[jbooth]

Well, so aside from the revisionist statistic-slicing, it's pretty clear that income inequality has skyrocketed, income mobility has decreased and we've been reducing taxes disproportionately on the rich for the last 30 years. For exhibit A), we can examine the present job prospects of a computer programmer vs your typical laborer or service employee.

Fairness aside, this is an issue for the rich as well. How you gonna stay rich if the middle class doesn't have disposable income to spend? It seems like a lack of middle class jobs/income would hurt the future value of any investments.

That's the thing I really don't understand about the "I got mine, you can go screw" attitude towards income inequality / income mobility. It hurts you, too, and you have more to lose.

[yummyfajitas]

Could you define middle class, just so we know what you are talking about? I'm not particularly worried about a lack of middle class jobs if the primary cause is merely inflation of the definition of "middle class".

Also, I'd be curious to see stats on time variation on income mobility.

[jbooth]

The middle 50% or so of the income scale, whatever that happens to be? Pulling that out of my hat.

The study you linked upthread said a bunch about income mobility or lack thereof. I see that as a much bigger problem than equality for it's own sake, although I'd be very concerned about a completely hollowed out system.

[yummyfajitas]

With that definition, there can never be a "lack of middle class jobs" (to borrow your phrasing). Precisely 50% of the country will be middle class at all times.

[jbooth]

Yeah but there can be a transition of those jobs from "paying a wage you can support a family on" to "not doing that". That seems to be what's happened, we've replaced a lot of trade skill jobs in manufacturing, etc, with non-skill jobs at Walmart or the gas station.