"...I am more interested in making the poor and middle class better off than I am in making the income distribution more equal; I don't feel that Larry Ellison's harrier makes the modest new rug I bought in Turkey somehow less beautiful or enjoyable. There are several broad categories of goods that I would like to make sure that everyone has enough of, and which I would like to see improve for everyone at roughly the same rate: food, shelter, clothing, leisure, health, education, and autonomy.
But this is precisely why I have a hard time dismissing CPI bias. Though I was raised upper middle class, enough of my family are median wage earners for me to be very familiar with the lifestyle--and also what it was like in the 1970's. I think it's improved a lot more than 10%.
According to the Census bureau, median personal income for a man was $8,056 in 1973, which I think puts my nuclear family right near the center of the income distribution. This works out to roughly $28,893 worth of income in 2003. The figures say that in the intervening years, median personal income rose only $1,100, to $29,931--an increase of less than 4% in 30 years. Median household income has done a bit better, going from a little over $10,000 in 1973--or $37,700 worth of 2003 income--to $43,318 in 2003. (Hooray for women's lib!) That's an increase of $5,618, or almost 15%.
But let's say we could find someone who makes $29,931 today, and remembers the 1970's. Do you think that if you offered to send him back to 1973, with 4% more than the 1973 median income, he'd take you up on the deal? What if you doubled that, to 8%? What if you sent him back to 1973 making 15 or 20% more than the median wage, so that he could keep the wife at home and still enjoy a modern level of household income?
Personally, I wouldn't take the deal . . . and not just because I'd be the one stuck at home trying to make the Harvest Gold drapes match the new Avocado refrigerator. 1973 means no internet. No cell phones. No cheap air travel to exotic foreign climes. No computers. No blessed asthma drugs (see my co-blogger's memoir for just how much this means). Three television channels and nothing good on any of them. Expensive books. Air pollution. Shorter life expectancies. More crowded housing. About the only thing more available then were Manhattan apartments, and that was because the muggers were cramping everyone's style. Yes, we all wish we'd done like my parents and bought a co-op in 1973--but that's because we want to live in it now, not then..."
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