Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
No, it just says in "2007 dollars" It doesn't give the actual income of all those groups.
And I wasn't looking to defend anything. Just pointing out that stats and graphs can be skewed to make things look "worse" or "better" than they really are.
I do know that the 80's, 90's, and 2000's were decades of prosperity in the U.S. that are unparalleled in history. That's what I was pointing out. That chart does not show the whole truth.
Most working people with real jobs were making a living better than ever before for the last 30 years. Unemployment was low. The dollar had many years that it was pretty damn strong too.
This country had a helluva run. And as I said...people that made a great salary were able to buy nice cars and homes and even invest just a bit. But nothing on the scale of the people who PAID them.
Those people had a lot more income to invest over the last few decades. And that money has grown exponentially.
Of course...another thing those charts don't show...is the fact that those "rich" people LOST trillions of dollars when the market and world economy took a dive. Not saying that it bankrupted them. Just saying that all of the wealthy people who had a lot of money invested in the stock market, took a pretty hard beating. Yeah, they're still rich (if they were smart). But what's wrong with that?
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I have a feeling most of those people who have the nice houses and cars and toys got them on credit not because they made a lot of money. According to Wikipedia the average household income in america grew $7,500 per year between 1980 and 2008. $5K of that came during the Clinton years.
I won't argue that we had a good run. We did. But we also saw credit become so easy to get that people started abusing it and relying on it. We also saw mortgages and auto loans as well as many other versions of credit extend their payback times.
When I was a kid my mom bought the house I grew up in. She paid $33K for it. It was a four bedroom (although the 4th room was tiny) and she had to jump through a ton of hoops to show she brought home enough money to make the payments etc. Her mortgage was for 20 years. It wasn't too long ago that many mortgages were for 15 years. My mom bought that house in 1981. In 1996 she sold it for $65K. In 2007 it sold again for almost $300K. The reason is that all around it these bigger nicer houses were built and it jacked the price of the house up. Banks realized that if they extended mortgages out to 30 years they could sell people bigger, nicer, more expensive houses. The The same with cars. A person can't afford a $40K car in a 2 year loan, but they can on a 5 year.
So I think a lot of people did get a lot of nice stuff, but they only have it because of credit, not increased income.