Maybe you could substantiate that. And I'm not talking about CEO jobs, just good paying middle and upper middle class jobs. Or lower middle class jobs for that matter.
CEO jobs are too few to effect the averages much even though they pay so high.
Average total compensation has been on a trend of increasing for some time. There are short term movements against that trend, but the overall trend goes back for decades, pretty much since we moved out of the depression, or at least since WWII.
Average wages have not gone up as much, and sometimes go down, but wages are decreasing as a percentage of total compensation.
Another thing to look at is real spending net of debt. That has increased for a long time.
Housing affordability and home ownership rate are two different things.
Sure they are two different things, but if home ownership is increasing then the middle class isn't getting priced out of it.
The bottom 60% of income earners in our country are falling more and more behind and their standard of living is getting lower and lower. .
That's just flat out false.
Even if it was true, "at the same time as" doesn't imply "at the expense of". "The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer", doesn't mean the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor. Most wealthy people are wealthy because they created wealth in some way, they either provided highly skilled labor, or capital. That skilled labor and capital produces more wealth for the economy and makes the country as a whole wealthier. Remove the efforts of the wealthy and those seeking to be wealthy, and you destroy the economy.
But the fact is that the poor in general aren't really getting poorer. Certainly the "lower 60%" (which includes far more than the poor) are not. They are in fact getting wealthier over the years. They are wealthier now than they where 15 years ago, wealthier then than they where 30 years ago, the same goes for 45...
Particular years are subject to the economic cycle, and other relatively short term factors, but the long term trend to greater wealth is unbroken.
OTOH if you do want to see it broken, by all means go ahead with large tax increases, and a vast increase in regulation. Move away from the free market and you can easily break the trend and start it moving in the other direction. |
