Economics Gurus, a question....

[phattonez]

You are playing with words. It can be strong relative to other countries, but still need to be stronger.
Did you try googling "shrinking middle class"? Or "Income gap in America"......If you don't look for it, you won't find it....

I'm not doing your own work. In fact, I'll provide evidence to show that the middle class is growing and growing strong.

Squeezed Up, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

Adjusting for inflation, the percentage of households with incomes over $50,000 has climbed from 24.9 percent in 1967 to 44.1 percent in 2003.

The article's claim that it has become harder to stay in the income range of $35,000 to $50,000 is correct, if what you mean by "harder to stay" is that it has become difficult to avoid being squeezed up into a higher category.

 

[phattonez]

If you would read a little more carefully, you would find that we don't disagree that individuals within a household make their own decisions with respect to decisions that affect them and only them.

However, you seem to feel that decisions that affect entire households are made in a vacuum and are not worthy of study. This attitude certainly flies in the face of substantial and persuasive evidence that household incomes and household formations substantially impact many facets of our economy and are therefore worthy of study.

I didn't say that decisions that affect the household don't matter, but rather that we can't look at the household as making a decision. It is individuals that make decisions, though the decisions may certainly affect many people.

Want a new family car? Mom wants a new washer and dryer? Dad wants to upgrade from a push mower to a riding mower? Want to move to a larger house or to a different neighborhood? Dad or mom wants to take a new job in a different city? These are just a few of the spending decisions that are rarely made unilaterally, by a single unit within a household.

But how often does the issue come up that multiple parts in the household do not agree with each other?

Notice the "rarely" qualification: of course there are exceptions. Even today with the greater prevalence of multi-income households there no doubt remain some autocratic household units. Even then, I would posit that spending decisions are mostly made with the benefit to the entire household as the primary motivation.

But the others in the household have to agree to this autocracy to an extent.

 

[Slartibartfast]

But how often does the issue come up that multiple parts in the household do not agree with each other?

Given that how one spends their money is an indicator of their priorities and that money is by far the leading cause of divorce, I would say the answer to your question is quite often.

 

[phattonez]

You are playing with words. It can be strong relative to other countries, but still need to be stronger.
Did you try googling "shrinking middle class"? Or "Income gap in America"......If you don't look for it, you won't find it....

I just found some more interesting statistics, and these don't even involve the income volatility that you see when you look at individual income earners (many people have a change in income greater than 25% in a year).

These figures are misleading for three reasons. First, they ignore taxes. Second, they ignore nearly all of the $750 billion in social safety net benefits received by low-income and elderly persons. Third, the census' fifths or quintiles do not contain equal numbers of persons. The top quintile actually has 70 percent more people than the bottom quintile.5 If taxes and safety net benefits are taken into account and the quintiles are adjusted so that each contains one-fifth of the population, the apparent gap between the top and the bottom quintiles shrinks dramatically--the ratio of the income of the top quintile to that of the bottom quintile falls from $14.60 to $1.00 down to $4.21 to $1.00.

Understanding Poverty and Economic Inequality in the United States | The Heritage Foundation