The non-existent Trump economic miracle.
POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 16:38
VIEWED: 7832
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year
If you are making less than $3,000 a month, you have plenty of company, because about half of the country is in the exact same boat. The Social Security Administration just released new wage statistics for 2019, and they are pretty startling. To me, the most alarming thing in the entire report is the fact that the median yearly wage was just $34,248.45 last year. In other words, half of all American workers made less than $34,248.45 in 2019, and half of all American workers made more than $34,248.45. That isn’t a whole lot of money. In fact, when you divide $34,248.45 by 12 you get just $2,854.05. Needless to say, it is not easy to survive in America today on just $2,854.05 a month, and this may help to explain why we have been seeing so many people fall out of the middle class in recent years.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/goodbye-middle-class-half-
of-all-american-workers-made-less-than-34248-45-last-year
Now, that measure of central tendency - 'the median' - is only slightly less useless in a highly skewed distribution than 'the average'. The number one really wants to see would be 'the mode'. But nobody reports that because it would leave high-income earners out of the picture entirely and paint too accurate a picture of the American workers.
2019 - $34,248 (+1407)
2018 - $32,838 (+1277)
2017 - $31,561 (+1028)
2016 - $30,533 (+603)
2015 - $29,930 (+1079)
2014 - $28,851 (+820)
2013 - $28,031 (+512)
2012 - $27,519 (+554)
2011 - $26,965
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https://byjus.com/maths/mode/
The value occurring most frequently in a set of observations is its mode. In other words, the mode of data is the observation having the highest frequency in a set of data.
The value that appears MOST FREQUENTLY in the wage data set from 2007 - 2019 is the yearly wage value ~ $2000 - $2100. Which means those values are the MODE.
As I've mentioned many times before, there are 3 measure of central tendency: the mean, the median, and the mode. In a 'normal' distribution, all those values are the same. But in a highly skewed distribution, where there's a hump near one end and a long tail at the other end, both mean and median become less useful if you want to find out where the bulk of your data resides. In the case of wages (not income) the highest frequency of the data is at the very low end.
The government formally reports the mean and median, because they look better. It doesn't report the mode because it looks bad, but you can determine it from the data.
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2007
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2008
etc
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So to get back to the econmic miracle that wasn't ...
The same as when we discuss "socialism" or "Fascism" we need some groundrules about definitions.
an ECONOMY is people exchanging goods and services. Where you have no production of goods to exchange, you have no economy.
FINANCIALISM is "making money on money". Thomas Picketty wrote a whole 600-page book about that: Capital in the 21st Century. In brief, he explains that if "modern" capital can make 6% by lending and speculation instead of 3% thru production, moeny will move to higher-profit financialism and avoid all the headaches of supply chains and labor unrest and environmental regulations and all of the disruptions that production is heir to.
What Trump has "accomplished" is exactly what OBAMA "accomplished" ... thanks to the very generous lending and money-printing by THE FED, "asset" prices (stocks), real estate, hedge funds, and bonds have exploded in value. Financialism. But unless the manufacturing economy recovers significantly, there is no "economic miracle" to speak of.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:You seem to be saying that the most important figure is those making $2,000 per year, or effectively the unemployed - while actually excluding the unemployed.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
https://byjus.com/maths/mode/
The value occurring most frequently in a set of observations is its mode. In other words, the mode of data is the observation having the highest frequency in a set of data.
The value that appears MOST FREQUENTLY in the wage data set from 2007 - 2019 is the yearly wage value ~ $2000 - $2100. Which means those values are the MODE.
As I've mentioned many times before, there are 3 measure of central tendency: the mean, the median, and the mode. In a 'normal' distribution, all those values are the same. But in a highly skewed distribution, where there's a hump near one end and a long tail at the other end, both mean and median become less useful if you want to find out where the bulk of your data resides. In the case of wages (not income) the highest frequency of the data is at the very low end.
The government formally reports the mean and median, because they look better. It doesn't report the mode because it looks bad, but you can determine it from the data.
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2007
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2008
etc
I am missing the concept of why this is a valid focus of data about wage earners or working folk at large.
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Quote:I sense that Germany is what you consider Financialism, on a global scale.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So to get back to the econmic miracle that wasn't ...
The same as when we discuss "socialism" or "Fascism" we need some groundrules about definitions.
an ECONOMY is people exchanging goods and services. Where you have no production of goods to exchange, you have no economy.
FINANCIALISM is "making money on money". Thomas Picketty wrote a whole 600-page book about that: Capital in the 21st Century. In brief, he explains that if "modern" capital can make 6% by lending and speculation instead of 3% thru production, moeny will move to higher-profit financialism and avoid all the headaches of supply chains and labor unrest and environmental regulations and all of the disruptions that production is heir to.
What Trump has "accomplished" is exactly what OBAMA "accomplished" ... thanks to the very generous lending and money-printing by THE FED, "asset" prices (stocks), real estate, hedge funds, and bonds have exploded in value. Financialism. But unless the manufacturing economy recovers significantly, there is no "economic miracle" to speak of.
Can you agree that Trump has made progress, working to reverse Obamanomics but it can't be done overnight? You don't think that this would be a Relative Economic Miracle while far from an actual miracle?
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Perhaps you need to re-read the thread title and OP:
The non-existent Trump economic miracle.
Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year
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Quote:Because that is what THE MOST wage earners make.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:You seem to be saying that the most important figure is those making $2,000 per year, or effectively the unemployed - while actually excluding the unemployed.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
https://byjus.com/maths/mode/
The value occurring most frequently in a set of observations is its mode. In other words, the mode of data is the observation having the highest frequency in a set of data.
The value that appears MOST FREQUENTLY in the wage data set from 2007 - 2019 is the yearly wage value ~ $2000 - $2100. Which means those values are the MODE.
As I've mentioned many times before, there are 3 measure of central tendency: the mean, the median, and the mode. In a 'normal' distribution, all those values are the same. But in a highly skewed distribution, where there's a hump near one end and a long tail at the other end, both mean and median become less useful if you want to find out where the bulk of your data resides. In the case of wages (not income) the highest frequency of the data is at the very low end.
The government formally reports the mean and median, because they look better. It doesn't report the mode because it looks bad, but you can determine it from the data.
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2007
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2008
etc
I am missing the concept of why this is a valid focus of data about wage earners or working folk at large.
Here is a problem with the other measures of central tendency:
You have ten baseball players sitting on a bench. One of them makes a million dollars, four of them make $10,000, and five make $1,000.
What is the average? (Roughly $100,000)
What is the median? (About $10,000)
But what do MOST of the players earn? $1000.
In this case, the average is a completely irrelevant figure, the median only slightly more reflective, but the mode tells you how MOST of the players are faring.
That distribution BTW may sound unrealistic, but it's like the USA distribution: it is highly skewed.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:There are TWO books on capital by Piketty. The latest, “Capital and Ideology” (2020):
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So to get back to the econmic miracle that wasn't ...
The same as when we discuss "socialism" or "Fascism" we need some groundrules about definitions.
an ECONOMY is people exchanging goods and services. Where you have no production of goods to exchange, you have no economy.
FINANCIALISM is "making money on money". Thomas Picketty wrote a whole 600-page book about that: Capital in the 21st Century. In brief, he explains that if "modern" capital can make 6% by lending and speculation instead of 3% thru production, moeny will move to higher-profit financialism and avoid all the headaches of supply chains and labor unrest and environmental regulations and all of the disruptions that production is heir to.
What Trump has "accomplished" is exactly what OBAMA "accomplished" ... thanks to the very generous lending and money-printing by THE FED, "asset" prices (stocks), real estate, hedge funds, and bonds have exploded in value. Financialism. But unless the manufacturing economy recovers significantly, there is no "economic miracle" to speak of.
For Piketty, rising inequality is a political phenomenon. The social-democratic framework that made Western societies relatively equal for a couple of generations after World War II, he argues, was dismantled, not out of necessity, but because of the rise of a “neo-proprietarian” ideology. Indeed, this is a view shared by many, though not all, economists. These days, attributing inequality mainly to the ineluctable forces of technology and globalization is out of fashion, and there is much more emphasis on factors like the decline of unions, which has a lot to do with political decisions.
But why did policy take a hard-right turn? Piketty places much of the blame on center-left parties, which, as he notes, increasingly represent highly educated voters. These more and more elitist parties, he argues, lost interest in policies that helped the disadvantaged, and hence forfeited their support. And his clear implication is that social democracy can be revived by refocusing on populist economic policies, and winning back the working class.
Piketty could be right about this, but as far as I can tell, most political scientists would disagree. In the United States, at least, they stress the importance of race and social issues in driving the white working class away from Democrats, and doubt that a renewed focus on equality would bring those voters back. After all, during the Obama years the Affordable Care Act extended health insurance to many disadvantaged voters, while tax rates on top incomes went up substantially. Yet the white working class went heavily for Trump, and stayed Republican in 2018.
Maybe the political science consensus is wrong.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200308071004/https://www.nytimes.com/202
0/03/08/books/review/capital-and-ideology-thomas-piketty.html
Free download of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (2014) and “Capital and Ideology” (2020) at
https://libgen.unblockit.lat/search.php?req=Thomas+Piketty+capital
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:One well known way to increase incomes for people making the least is increasing the minimum wage. Trump won't do it.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Perhaps you need to re-read the thread title and OP:
The non-existent Trump economic miracle.
Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year
Increasing the minimum wage is very popular.
Empirical economics research has grown increasingly optimistic about the possibility of a $15 per hour wage as some cities have experimented with it.
At the same time, it’s become extraordinarily popular with the public, drawing a large amount of support even from rank-and-file Republicans.
Back during the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested he would support a minimum wage increase — albeit perhaps to $10/hour rather than $15/hour.
As president, he’s completely abandoned that idea. And it’s part of a larger transformation, through which a guy who was perceived as ideologically moderate in 2016 has become increasingly right-wing and extreme on basic economic issues. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, said he’s for raising the minimum to $15/hr, as Democrats generally are.
https://www.vox.com/2020/10/22/21529733/donald-trump-minimum-wage-deba
te
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND: Or, Picketty could just have said this
Quote:
“The ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone”
Or this
Quote:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
or this
Quote:
Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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