The Christian Science Monitor has an article on research showing that younger workers are not doing as well financially as their parents and grandparents were doing at a similar age. And this is without the federal debt obligations and Medicaid burdens being passed on to GenX by the Boomers. When those chickens come home to roost, things will presumably get worse.
Between 1970 and 1997, the real median income declined 19% for men under 35 and declined 10.6% for men between 35 and 44.
Perhaps most significant, though, is a labor market that has become tougher on workers, especially those with lower skills. Global competition has compressed wage gains.
Thus, despite a boom in worker productivity, “what the typical family or typical worker has to show for it has been remarkably little,” says Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
In his view, the biggest issue is the rising inequality of incomes during the past quarter century.
At the Blue Frog Bakery, Ms. Brown sees that trend among her own peers. “People are either doing phenomenally well or living paycheck to paycheck,” she says[.]
A book I’d recommend on the subject of increasing wealth disparities in America, increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the ultra-wealthy, and the negative effect this has on our democratic institutions is Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips.
I enjoyed his book on the Bush family. American Dynasty I think it was called.
I’ll have to track the one you mentioned down.
I may well have to read that book as well, after tax season…