>seems like its only the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and less healthy.
At least in the past decade, the opposite has been happening.
>[...] Even after taxes and transfers, the average real income of households like his grew by 110% from 1990 to 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But most of that growth took place early in the time period: in 2019 he was probably doing worse than his equivalent in 2007, before the global financial crisis.
>By contrast incomes in the lowest 20% of households, in which the fast-food worker resides, surged in the tight labour market of the late-2010s. By 2019 she was enjoying after-tax-and-transfer household income 25% higher than those like her in 2007, in part thanks to “Obamacare”. Even over the full period since 1990, the bottom quintile’s after-tax-and-transfer income growth was 77%, the same as for the highest quintile—thus, excluding the highest-earning 1% from the top 20% would show the poor enjoying faster income growth than the upper-middle-class. [...]
Percentages are not enough to get a full picture. If I make 100k a year, the person making 50k will need to see a 2x increase in their percentage gain to see the same amount gained in currency. I would take a small bump of a large number over a large bump of a small number any day. And the reality is that the disparity is much higher when you’re talking about the bottom 20 and top 20, and just gets exponentially worse from there.
Here’s a nice visual to put that into context (spoiler alert, while the bottom has seen gains, they’re laughable in the overall context and are not rising at the rate the top is seeing)
At least in the past decade, the opposite has been happening.
>[...] Even after taxes and transfers, the average real income of households like his grew by 110% from 1990 to 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But most of that growth took place early in the time period: in 2019 he was probably doing worse than his equivalent in 2007, before the global financial crisis.
>By contrast incomes in the lowest 20% of households, in which the fast-food worker resides, surged in the tight labour market of the late-2010s. By 2019 she was enjoying after-tax-and-transfer household income 25% higher than those like her in 2007, in part thanks to “Obamacare”. Even over the full period since 1990, the bottom quintile’s after-tax-and-transfer income growth was 77%, the same as for the highest quintile—thus, excluding the highest-earning 1% from the top 20% would show the poor enjoying faster income growth than the upper-middle-class. [...]
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024/10/14/is-highe...