Progress History?: REAL keys that upped std living

[oscar111]

for middle, lower class.

trying to reshape in my mind, the bright peaks of US history that really mattered, really improved life for the middle class.

schools' histories were an aimless, cluttered, dark mess.

want the double handful of peaks.

My picks {seeking still : minimum wage, weekends}
1. civil war
2. Homestead steel strike
3. election TR
4. election FDR
5. ss social security
6. election LBJ

[Warpy]

1. Actually, there were several peaks

with most of the earlier peaks happening as land was wrested from the tribes and opened up to new settlers. The settlers that did the best became quite comfortably middle class.

The only peaks since then have come with FDR and LBJ, both because they put more money into the hands of people who would spend it. The money pump has always worked from the bottom up, and every extra dime you give the working class works its way up from retailers to wholesalers to manufacturers, employing more people along the way.

Every extra dime you give the rich just sits there, driving up the cost of fine art and antiques but not doing a whole lot else. No rich person ever gave you a job unless he had customers for the goods and services you'd produce.

[housewolf]

2. The rise of unions in the eary 20th century

The rise of unions and worker protections have had a HUGE influence in the rise of the middle class. They have done more towards bringing people up from poverty than any other force in history, in my opinion.

[applegrove]

3. Income Tax. So there was a transfer of wealth often enough that

embedded elites didn't happen.

[Terry in Austin]

4. Petroleum and more energy per capita

The introduction and spread of petroleum use dramatically increased the energy per capita in America. Energy per capita is often considered "a fair measure" of the standard of living. It relates to that familiar stat about Americans having the equivalent of 19 slaves per person.

Energy per capita peaked in 1979. In the longer perspective of history, the 50 year period centering on 1979 would seem to qualify as a bright peak for our standard of living.

[oscar111]

5. If oil not distributed? Like Mexico?

hi,
thanks for the new idea. it may be a good idea, have to mull it over, chew the cud. LOL

seems to be like dollars per capita.
Or slaves per capita equivalent.

looks nice at first, but then --- what if not distributed?

Mexico has oil. But its energy/ownership not distributed AFAIK.

somehow the millions in mexico have a rotten std of living. They flee over hot deserts to get out. thousands die in trying on the desert.

still, interesting measure, energy/person.
comments?

[Terry in Austin]

6. Distribution is a key issue

The capitalist system has always seemed to be stronger on production than distribution. One could probably argue that the rise of socialism was largely a way to address this problem, trying to find ways of more equitable distribution.

It's true that energy per capita, like dollars per capita, is one of those abstractions that are informative about a whole population, but ignores the fact that there are major chunks of the population that lie outside the normal distribution. "Normal" in this sense roughly equates to "average" or "per capita." It can be misleading, of course -- doesn't mean "per every person."

Here's a good example: total household net worth in the US is about $44 trillion. With about 106 million households in the US, that works out to something over $415,000 per household. Never knew I was that well off! As a population, we are wealthy (average net worth per household) and have a high standard of living (energy per capita), but there are quite a few individuals scrambling for crumbs here -- and even more, as you point out, in Mexico.

[oscar111]

7. Households only 60K, not total you cite

Hi,
thanks Austin, for comments.

but dear friend, i quibble with one stat you have.

ten yrs ago, AARP said the avg household at retirement had 20 K savings, and 40 K in house worth.

let the ten years balance out two trends:
-- slight up in income due to inflation
-- some drop from that 60 K figure to the average age of folks and their lesser savings.

taking 60 K as roughly the household wealth, and 72 million families,
one only gets

4 trillion total for the middle class,

not 44. Perhaps KnightRidder moved a decimal in innocent error?

comments, valued correspondent?

[oscar111]

8. Austin, got it figured out

that 44 Trillion you quoted as total household worth,

must include "households" like the duPonts and Rockefellers.

Those " households" , own things like hundreds of supertankers, hundreds of refineries, and dozens of steel mills.

Since my thread is focused on the middle class, and your helpful comments focused on distribution, i submit humbly that the stat given , must define 'households' in a non-relevant way.

Must include Rockefellers and Joe Average together as households, as opposed to wealth held trickily as "corporate wealth".

I submit that to see progress for the middle class, we must look at middle class household wealth. Excludng the supertankers of the Rockefeller household. So the 44 trillion stat is not really relevant to this examination of the history of the middle class.

More relevant is the AARP stat, which appears to deal with the typical, or modal household. ie, middle class. {three averages can be found; mean, median, mode. Mode is the typical household}.

The middle class, based on the AARP stat, owns only 4 trillion. The other 4O trillion mentioned in your stat, apparently belongs to the Rockefellers, DuPonts, and the like.

Total US wealth apparently is these two kinds of households, plus "corporate wealth", and totals 1O9 Trillion.

To look at distribution, as you did at the end of your fine post, i submit humbly that one might also benefit from looking at that 1O9 trillion stat.

ASIDE: production is not as great as it might seem: the long term growth of the US is only a piddling three percent. {unsure if that includes the Great Depression. It ought to.}. Distribution, as you said, is also weak.

[dcfirefighter]

9. What is production

GDP doesn't really measure productivity, it measures transactions. If I break something, and you replace it, it counts as productivity; likewise, if I stab you, and a doctor patches you up, his bill gets counted in GDP, but the total transaction is not a net benefit.

Competition is quite good at productivity, unfortunately, as pointed out, not so good at distribution, and as pointed out, tends to lead to socialism as a reaction. I feel there's a better alternative. The trick is in capturing unearned income (rent-seeking behavior). Note well that interest on loans, and fees for use of machinery & buildings is, in fact, earned income.

http://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm