If you'd paid more attention in high school algebra instead of smoking the devil weed, you could have backed these numbers out yourself...;-)

MATH! TEAM! WOOHOO!

Now, can someone with a pretty chart-makin' program graph these? Pretty please?

How many people are either immigrants since 1979 or the children of immigrants since 1979? There are currently almost 40 million immigrants in the United States. In 1979 on average these people were much poorer than the 1979 lowest fifth quintile given in your chart. This is simply not a fair comparison. It may actually be more fair to compare the first quintile from 1979 to the second quintile from 2006. That would at least be slightly more like a longitudinal survey. Also worth pointing out that these are not the same people being compared in the two charts and even if it were, the fact that wealth is increasing across all quintiles is a pretty happy thing.

If these incomes had all increased at the same rate as the lowest quintile, we'd see:

lowest: 1,639
2nd: 3,000 to 33,000
Middle: 5,000 to 48,000
Fourth: 6,000 to 62,000
Fifth: 11,000 to 110,000
Top: 37,000 to 374,000

And if they'd all increased like the top 1%, we'd see:

1st: 38,000 increase to 53,000 total
2nd: 77,000 increase to 107,156 total
3rd: 110,000 increase to $152k total
4th: 144,000 increase to $200k total
5th: 253,000 increase to $352,000 total
Top: 862,000 increase to 1.2m total.

So, the median family would make something like $100,000 more than they do now. Instead, of, uh, 10 grand more.

And we wonder why the economy collapsed.

Nothing new here.

In times of technological change, those who embrace it have unlimited opportunities. The computer revolution is no different than the industrial revolution.

All change offers opportunities. Some take advantage of it and some don't.

If you bust out the top 1% from the top fifth average, the gains for that quintile become considerably more modest:

86,400 in 1979
130,900 in 2006
52% increase
44,500 gain in real dollars

They should have reported the numbers like this to better emphasize the difference between the top 1% and everyone else.

To paraphrase El Viajero:

Nothing new here.

In times of political capture, those who embrace lobbying have unlimited opportunities. The computer revolution is no different than the industrial revolution.

All politicians are corruptible. Some take advantage of it and some don't.

I suspect these numbers are including inflation. If inflation was removed the bottom two quintiles likely had a negative growth in real dollars and percentage.

This is a double whammy, since the lowest earners spend more of their income on items that experience inflation (food, housing, transportation).

This wasn't an accident. It was planned and executed to adjust low-skilled or low-experience or low-status workers to third-world competitiveness standards so the corporations could reap their greedy gains/bonuses wherever they employed people.

What's the median look like?
Average distorts data too much to be meaningful...they're averaging in Bill Gates' billion dollar earnings with Bill upper-Middle classes $250k.

I suspect it would show disparity, but not nearly as severe as the average shows.

I'd also be curious to to see numbers for 2008 or 2009. The top brackets have all the savings, and therefore investments. How much of this represents returns to capital, vs. returns to labor?

Also, JimPortland....this specifically IS adjusted for inflation, hence "2006 Dollars". And your comment about being "planned" is pretty ignorant.

If the gravitational constant were half what it is we could build a much bigger airplane.

is the earned income tax credit counted in here as income? How about the cost of Medicaid? Section 8 vouchers?

We could take away all the freebies and pay them more if that would make you feel better.

I made a chart of the numbers in the table for anyone interested. Just click below:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ux8_ABPSFxg/SenHLHV2jyI/AAAAAAAAQ90/7_OGpDvXGCU/s1600-h/image001.png

pt, the median is right in the middle of the third quintile. because of how income distribution works, average within the quintiles isn't really a bad proxy precisely because you aren't averaging a-rod and someone making very little.

now, in the top quintile you do have a different problem, because the top quintile starts somewhere in the $80K range and runs all the way up the ladder, so the top quintile is pulled up somewhat.

however, the figures for the top 1% help us figure that out: i don't recall where the top 1% starts (i think it's around $300K or so), but the average is significantly higher than the median in that cluster.

nate, i know you think you're just some clever critic, but actually, you're just fatuous: who do you think benefits from government services more? the person making $12K a year or the high-income person? suppose there were no united states, just a series of armed militias and tribes. do you think that bill gates and warren buffet and the walton family and paul allen and all the rest would still be living as well as they do?

no one - i mean, no one - benefits more from the value of a functional nation state than high income, high net worth people.

el viajero, on the other hand, continues to demonstrate his ongoing detachment from reality in whole new ways: you would honestly think, reading el viajero, that the reason that the income of the top 1% has risen so much is because bill gates, paul allen, steve ballmer, steve jobs, larry erickson, and a handful of other high tech pioneers are pulling the income up. what a nitwit.

howard
the wealthy may benefit most from the maintenance of law and order but that can be provided for a couple percent of gdp. the rest of our tax dollars go mostly to various forms of patronage (including the military. the right is just as guilty)and pseudo charitable vote buying. I don't expect you to agree with this at all.

Maggie Thatcher challenges the Labor bench on this very issue.

There is something very wrong here. According to my tax preparation software,the IRS shows the top one quarter of taxpayers for 2008 had an after-tax income of $43,500-- very different from the CBO figures. Even accounting for the difference between the average and the median doesn't square the data. CBO's calculation of an average after-tax income for the middle fifth of $52,100 appears to be too high.

JimPortlandOR:

"I suspect these numbers are including inflation."

well no, didn't you read the table? the numbers are in 2006 dollars.

josh, you're right: i don't agree in the slightest. if you think "law and order" are maintained by a couple percent of the federal budget, we really have nothing to say to each other, since i prefer reality-based commentary.

Government spending in 1900 was 7% of GDP total. This is well above historical standards from before then and 7% of our GDP would be orders of magnitude more per capita than it was then. Similar situation is Britain. Both countries had far less crime then compared with now. So, yes, empirically a couple percent will provide law and order.

josh, there have been a lot of changes in the technology since then. What do you think a 1900 fingerprint/criminal paper-based database cost to create and maintain in 1900 vs. a computer system that is used today?

Yes, but if anything, technology has tilted the scales in favor of the state. This should have made policing more efficient. If it costs so much more and we have more crime, I have to ask, why adopt such technologies? Also, don't forget how much more 7% of GDP would be today than it was then. According to 1890–1929: Historical Statistics of the United States; and 1929–2000: National Income and Product Accounts. Output has increased by a factor of 43! 7% of GDP today would by more than 3 times the entire economic output of the US in 1900. Yet somehow they achieved law and order spending less than 3 times everything they had.

Both countries had far less crime then compared with now.

From the Wikipedia Crime in the United States.

Crime has been a long-standing concern in the United States, with high rates at the beginning of the 20th century compared to parts of Western Europe. In 1916, 198 homicides were recorded in Chicago, a city of slightly over 2 million at the time. This level of crime was not exceptional when compared to other American cities such as New York City, but was much higher relative to European cities, such as London, which then had three times the population but recorded only 45 homicides in the same year.[9]

Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the course of the last half-century, rising significantly in the late 1960s and 1970s, peaking in the 1980s and then decreasing considerably in the 1990s. Over the past thirty years, the crime rate rose throughout the 1980s, reached its peak in 1991 and then began to decrease throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Recent statistics indicate that crime could again be increasing.[8] The year 2005 was overall the safest year in the past thirty years. The recent overall decrease has reflected upon all significant types of crime, with all violent and property crimes having decreased and reached an all-time low. The homicide rate in particular has decreased over 42% between its record high point in 1991 and 2005.

Chicago had in 2007 16 homicides per 100,000, which is not high fro a city of its size. Thats 320 per 2 million, an increase of 60% over 1900. That's even with the recent fall in crime rates and much, much, more spending, which was the original topic. I'm not really sure what your point is. It seems to back up what I've been saying.

By the way crime in London has increased by a factor of 40 in the past century.

Chicago had in 2007 16 homicides per 100,000, which is not high fro a city of its size.

Compare it to any European city of a similar size, you'd probably find the homicide rate a lot lower.

Thats 320 per 2 million, an increase of 60% over 1900.

Crime in Chicago from the Wiki

Like other major industrial cities in the US, Chicago had a major rise in violent crime starting in the late 1960s. Like most major American cities, Chicago has also experienced a decline in overall crime since the early 1990s.[4] Murders in the city peaked first in 1974, with 970 murders when the city's population was over three million (resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000), and again in 1992, with 943 murders when the city had fewer than three million people, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000. Following 1992, the murder count slowly decreased to 705 by 1999. That year it still had the most murders of any big city in the U.S.[2]

And if you take into consideration the fact that there were a lot fewer federal penitentiaries and prisoners back around then, it would therefore be logical that there would be more spending now than then.

We agree that Europe has less crime than the United States (it also has a lot more crime than it did in 1900). We also agree that crime in the US has generally decreased since peeking in the mid-nineties. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

All I'm saying is that historically, law and order has been provided for a fraction of a percent of our current GDP. To me this implies that law and order can in general be provided much more cheaply than it is currently. I'm still not sure with which part of this you disagree.

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