C-Stoff, here is the original Forbes article that the article to which you linked posits a sound refutation:

[color="Red"]The Average American: 1967 and Today

Forbes.com
By Tom Van Riper

As the U.S. population crossed the 300 million mark sometime around 7:46 a.m. Tuesday (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), the typical family is doing a whole lot better than their grandparents were in 1967, the year the population first surpassed 200 million.

Mr. and Mrs. Median's $46,326 in annual income is 32% more than their mid-'60s counterparts, even when adjusted for inflation, and 13% more than those at the median in the economic boom year of 1985. And thanks to ballooning real estate values, average household net worth has increased even faster. The typical American household has a net worth of $465,970, up 83% from 1965, 60% from 1985 and 35% from 1995.

Throw in the low inflation of the past 20 years, a deregulated airline industry that's made travel much cheaper, plus technological progress that's provided the middle class with not only better cars and televisions, but every gadget from DVD players to iPods, all at lower and lower prices, and it's obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Median are living the life of Riley compared to their parents and grandparents.

So why are they so unhappy?

Yes, despite their material prosperity, the Medians are a grumpy lot. A Parade Magazine survey (a good source for all things median) performed by Mark Clements Research in April showed that 48% of Americans believe they're worse off than their parents were. A June 2006 study by GFK-Roper group showed that 66% of Americans said that their personal situations in the "Good Old Days"--defined by the bulk of respondents as anywhere between the 1950s and the 1980s--were better than they are today. And in May, a Pew Research Center poll showed that half of U.S. adults believe the current trends point toward their children's future being worse than their own present.

Attribute some of the dissatisfaction to what economist Milton Friedman dubbed "Permanent Income Theory," which assumes that people measure where they are relative to where they expected to be a few years ago. They don't care a bit what the average income was four decades ago.

"If you expect a 3% rise in income and you get 2.5%, you're disappointed," says Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a private research group in New York.

And because people generally judge their fortunes not in absolute terms, but by comparing themselves to others, the super-success of the top 1% can make Mr. and Mrs. Median feel relatively poorer. Take CEOs--the $19 million that Wal-Mart Chief Lee Scott raked in last year was 410 times what Mr. and Mrs. Median made, as opposed to the $469,000 a year earned by Exxon's Ken Jamieson in 1975, which was a mere 40 times more.

It's the same with celebrity athletes. Those who worshipped Joe Namath in the 1960s could at least identify with the $142,000 a year he made ($848,000 in today's dollars). But how many can identify with the $87 million Tiger Woods took in last year? And not only are the elite making much more today, relatively, than the Medians, the rise of cable television and the Internet assures that they know all about it.

"It's now easy for us to see how other people around the world live, not just how our neighbors live," says Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. Schwartz also argues that the plethora of consumer choices today, while generally a good thing, can be a catalyst for bringing people down. Not everyone can have a new flat screen television with both a 60 inch screen and premium sound.

"The more options you look at, the more you have to give up," he says.

It's true that the wealthy have grabbed up a larger share of the growing economic pie over the past 40 years. Census Bureau stats show that the percentage of pay collected by the middle 60% of wage earners dipped to 46% in 2005 from 52% in both 1965 and 1975. That figure doesn't include income from investments, which would make the gap even larger.

But the overall pie is much larger too. A near quadrupling of the Gross Domestic Product since 1967 means that today's Americans share $12.5 trillion in wealth, or $41,579 per capita, compared to the $3.8 trillion, or $18,951 per capita, enjoyed by 200 million people back then.

Of course, the super-rich have done even better. When the first edition of the Forbes 400 hit newsstands in 1982, the top-ranked person was shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion. That was about 20,000 times the net worth of Mr. and Mrs. Median at the time. There were only 12 billionaires on the list that year.

The top person on the 2006 edition of the Forbes 400, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, had a net worth of $53 billion, or 133,741 times the Medians. That means that while Mr. and Mrs. Median have seen their net worth rise 130% percent since the first Forbes 400, the richest man in the country is worth 1,225% more. Oh, and every member of the list is now a billionaire.

But what does the pay of celebrities and CEOs have to do with the average American, other than provide fodder for jealousy? It would be one thing if growing incomes at the top stretched prices of goods and services so much as to dramatically push inflation ahead for everyone else. But inflation has been tame for over two decades.

The fact is that in real terms, the Medians are doing great. Mr. Median makes 25% more than his father did 30 years ago, even after holding for inflation. Mrs. Median is a lot more likely to work in the professional ranks than her mom was, and to be paid about three times as much doing so. And though she still makes only 77% of what her male counterparts earn, this is up from 33% in 1965. They dote on the same number of children (two), but waited longer to have them, until both careers are well under way. They also pay less tax to the federal government and have 8% more purchasing power than they did 20 years ago, including 5.7% more than they had just ten years ago.

But, if despite their prosperity, the Medians need some cheering up, there is one powerful person whose wage growth they have outpaced nicely over the last two generations.

When Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House in 1965, he earned $100,000 a year, or 14 times what the Medians earned. This year, George W. Bush will earn $400,000, or just eight times the Medians.

Click here to see Mr. and Mrs. Median over the decades.

Here's more jew-penned (Virginia Postrel = jewess writer from Dallas) propaganda, the purpose of which is to convince the dirty goyim that they should be happy with their lot in life, if for no other reason that that they can (allegedly) now load up on pre-cooked rotisserie chickens and flat-screen televisions. And to think, the people who spout this stuff are highly-esteemed writers in today's Kwa, lauded with seemingly endless awards and praise. The arrogance of these pieces of shit simply knows no bounds:

[color="Red"]The American Standard of Whining

Virginia Postrel, 09.04.06, 12:00 AM ET

Adam Smith was a remarkably insightful guy. He not only figured out how expanding trade allows the division of labor, thereby creating wealth and raising living standards, he also realized how hard it is to get people to believe they're better off than their ancestors. He discovered declinism way back in 1776.

"The annual produce of the land and labour of England … is certainly much greater than it was, a little more than a century ago, at the restoration of Charles II," Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations. "Though, at present, few people, I believe, doubt of this, yet during this period, five years have seldom passed away in which some book or pamphlet has not been published … pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. Nor have these publications been all party pamphlets. … Many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but because they believed it."

Sound familiar?

Nowadays, candid and intelligent people--not to mention partisans--tell us that the average American's standard of living has barely budged in decades. Supposedly only the rich are living better, while everyone else stagnates or falls behind.

And today's gloom peddlers can claim to have scientific data on their side. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median real income of a full-time working male rose only 4% between 1981 and 2001, from $44,000 to $45,900 in today's dollars.

If so, you have to wonder who's buying all those flat-screen TVs, serving precooked rotisserie chicken for dinner or organizing their closets with Elfa systems. "Anybody who thinks things are getting worse should go to Best Buy (nyse: BBY - news - people ) and notice the type of people who go to Best Buy," says economist Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University. ([color="Blue"]Poster's Note: By and large, morons who are living beyond their means and fueled by high-interest consumer credit are the ones who are hanging around Best Buy, loading up on "flat-screen TVs." A good many of these people probably never plan on paying off their "purchases." I also like how the generalizing author makes it seem, in an obtuse way, as if the dregs of society are buying all these niceties. Let me tell you, they aren't. They're Wal-Mart shoppers, living from paycheck to government-assisted paycheck. I'm not exactly a bum and I don't know of one person who owns a flat-screen TV. Fuck these kikes and their amazing ability to exaggerate and distort.)

Gordon is the author of a much-cited study showing that from 1966 to 2001 real income kept up with productivity gains for only the top 10% of earners. What the pessimists who tout his study don't say is that, while Gordon does find that inequality is increasing, he's convinced that the picture of middle-class stagnation is false.

"The median person has had steadily improving standards of living," he says. But real incomes have been understated. The problem lies in how the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the cost of living.

Do we want to know how much money it would take the typical American to buy today what the typical American bought 20 years ago? If so, what about all those things that didn't exist back then--not just iPods and mobile phones but everyday items like wrinkle-free pants, effective sunscreens, prewashed salads-in-a-bag or comfy hotel beds? ([color="Blue"]Poster's Note: Once again, the jewess steers us back towards this red herring of "wow neato consumer goods." How much of this stuff is being charged off onto credit cards that will be impossible to service the second the economy so much as burps?)

Price indexes also haven't kept up with changes in what consumers buy and when and where they shop. Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people )'s share of the U.S. grocery market is more than a fifth and is growing. Wal-Mart and other superstores charge up to 27% less for food than traditional supermarkets, estimate economists Jerry Hausman of MIT and Ephraim Leibtag of the Department of Agriculture. ([color="Blue"]Poster's Note: How nice of Mrs. Postrel to conveniently ignore the fact that mega businesses like Wal-Mart destroy opportunities for middle class business ventures such as grocery store ownership.) But the BLS doesn't factor those lower prices into its inflation estimates. It simply assumes that Wal-Mart's price reflects worse service, and ignores the savings.

Government statisticians, Hausman complains, "want to act like accountants, and they don't want to take economics into account at all."

Using ACNielsen data from 61,500 households, Hausman and Leibtag calculate that grocery shoppers are 20% better off--not the full 27%--with a superstore shopping trip. "So some of the food isn't quite as good or the diversity isn't quite as good," says Hausman. "But you still get a huge boost."

Since groceries make up 12% of household spending and as much as 25% for low-income Americans, this distortion significantly understates real incomes, especially at the bottom.

So why do we only hear bad news? Adam Smith knew.

"A continued Series of Prosperity," he taught his rhetoric students, "would not give us near so much pleasure in the recital as an epic poem or a tragedy which make but one continued Series of unhappy Events." In the rhetorical marketplace nothing succeeds like failure.

Virginia Postrel (http://www.dynamist.com) is the author of The Substance of Style and The Future and Its Enemies.

Thanks for those !!

It is really sickening to witness the reshaping of history before our eyes...

I wonder what the hell is going to happen.

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The one thing that niether writer bothered to mention is that happiness is not usually directly proportional to the amount or price of consumerist shit. People have values, emotions, the very thing that makes us human and not mere statistics. Many people are dissatisfied with life due to largely foreign influences like the feminization of America, the forced political correctness culture, and politicians who don't represent them one bit.

You can only buy off so many retarded consumerists. People with any ability to actually think will assess society based on higher values.

The one thing that niether writer bothered to mention is that happiness is not usually directly proportional to the amount or price of consumerist shit. People have values, emotions, the very thing that makes us human and not mere statistics. Many people are dissatisfied with life due to largely foreign influences like the feminization of America, the forced political correctness culture, and politicians who don't represent them one bit.

You can only buy off so many retarded consumerists. People with any ability to actually think will assess society based on higher values.

This is a great point. It has been shown many times that happiness levels off fairly quickly once a certain material threshold is passed. Not only do our arrogant overlords lie about the extent to which we have been bought off, (everybody dines on gormet pre-cooked gormet rotisserie chicken while watching 70 inch plasmas) they also have the temerity to act as if our alleged status as "boughtlings" who are showewered in products should make us unwaveringly happy.

You're right, sbrocker8; what really ails those of us who can still think is the anti-culture of disengagement created by the jews and their lackeys: a culture in which the only politically safe and approved place to find fulfillment is in mega malls and other warehouses packed full of consumer junk.

Itz alwayz good for the filthy rich.

"It's much better now. It's getting better all the time" and "Oh, you're getting a deal, now!" is manager-speak to deal with complaining wage slaves and irate customers.

Things were already on the downslide 30 years ago, and had been since 1966.

Things were already on the downslide 30 years ago, and had been since 1966.

I agree. Especially when considering housing costs and healthcare costs.

(Poster's Note: I'm not exactly a bum and I don't know of one person who owns a flat-screen TV.)

Heh; I make above the median income and I know of only two people who own flat-screen TVs: one is a friend who won his in a radio contest and the other is my brother, who makes far above the median income and has one the size of a computer monitor for his exercise room (I don't know if it is HD). I haven't seen the big sets outside of a show room, so I can't judge how well the picture is in a normal setting. So far, the quality of what I have seen is only marginally better than that of my traditional TV; not worth the premium. But I was told that the cable signal they use in the show room is split among so many sets that the picture is degraded.

The Warlord

You're right, sbrocker8]

Absolutely, what I don't understand is why more Americans aren't bored with this buying nonsense?

The following WN leaders are too wedgy: Craig Cobb (hates Peter Schaenk and Christians), Peter Schaenk (hates Atheists and Pagans)

 

Absolutely, what I don't understand is why more Americans aren't bored with this buying nonsense?

Itz become an addiction and itz good for the economy and therefore good for business!

However the banks are to blame as well for handing out copious amounts of credit to people who shouldn't have because they'll be crippled by debt. Good for the banks itz....interest leads to healthy profits therefore allowing more "suckers" ie consumers more credit.

Itz a vicious circle, itz!

In all ways he is comparing apples and oranges - life in the sixties to now has no comparison in quality and anybody who lived then, knows it. In Calif, ordinary people could once afford to buy three bedroom houses, and then build on a fourth. And only dad was working!

About half of the next generation could probably never afford a house. The third generation are living with their parents, they can't afford to move out, unless it is into a closet sized apt., even though they are grown, and maybe have a kid. And that's with both husband and wife working.

Especially troubling is the cost of post secondary schooling. Many a young aspiring hopeful who isn't connected to a wealthy family or granted scholarships for playing sports or even academia is going to be burdened by massive debt that they'll have to work off for up to 10 yrs. Forget owning that house, raising that family. Its tough for many.

And you know what? For the most part its the whites who will suffer. They don't receive special treatment like the assorted kwanese do.

In all ways he is comparing apples and oranges - life in the sixties to now has no comparison in quality and anybody who lived then, knows it. In Calif, ordinary people could once afford to buy three bedroom houses, and then build on a fourth. And only dad was working!

In 1970, a relative bought a new 3 bedroom, 2 car garage, huge yard, home for $17,500.

He was hurt in an accident, decided he could no longer maintain it, so he sold it in 1974.

The house currently has a market value of around $225,000.

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