A self-described “Big-Picture Conservative” Tweeted the following earlier today:
Fact: if you believe the average American was better off 30 years ago than he is today, you're astonishingly ignorant.
First of all, for someone like this to call anyone who doesn’t believe the same bullshit he believes “astonishingly ignorant” without supporting it fully with numbers constitutes “astonishingly arrogant.”
As someone who was a young adult working hard for a living 30 years ago, and still do so today, I can tell you, I not only “believe” that the “average American” has a tougher time these days, but the numbers back me up. What is it about people on the right, that some think just because they say something, it has to be true?
Even if you look at the numbers through the rosiest glasses you can find, the "average American" now is in basically the same shape as the the "average American" was in 1980, which is not good enough. In order for an economy to function properly, everyone must see growth. But based on the numbers, most “average Americans” are increasingly being left behind in the economy.
Take the example of income inequality, it is a stone cold FACT that the rich are getting much richer at the expense of everyone else. Between 1970 and 2005, the mean inflation-adjusted income after taxes increased by 176% for the top 1%. The top 20% of the economy saw their after-tax income increase 69%. The middle 20% increased by 21%, the second quintile (next to bottom) increased by 17%, and the bottom quintile saw an increase of just 6%. The aggregate share of after tax income held by the top 1% rose from 7.5% to 14% during the same time period. Sources for those numbers: http://bit.ly/ksyf8g http://bit.ly/lwQudF http://bit.ly/lCgB6e http://econ.st/izVych
Overall, in 2010, the top 20% earned 49.4% of all income in the United States, while the 15% of the population who are trying to live below the poverty level earned 3.4% of all income. The earnings ratio between the top 20% and those living below the poverty level is a record 14.5-to-1, up from 9.3-to-1 in 1980. As of 2007, the 300,000 top income earners received 440 times as much income as was earned by the “average American,” which is roughly double the ratio in 1980. Overall earnings for the average American have stagnated since 1980. There was a small uptick in the late 1990s, before and after that, wages have been largely flat. In fact, during the first 7 years of this century, though productivity numbers increased by 20%, there was no increase in earnings for the bottom 50%. http://nyti.ms/mC86Cs http://nyti.ms/mC86Cs http://slate.me/jVbAHw http://bit.ly/mzRlqp
But "better off" can't just be about income. Even as late as 1980, it was still possible for a family to own and maintain a home using just one income. The higher cost of housing and other costs has forced most families to need two incomes. Look at this chart, and you can see that the ratio of home prices to income is much higher now than it was in 1980, and the debt-to-income ratio for most Americans is much higher than it was in 1980. These realities make it necessary in many cases to have a second car and pay for full time child care. Car ownership is up from 1.53 cars per household in 1983 to 1.91 per household in 2009.
The cost of health care was about 9.2% of GDP in 1981 and was close to 16% of GDP in 2010. On an individual basis, many employees are faced with having to pay far higher proportions of their health insurance premiums, as well as co-pays for doctor visits and prescriptions, to the point that the amount of income the “average American spends for health care doubled between 1984 and 2009. http://bit.ly/ifHWn6 http://bit.ly/mzRlqp
The jobs that are left in this country seem to fall into two categories; low-paid “service” jobs, and highly paid professional jobs. Far more available jobs require a college degree to even apply, but if the “average American” wants to go to college, or send their kids to college, the cost of a college education, including tuition and room and board, increased more than 500% between 1980 and 2010, and now runs about $20,000 per year. http://nces.ed.gov/
The savings rate for Americans is also far lower than it was in 1980. It peaked at 11% in early 1981, and it had fallen to below 2% when the economy crashed in 2007. http://bit.ly/kokfzz
The only area where we are better off financially is food. In 1980, roughly 15% of an average family’s income went to food, compared to 12.6% in 2010. (Of course, nutrition is another story.)
In summary, the “average American” is barely making more money than the “average American” made in 1980, despite the fact that they have to spend far more on necessities than they had to back then. It’s also costing them far more for an education for them and their children. Even without taking into account additional obvious factors such as fewer available jobs, thousands of closed factories and the devastation of hundreds of cities and towns that has occurred over the last 30 years, or the swelling numbers of Americans who are living below the poverty level, it’s impossible for anyone to say that Americans are absolutely better off than they were in 1980, and have any credibility when doing so.
Based on actual raw numbers, it would seem that this particular “Big-Picture Conservative” is relying more on his own arrogance than any facts of any kind. In any case, what he claims as “fact” is faulty, and his claim that anyone not believing his silliness is “astonishingly ignorant” actually makes him just plain ironic.
I’m sorry, but if you’re going to call something a “fact,” it helps to know what a “fact” is.
