I don't spend much time on slashdot, rather in economics reading.
Umm...ok. I'll let you in on a little tidbit of information that is news to nobody who actually does read about economics. Notice how you linked a piece of his from 1992? Yeah well, he keeps changing his mind on shit like this, which is fine and all, everybody should change their views in the presence of new evidence. I do this often. But the way he changes his mind seems more to adjust to whatever the current whims of the democratic party are at the moment, rather than being based on any empirical measurement or observation. Just a few examples:
https://www.econlib.org/archiv...
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem...
Guarantee you, he'd even revise the shit out of that piece if he went over it again.
I believe his best-known point was that when Bill Gates walks into a 20,000 seat football stadium, the "average attendee" just became a multi-millionaire.
You don't have to tell me this, I'm always the one having to tell you guys this.
But I gotta say - that St Louis Fed page says it rose from 27K to 45K in 45 years. That's 1.1% gain per year.
By the way, in case you haven't noticed, this is in real terms. In other words, that's in excess of the rate of inflation.
Krugman's own essay above is about how that number is smaller than the percentage gains of the top 10%, much less the top 1%, much much less the top 0.1%...which is what the inequality debate is all about.
I don't know how we're jumping to inequality all of a sudden, but here's an interesting thing about those upper income brackets: The higher you go, the more you find that they don't have an actual salary. I don't think you'll understand this particularly well, so let me draw an analogy that you may be familiar with:
Suppose you build a house. The land you bought plus the materials cost you $100,000. Fast-forward 20 years later, you make no improvements to it over that time, only maintaining what is already there. Somebody else comes along and says it's worth $1,000,000, even though if we only follow the rate of inflation, that original $100,000 only looks like $200,000 in today's money. So what about it changed to increase its value 5 fold?
Hold that thought, and consider the road you're currently heading down. By having this house, what harm did you do to somebody else? You literally have a lot more "wealth" than somebody two towns over, yet nothing in your possession has changed. Sure, you might argue that somebody who could afford your house two years ago now can't. But is that even relevant if you never had any intention of selling? Certainly not, but you're going to get taxed much harder. But who created that problem? Some unnamed "wealthy" people who are willing to pay you more money for it, or some very specific people who you voted for and decided that you owe a privilege tax because of what somebody else thinks about your house?
There's a lot to digest there.
But my stronger point was the use of "wealth" rather than "income". Wealth is the integral of (income - living.costs) over time, modified by preference for saving over spending. (Japanese are great savers, so are Canadians). If your income keeps going up, but your inescapable living costs like housing and higher education also skyrocket, your wealth will do poorly, as with Gen Z not having housing.
Canada has THIRTY PERCENT higher median wealth than America. That's the sum of savings, despite lower income, because we have far lower medical insurance costs and precarity.
I'm actually glad you cited Canada. Do you have any idea what is going on with that country right now? Quick video for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Now watch what happens to your...well...let's be honest, really meaningless...wealth figure falls with Canada's real estate bubble.
