[rayiner]

Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970-_Relative_incom...

You can make a fair argument that the bottom 50% haven’t gotten their share of productivity growth, but that doesn’t explain why social indicators among the bottom quantile have gotten so much worse.

[dragonwriter]

> Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970

It's grown for every group used in that breakout, but while it breaks out the upper income groups on relatively fine categories, it groups the bottom half as one category.

(It's useful for the graph's original purpose of discussing top-weighted inequality, it's not useful for the argument you are trying to make with it.)

[coldtea]

>Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970

And education, housing, and health costs has sky-rocketed, number of "essential services" to pay for (mobile phone, internet, severan "rentier" subscriptions) has increased, while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...

But yes, the top 10%, the types to usually post at HN, never had it better.

[rayiner]

But a lot of those requirements are manufactured. Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?

I agree the top 10% have poor insight into what life is like for everyone else, but that cuts both ways. I think there’s a real misperception of what income is necessary to maintain a similar quality of life to the past.

[hef19898]

University is free in Germany, and a lot of jobs that require a college degree elsewhere are fulfulled by 3 year appreticeships in Germany. So hard to compare.

[danaris]

Whether it's manufactured or organic, it's still real. That's the economic reality we all have to live with in America, so it doesn't matter whether Germany can operate just fine without the crushing college debt we have: the fact is, middle-class households in America have lost real wealth and purchasing power over the past 50 years because of this and a number of other factors.

[qeternity]

Just because it's real, that doesn't make it right. You're missing the entire point: maybe the issue isn't the gutting of the middle class, but the expectation or encouragement of higher "education" even if it is unnecessary for a huge chunk of people.

[coldtea]

>Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?

Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".

Germany also has a quite solid social protection, not a cut throat environment where tons of people are a medical bill away from homeless.

[MathCodeLove]

> Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".

Neither does the United States? Not sure where you're getting this idea from. Most people I know revere trades as they're a known way to make great money without a degree. And, anecdotally speaking, I've managed to get great jobs as a software engineer without a degree. We treat non-college graduates who don't try to ascend above retail or fast-food as losers - and for good reason.

[qeternity]

> while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...

What?! The labor market has been so strong over the past decade that economists started to wonder if previous paradigms no longer apply (i.e. Phillips curve).

[coldtea]

In most empires on the way down, the scholarly narratives and the truth on the field are different things...