The good news: According to mybudget360, in the period from 1967 to 2011: Mean income is about 40% higher than the median. This is the result of the top 10% growing 62% while the bottom 10% only grew by 25%. The median increased by only 19%, so the rest of the bottom 50% grew even slower than the bottom 10%. The top 5% only grew by 66%, indicating that the top 10% grew roughly uniformly. The bad news According to usinflationcalculator/ over the same time period: Cumulative rate of inflation is 573.5% based upon the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This means that even those that were in the top 5% lost significant ground by this optimistic outlook. They would have had nearly 3.5 times the buying power in 1967 as they do today. I say optimistic outlook because the real picture is much bleaker than that. Food and energy are not included in the CPI. According to bls.gov/cpi/ the CPI is made up of "a representative basket of goods and services" that are "paid by urban consumers" which is only about half of the USA. The basket apparently does not include food and energy. If you add in just those 2 categories, the numbers for inflation look far worse. Try this little experiment: Dig through your old receipts and find any items on it you like to buy still. Use the inflation calculator to enter the then year and the current year. Use the then price and see what price is predicted for today. Compare it to the price you actually currently pay.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 21:22:32 +0000
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