The chart on polarization (footnoted 12) sucks.
Charty charty chart chart. Go crying back to Edward Tufte, Charty Cathy.
Looking at some of the charts in detail, I object to the fact that they show very different time frames with no explanation given for the choices (and note, it just compares the first year of the time frame to the last; it doesn't give information about anything in-between). We have
1: 2000-15
2 & 3: 1947-2014
4: 1009-14
5: 1998-2015
6: 2003-15
8: 99-2015 (that one does show year-to-year numbers)
9: 2005-15
10: 2001-15
11: 1985-2015
12: 1947-2013
13: 2001-15
It makes it seem likely that there's some cherry-picking of time-windows going on there.
[That said, it is well put together, and I appreciate the link.]
Yeah, the comparison in trust levels to just after 9/11 seems like a clear example of cherry-picking (although ther is a clear long-term trend).
||
Totally unhelpfully and OT, 5 reminded me of this tweet, which had me giggling to myself a couple weeks ago:
Being 28-2016: I'm not ready for a relationship
28-1816: I have 13 kids
28-1000BC: I lived a good life, thrice I ate a berry and once a pear
|>
5: I had drafted a long comment about why two points connected by a line ought to be a huge flag that you are being bullshitted but decided it was too negative. I agree with the conclusion but the way the data is presented just screams bullshit. It's unfortunate that such crappy data presentation is considered persuasive. Throw in the obvious cherry picking of endpoints and I think a person unfamiliar with the underlying facts from other sources would be smart to tentatively adopt the position that the conclusions are bullshit or they wouldn't have had to resort to such deceptive use of charts.
...deceptive use of charts
Deceptive is too strong a word. Should be more like suspicious.
I thought before reading these comments that charts with two data points are suspicious. Beyond that, I thought it was weird that they're pointing to such wide-ranging economic indicators, skipping a few logical steps to say that this is why politics are "fragmented", and skipping a few more logical steps to say that people are angry. I mean, I don't know, maybe the current level of fragmentation is the new equilibrium and it'll plateau here for a few decades. Maybe people are happy when there's no middle class, as long as their basic needs are met. Examine assumptions!
You know what else I found suspicious? The first footnote:
Methodology: "Middle class" is based on wealth, using a 2015 U.S. benchmark ranging from $50,000 to $500,000. For prior years, it was adjusted for inflation based on the consumer price index. The wealth ranges for other countries were calculated by adjusting for purchasing power parity with the U.S., using International Monetary Fund data.
I realize we have this discussion roughly weekly, but I'm pretty sure that if there's any standard way of measuring "middle class," it's (a) based on income rather than wealth, and (b) $499,000 is pretty high to be included in it.
But it's weird to complain about Bloomberg slanting the data to make a left/liberal argument.
Actually, I like that way of defining middle class. Maybe not those exact numbers, but wealth is part of it.
I don't think reporters are under any obligation to present raw data, beyond providing a source. If the point they're making is true, they can use whatever chart will best illustrate it.
4: 1009-14
Outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society!
12: That's their approach -- I know people are angrier, so I'm going to find a chart that shows what I know to be true.
Having actually read it, I kind of like it. It's like Buzzfeed meets data journalism except that it doesn't suck as much as you'd think that would. Also, Minivet was right about the polarization chart. It's the weakest of the bunch.
15: So what was 2 about? Were you just itching for a fight yesterday?
I found it amusing to be polarized over a chart on polarization, of course.
It's a misleading chart because what it mostly shows is that lots more racists used to be Democrats.
Things I don't understand about Germany, Part 245: "Upon discovering it, the owner of the field informed local authorities in accordance with the Lower Saxon natural protection law that discoveries of rocks that are more than 2 meters across (6½ ft) must be reported."
(On topic because willingness to report big rocks indicates a very strong trust in government.)
I don't understand it either, but find it greatly endearing that they spent €15000 to preserve a big rock.
Was the rock in danger? Given how much it cost to move, was the farmer going to get rid of it or just put up a fence with a sign saying "Don't plow here. Glacial remnant."
I want to argue with a lot of stuff in the OP link, but it will have to wait until tonight.
Meanwhile, to Cyrus at 10: That's a good catch. It effectively means, among other things, that at least half (and probably far more) of black and Hispanic families do not count as "middle class."
(Given this article, which says median wealth for black families is $11,000 and median wealth for Hispanics is $14,000.)
It effectively means, among other things, that at least half (and probably far more) of black and Hispanic families do not count as "middle class."
I think that's more America's fault than the fault of the guy who made the chart. Using strictly income based measures isn't without problems (e.g. people having low income but lots of wealth not counting as middle class).
I think any attempt at reasonable discussion of national decline or stasis is worthwhile. Much public discussion that I see is either "growth and capitalism forever!!" or "lethal threat to our way of life!" Saying in a relatively calm way that things are getting a little worse economically seems reasonable to me. The anger that's the apparent result seems to me pretty disproportionate.
Wealth is harder to measure, but is both less volatile and I think more significant as a measure of well-being than income. Wealth should include home equity, and most of a residence plus some savings will add up to 500k pretty quickly, especially in the cities where there's well-paid work. That said, I have not actually read the footnote to see if the definition actually used includes home equity.
and most of a residence plus some savings will add up to 500k pretty quickly
Houses are cheaper than that. About $150,000 will still get you something perfectly nice.
About half the economic activity of the US is NYC, LA, Houston, Chicago, DC. I don't know about Houston, but 150k will not go far any of the other places.
Moby's right.
Census Bureau says median price of new homes nationally is $300K.
I can't find an easy link but I think the median price for all home sales (new and existing) in the US is somewhere around $170K.
I've never actually understood how LA and NYC work for regular people. I understand how Houston and D.C. work, but found them both unpleasant. Chicago seemed nice enough.
Long commutes, low standards about how much space you need, and a deep, burning need to spend time on underground trains.
25, 27: A consequence would be that pretty well everyone who owns a condo or house in a city with plenty of good work is not middle class but is rich.
That may be the right way to use the word rich, but in that case the middle class really is evaporating very quickly, also many so-defined-as-rich people can barely afford private secondary schools, fancy vacations, or more than two kids.
I feel horribly cramped with three people in 1,500 square feet and put out by my 30 minute* commute via (free to me) public transit and walking.
*After they fix the broken water main. Fuck you crumbling infrastructure.
And, I guess the way to put it is that finding a place to live that works is always kind of a fluke if you're not really rich-- you got in as the neighborhood was gentrifying; it's your mother's apartment and the rent's been stabilized since the seventies; something. You can't just pick an area and count on finding someplace, there's always an element of luck.
My mother has a much bigger house than I do and it's just her and dad.
31: You would not enjoy living in New York, barring a pretty big fluke.
28. Chicago is fantastic. You can get a place for 150k, but it will either be smallish and not in the greatest location wrt public transit or it will be a gamble that the neighborhood will improve from its current state.
21: Wiki says the alternative was 'demolition'. Given a farmer found it ploughing, it was obviously in the way.
I had the same concern about 2 point graphs with varying start dates--enough to make me suspicious, not enough for me to call them dishonest.
Kevin Drum's "No, really, we're not angrier" posts, about free trade, the economy, or angrier than usual this year do make me wonder if they're trying to find data to their preexisting conclusions.
Everybody is angrier: Local exhibit #456.
19: My assumption is that if you find a big rock in an unexpected place you might want to talk to an archaeologist in case it turns out to be a menhir.
Not a menhir, just a huge bloody glacial boulder. Which makes the expenditure extra endearing.
Wealth should include home equity, and most of a residence plus some savings will add up to 500k pretty quickly
That's absolute crazy talk. Wealth is assets minus debts. Even if you manage to afford a home that expensive, which very few people do, you've got a whole lot of mortgage to pay.
If you own a home and a car, have a 401(k) and a savings account, (not givens for the median person), you've still got to subtract debt -- mortgage, education, medical, credit card, car payment -- to get to wealth. (Pensions are harder to measure, but hardly anyone has one anymore. Worse retirement, but simpler math!)
The quoted statement was "home equity", which is already value of the house minus value of the mortgage. And people who don't move do end up paying their mortgages off, mostly, eventually. So not really crazy talk, I don't think.
Like, my apartment, we got a fifteen year mortgage, so it was paid off last year. But even with the standard thirty, we'd have a lot of equity in it by now.
43: Right, and I'm saying that it's crazy to think that very many people have paid off enough of a mortgage on a home that expensive to have that much equity. As others note, the median home price is way lower than that to start with. To get anywhere near $500K, a household would need to have paid off most of a mortgage and have at least $200-300K in other assets -- after debt. $500K is stratospheric.
Median household wealth in the U.S. is $38,786.
(2012, Credit Suisse)
The thing about LA is that living here in a house was reasonably possible for ordinary people until about 15 years ago, and then everything changed. We're new at this.
$500,000 isn't the bottom of the range for middle class, but the top. You could certainly get there by 65 if you had a house paid off and a 401k match. 401ks are shitty compared to pensions, but even 3% of a $40,000 salary and no match, you will get $200,000 over a thirty year career.
Fair enough, you're right that $500K is a hell of a lot. I was mostly nitpicking because you were bringing up subtracting debt as something that has to be considered, and that's already wrapped into "home equity".
But your global point, I can't disagree with.
Median household wealth in the U.S. is $38,786.
I do think that a wealth-based definition for the middle class will be more accurate, for some purposes than income-based. It also seems harder to measure, but that's a separate issue.
But the value they're graphing makes no sense without some explanation: "The share of wealth owned by the middle class." That seems like a poor proxy for either, "fairness of distribution" or for "percentage of people who are middle class" or "upward vs downward mobility." It's related to all three but, because it combines so much in one summary metric, it's hard to know what changes in that value mean.
From 2000-15, Europe went from 47.2% to 40.6% and Latin America went from 36.9% to 35.1% what should I take away from that? It's almost meaningless.
You could certainly get there by 65 if you had a house paid off and a 401k match. 401ks are shitty compared to pensions, but even 3% of a $40,000 salary and no match, you will get $200,000 over a thirty year career.
Yeah, there's also going to be an age affect for any wealth-based measure. It would be helpful if, for example, they included the percentage of people in the sample that are over 55. But that isn't quite right either, because the sample their using isn't people, it's savings (e.g, the number could be read as, "if you were to select at random $1 of wealth from the economy, what is the chance that is owned by somebody who has between $50K and $500K in wealth?" So people who have no wealth are completely excluded from that measurement.
It's hard to precisely value a pension, but an annuity calculator will let you ballpark it. Somebody who retires at 65 with a pension of $2,000/month (which you still see fairly often in public sector jobs) is getting pretty close to $500,000 on that basis.
But I think they usually leave pensions off when calculating household wealth.
My main point is that due to cost of living variance and opportunity variance, the US is not really a unified country.
44. The other way that equity builds with normal income is price appreciation of the home, usually because the city or neighborhood have improved. As I say, defining "rich" this way is possible, but that seems kind of surprising to me, because you then have rich people saying to their kid "no, we can't afford that University" and "we can just afford a beach this year as long as we drive there and camp." Definitely with that definition there are rich people with little financial room for error. Maybe this disagreement is what Cyrus meant in 10.
45. I would argue that nationwide statistics are of limited use, because the US includes both San Francisco, where $1M is a hovel, and San Antonio or Cleveland, where prices are lower and the cities are pretty good. It's true that if you sit on a residence in a thriving city, you then have the option of selling the place, keeping some cash, and moving someplace cheaper. It's also true that due to the housing boom/bust, ordinary people whose life timing led to buying at the wrong time got screwed.
I feel like the wealth numbers in these charts are not at all the same as what was in Piketty, especially for Europe, but I don't have the book handy. 40.6% as a "share of wealth" owned by the "middle class" seems stunningly high.
I would argue that nationwide statistics are of limited use . . .
How do you feel about a graph for, "Asia-Pacific" . . . ?
Total Household Real Estate Percent Equity = 57%
Number of households who own outright = 30%
Average Percent Equity of those who do have mortgages is probably
$500k net worth = 82nd percentile of households
I hear Cleveland is nice, but there are lots of serial killers and the Trump riots are coming.
54: I was surprised by how different the U.S. was from the rest of the world on that. I'm wondering if they are really getting equivalent figures, but I don't know enough to think of any potential problems.
55. Badly, I feel badly. Furthermore, I dislike pie charts.
Back when I was growing up, you knew who the middle class people were because they drove station wagons.
It was a simpler time.
You know who else didn't like pie charts.
Our station wagon had fake wood paneling on the side, because we were upper middle.
Back when I was growing up, you knew who the middle class people were because they drove station wagons.
Growing up we had a Volkswagen Dasher. It's been long enough, I can't remember exactly what it looked like, but I remember the feel of vinyl back seat and idly picking at the stitching.
If I could just earn some more money and/or persuade my wife, my kids could grow up knowing that they were members of the awesome class because Dad drives a CTS-V station wagon (556 hp).
1972 VW Bug, lasted until 1986.
We had the fake wood paneling as well. My memories are not clear enough to tell if it was, in fact, the same model pictured in 66. Certainly something close.
Did the tailgate roll down (and the window roll up)?
Looking for images of a Dasher I found this amusing page of vintage VW ads.
Also this ad which is fairly well done.
You can see the keyhole on the right, rear there.
I love the late 70s Dasher (i.e. Passat, i.e. Audi Fox rebranded) Wagon. Just a beautiful car. Would love to own one right now, especially the (not at all clean or fast, but not lying about it either) diesel.
I also am totally in love with the Volvo V60 Polestar. Saw one of those bad boys on the streets last week and it is just stunning. Would totally sacrifice my wealth to obtain one.
I mean is there anything you can spend money on better than "yes, I drive a Volvo station wagon. The BADASS Volvo station wagon."
Now I'm picturing R Tigre and Moby in some kind of post apocalyptic Mad Max style showdown with Moby driving a souped up Volkswagon Dasher with fake wood paneling and RT in a BADASS Volvo station wagon.
It probably explains why I have never purchased another VW product.
I'm probably disqualified from owning the Volvo wagon because my second thought, after "Hey, that looks sweet," was "I wonder what kind of cargo space it has." Don't have kids, folks. Global warming, you know.
The Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser is also just such a badass Detroit pre-oil-crisis monster. Is there anything that says "the America we have lost" more than that thing? Just load up your kids into this 5 MPG beast and let them slide around in the back seat with the camping stuff as you take your paid 2 week vacation from your union job.
I think the car in 66 got like 11 mpg in town and maybe 15 on the highway. We only took it one maybe one or two vacations where we drove across the country. We got a full-sized van because the third row seat in the wagon was too awful for even a little kid to sit in for more than a half an hour.
Like this guy and his family. "I'm growing out my hair a little and rocking the turtleneck and jacket look. Get in kids, I went to college for free and the postwar boom is paying for this stylish beast."
We are 3.5 years away from once again not owning a car and I am soooooo looking forward to that glorious day. Also and completely off topic but I am in a constant state of delight today because child's report card included the observation that he has acquired "Bonne maîtrisse du ukelélé. Bravo." He should probably just drop out now as there really is no better report card obtainable.
They got the part where dad was constantly smoking right. 82 and 84 glossed over that.
I spent a humbling weekend at a racetrack driving Shelby Cobra replica cars. Some guy driving a Passat station wagon kept zooming by me on the track. Apparently, it isn't just your equipment. It is how you use it.
He should probably just drop out now as there really is no better report card obtainable.
Indeed!
I had a 72 bug until 1986. We had an assortment of station wagons growing up -- 65-72, 4 kids -- including, I think, that Olds, and then a 72 Suburban, in which all four of us learned to drive. Might have gotten to 250,000 miles.
I believe that I got the whole thing off the ground, Bullitt-style, driving in SF.
There was also a pretty detailed disquisition on his badminton skills but I just skimmed that.
