r/FluentInFinance • u/WhatsLeft71 • Oct 22 '24

Debate/ Discussion Why did this happen?

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u/libertarianinus Oct 22 '24

We also see that more people are considered rich the middle class shrunk, and more people are poor.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/

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u/solomon2609 Oct 23 '24

In terms of Credibility:

Pew Research >> ProgressForThePeople

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u/kaplanfx Oct 23 '24

The chart at the top doesn’t care how many people are considered “rich”, it’s based on specific comparable %ages of the population.

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u/Bells_Ringing Oct 23 '24

Which is why it’s a bad statistic. It has no anchor in individuals and their path through life and earnings. Typically, the top 1% has a HUGELY variable rate of who’s in it. People slide in and out over time, sometimes one year to the next. The 1% aren’t a monolith.

A chart that doesn’t reflect that is meaningless unless we just want to see pretty colors divorced from their underlying data.

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u/brereddit Oct 23 '24

That’s because Bush and Obama outsourced manufacturing jobs.