jlee562
I'll Lock Up
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It was in reply to you, but it wasn't directed *at* you specifically, but rather at the larger group we were referencing. It was used in the plural sense. I've explained that.
If you really want to stick that "explanation," your reply was poorly phrased, because you switch from supposedly not addressing me directly ("How you can make sweeping conclusions...", to addressing me directly ("...bringing up past generations isn't clouding the issue,") to supposedly not addressing me directly ("They were when I was your age too").
False.And I've said the objective measurements are only proof if you accept them as an absolute indicator of future occurence.
A measurement such as the proportion of the middle class at two different time periods is not an "absolute indicator of a future occurrence." It is a descriptive statistic.
...I reject that premise. That doesn't mean the data *are* false, it only means that they are indicative of a trend, not definitive.
If you really want to get into the macroeconomic argument, it's totally unrealistic to expect a large scale economic change which would significantly change what we know about upward mobility today. You keep saying that I'm making absolute projections. In fact, I did nothing of the sort.
This was the original statement which you took issue with:
So if we go back to the question: does this current generation have it worse off than the last?
If you want to answer the question as you did, judging by life experience, sure, it's "absurd" to judge what will happen in the coming years. However, that is not how I chose to answer the question.
Upward mobility is a quantifiable value. And it was a quantifiable value in 1965, 1955, 1945, 1935, 1925, etc, etc, etc. The proportion of the middle class is a quantifiable value. And it was a quantifiable value in 2000, 1900, you name it.
If you want to answer the question with quantifiable data, you have an answer. And that answer is that, on average, a young person today does not have as good a chance of exceeding their parent's generation, as the that generation had compared to their precedents.
My statement is intentionally very specific and has two parts. If your only point is to reiterate that one cannot make judgments on what will happen in the future, I'm really not sure why you're still debating me, because I already conceded that in the first part.
My second point, was that, if you choose to answer the question "does this current generation have it worse off than the last?" with quantitative data, the answer is yes. But my answer was a two-part answer. You keep saying the second part is false by asserting the first.
Well, I do. But I haven't said that yet. I only taken issue with your assertion that the future is set in stone by virtue of some upward mobility statistic. And on a larger theme, I take issue with the assumption that "worse off than your parents" is on some sort of absolute scale. It's not. It's relavative and how bad that actually is is a matter of opinion/perception, which is why comparing it only to the previous 20 years is not only misleading, it's pointless.
Things like social and environmental issues are another day's argument.
It was my assumption that "better/worse off than your parents," was commonly understood as a phrase in the lexicon representing a measure of income. Moreover, in the US, it is historically true that each successive generation has done better. To wit:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18868904/...ation-does-better-dont-count-it/#.Uzuro84vDtc
The American dream has always held that each generation will enjoy a higher standard of living than the previous one, and that is still true, as measured by household income.
...
U.S. inflation-adjusted household incomes rose only 9 percent from 1974 to 2004 — a severe slowdown when compared with the 32 percent increase from 1964 to 1994.
Going back to 1820, per capita gross domestic product in the United States has grown an average of 52 percent for each 30-year generation, according to the report. But since 1973, median family income has grown only 0.6 percent per year, a rate that produces just a 17 percent increase over a generation.
"Thus, unless the rate of economic growth increases, the next generation will experience an improvement in its standard of living that is only one-third as large as the historical average for earlier generations," the report said.
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