Joseph Marshall – While some of your points might seem valid to some, I must disagree.
Firstly, that 7.6% is above inflation, which means an overall improvement. It also doesn’t factor in health care benefits, the cost of which is ridiculously high. These benefits are real income, although offset by healthcare costs. This area is the main cause of the financial stress in people’s lives, knowing it can make or break you.
Secondly, high prime interest rates make the high returns on CD’s. Low interest rates may make it hard to accumulate capital, but it also makes things more affordable, like houses.
Thirdly, it doesn’t take 5 times more hard work to produce 5 times more income. A baseball player with a .300 average makes many, many times as much as one who bats .275, because he enables victory. It’s the same in the marketplace. 5-10% more efficiency allows one to provide better value, and allows you to absolutely dominate the market. That’s why the 2/5 are doing better than the 3/5.
Fourthly, most people do NOT work hard. they just think they do. I used to always work myself out of jobs, by streamlining the process. After I’d leave, it would eventually become less efficient, and it would take two people to do my old job. Sometimes that would happen right away, just because fo the sheer amount of work I’d put out. My sisters are the same way.
The thing is, there is a difference between hard work and working hard. It requires work AND ambition to really produce at maximum. “Joe the Plumber” is the very embodiment of that. He works long hours at work that can be physically difficult, and he has dreams! Do you have any doubt that someday he will become quite prosperous?
The fact is more people in this country have become quite well-to-do in the years you cited. Many have not, but the lower portions include a very large number of recent immigrants. The hard-working, AMBITIOUS people HAVE moved up, because a low-tax policy has made it possible.
The thing to remember is that it IS possible. You gotta want it BADLY. It’s not supposed to be easy to “get ahead”. You have to do more than the lower half; the very definition of “getting ahead”. Ahead of whom? The other half.
For the record, if you ever work with today’s youth, you’ll find that they don’t really know how to work hard. They don’t learn it growing up, so don’t learn it until their late-20′s or so. That’s why the youth are swarming to Obama. They don’t know better, and it’s not just inexperience. It’s about work ethic. Don’t believe me? Try hiring a 20-yr-old to do some work for you. You’ll be appalled.
