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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (26307)	2/22/2008 9:32:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

9 years later isn't a lifetime. So looking nine years later only covers a portion of mobility over a life time and also if people get wealthier and then poorer again and then wealthier again you can miss the back and forth through just looking isolated snapshots. Perhaps even more important are these points 1 - Inequality by spending is less then inequality by recorded income. The recorded income stats often don't include many forms of benefits (which is senseless in the context of arguing for benefits for the poor, unless you don't care about intelecutal honesty. You would get "they are very poor so give them benefits", and then after they get the benefits, that you don't count towards recorded income you would still have "they are very poor", and so presumably you would also have "we have to give them more benefits". Also while I doubt expenditure data covers black and grey market income very well, it does a better job than official income stats. Expenditure inequality is far less than income inequality. ---- 2 - In the bottom quintile doesn't mean your really poor in some objective sense, you just have less money than others. Most people in the world today, or most Americans in previous generations would consider someone at the 20 percentile in America to be well off. And even if you look at people at the 10th percentile, and compare to other rich countries rather than the world as a whole, the 10th percentile in America is wealthier than the tenth percentile in the UK, Australia, Sweden or Finland, and very close to the 10th percentile in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. ---- 3 - The issue isn't as much what quintile you are in, but how well off you are. If you get richer, but so does everyone else, so you stay in the same quintile or even move down one, then your still better off. ---- 4 - Even income mobility is not low * Income mobility of individuals was considerable in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period with roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom quintile moving up to a higher income group within 10 years. * About 55 percent of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile within 10 years. * Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996--the top 1/100 of one percent--only 25 percent remained in the group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over the study period. * The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996). * Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the study period: * Median real incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation; * Real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period; and * Median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the high income groups. treasury.gov ---