| I'd be really curious what your opinion is informed by since I don't see any data to back it up. Those in the Top Quintile (~200k in 2010 and ~250k today, so right in the middle of your proposed hosed bracket) have seen the greatest increases in Mean Income in the last decade [^1 p.8]. Those in the Upper Income bracket (~190k in 2000 to 207k today) have seen a 20% increase in wealth in the last 30 years while lower brackets have declined [^2]. Do you have any data to backup your assertion that "being a hard working professional in this country is losing its allure, and is increasingly a suckers bet"? These jobs seem to have a much greater increase in wages [^3 Fig. F][^4 Fig. 1] (4x in the last 40 years) than those in all other lower income groups. I'm not sure how anyone could come to the conclusion that increasing wealth and top of the pile wage growth are "a suckers bet". [1] CRS The U.S. Income Distribution: Trends and Issues - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44705.pdf [2] Pew Research "Trends in income and wealth inequality" - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... [3] Economic Policy Institute - "State of Working America Wages 2019" https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ [4] CRS "Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2019" - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf |
Actually, not. Your numbers are household, not individual quintiles; the proposed “hosed" bracket bracket is about about 92nd-98th percentile by individual income.