countries.

Outsourcing and transferring jobs out of our country as a result
of trade policy have compounded problems for the American Middle
Class.

Until we get some common sense on these issues, we are on our
way to becoming a Banana Republic.

Youngsters, it is not the oldsters that is the problem. Oldsters
get no cola this year.