I think you can make an argument that capitalism also stifles innovation and progress.
Actually not .....
www.pewresearch.org
Middle class 40k to 120k ......The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families
Middle-income Americans' financial gains between 2011 and 2016 were modest compared with upper-income Americans' gains, widening the income disparity between the groups.
About half (52%) of American adults lived in middle-class households in 2016. This is virtually unchanged from the 51% who were middle class in 2011. But while the size of the nation’s middle class remained relatively stable, financial gains for middle-income Americans during this period were modest compared with those of higher-income households, causing the income disparity between the groups to grow.
The recent stability in the share of adults living in middle-income households marks a shift from a decades-long downward trend. From 1971 to 2011, the share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points. But that shift was not all down the economic ladder. Indeed, the increase in the share of adults who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income over that period, a sign of economic progress overall.
SMH ...
www.forbes.com
The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families
Middle-income Americans' financial gains between 2011 and 2016 were modest compared with upper-income Americans' gains, widening the income disparity between the groups.
About half (52%) of American adults lived in middle-class households in 2016. This is virtually unchanged from the 51% who were middle class in 2011. But while the size of the nation’s middle class remained relatively stable, financial gains for middle-income Americans during this period were modest compared with those of higher-income households, causing the income disparity between the groups to grow.
The recent stability in the share of adults living in middle-income households marks a shift from a decades-long downward trend. From 1971 to 2011, the share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points. But that shift was not all down the economic ladder. Indeed, the increase in the share of adults who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income over that period, a sign of economic progress overall.
Boy bye!!!Sure The Middle Class Is Shrinking: 30% Of Americans Are Now Too Rich To Be In The Middle Class
A very interesting report on America's shrinking middle class shows, once again, that the middle class is shrinking. And, once again, we see that the middle class is shrinking because people are getting too rich to be considered middle class any more. And if we're honest, the idea that too [...]
Sure The Middle Class Is Shrinking: 30% Of Americans Are Now Too Rich To Be In The Middle Class
Tim WorstallFormer Contributor
A very interesting report on America’s shrinking middle class shows, once again, that the middle class is shrinking. And, once again, we see that the middle class is shrinking because people are getting too rich to be considered middle class any more. And if we’re honest, the idea that too many people are getting too rich isn’t something that is going to keep us awake at night.
We might worry if everyone were becoming too poor to be middle class. We might even worry if one person gets all the goodies leaving some monstrous multiple of those who remain middle class. But that whole swathes of the society are climbing up out of the petty bourgeois lifestyle into the haute bourgeois one shouldn’t be causing any night sweats.
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It’s actually what we’d like to be happening to everyone in fact. The mixture of capitalism and free markets has meant that, in places which have actually been doing those things for more than a few decades, we’ve entirely destroyed the peasant and then proletarian lifestyles of yore.
Seriously, what is wrong with the idea of a society where more people have the resources to live a decent life?
As the WSJ says:
The latest piece of evidence comes from economist Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute, who finds in new research that the upper middle class in the U.S. is larger and richer than it’s ever been. He finds the upper middle class has expanded from about 12% of the population in 1979 to a new record of nearly 30% as of 2014.
‘Any discussion of inequality that is limited to the 1% misses a lot of the picture because it ignores the large inequality between the growing upper middle class and the middle and lower middle classes,’ said Mr. Rose. The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan policy research group.
I’ve said a number of times that I’m not very worried by inequality but I am worried about absolute standards of living. I would be unhappy if some number of people were getting richer because others were getting poorer. However, that appears not to be the case:
middleclass
That slight decline in the bottom incomes is because these are market incomes. The changes and expansions of the welfare system have more than made up for that over those years. So, all incomes are growing, and some are growing faster than others. That leads to the sizes of the different classes changing:
middleclass1
It is worth pointing out why this is different from Pew Research’s recent results. Pew were measuring middle class as a relative term: 60% of median income to twice median income. Thus the change in the size of the various classes is a reflection of how inequality is changing. Here the measurement is an absolute income level. And thus we’re including both that widening of inequality and also the fact that large parts of the country are becoming richer.
I urge you to read the report.
The truth is that the American middle class is shrinking. But the major cause of this is that large parts of the population are simply becoming too rich to be considered middle class any more. And I think that’s great. I cannot bring myself to complain about 30% of Americans now living better and richer lives than their forbears did.
Besides, isn’t that what we’re all actually trying to achieve? We should be celebrating the evidence that we’re succeeding.
and first broadcast as a special edition of the television series Think Tank in June 2005.
