The poor get richer

[DanS]

There's an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times about the small gap in consumption per person between rich and poor households. It's a pretty short read, so I recommend it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10cox.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=You+Are+What+You+Spend&st=nyt&oref=slogin

The accompanying image is fascinating. It shows the rate of uptake for some common products over time in the US.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/10/opinion/10chart.large.gif

One of the things that I find intriguing is that it shows the products that are deemed absolute necessities and those that aren't. Only electricity, stoves, radios, and refrigerators are ubiquitous. Oddly, telephones are not ubiquitous.

Further intriguing is the fact that no products introduced within the last 80 years have become ubiquitous.

[Jon Miller]

For right now I Agree with them. But in the future, if the times are tight... the rich will be sitting pretty while the poor will starve.

JM

[chequita guevara]

So going massively into debt shows that the gap isn't that great!?!

[DanS]

Read the article. It describes why the bottom fifth can spend twice as much as they earn.

[Jon Miller]

not forever, they are the ones who will be most scrweed when our economy goes belly up

where you are right in is that a lot of things that use to be nice extras are now common that everyone has (TVs, Cellphones, etc)

JM

[chequita guevara]

Ahhh, the bottom quintile includes people who aren't really poor. So how does that prove the poor are doing fine?

[Kuciwalker]

Interesting, the biggest differences are in taxes (duh) and education.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Interesting, the biggest differences are in taxes (duh) and education.

And savings (investments).

[Kidlicious]

What's absurd is that the article calls consumption, instead of income, economic prosperity. Dey musta got manure fer dare brains.

[Kidlicious]

"At the average wage, a VCR fell from 365 hours in 1972 to a mere two hours today. A cellphone dropped from 456 hours in 1984 to four hours. A personal computer, jazzed up with thousands of times the computing power of the 1984 I.B.M., declined from 435 hours to 25 hours. Even cars are taking a smaller toll on our bank accounts: in the past decade, the work-time price of a mid-size Ford sedan declined by 6 percent."

All of these products, except for cars, got cheaper because the price was high in the first place. Indeed, the wealthier have the latest and best devices with more gadgets, and the poor have the old models with out all the bells and whisles.

They tried to make this a pro cheap foreign labor piece and it falls on it's ass. The situation would be exactly the same without the use of cheap labor.

They are complete idiots who know nothing about business and the economy.

[Krill]

Atleast the poor get something, though, right?

Right?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Krill
Atleast the poor get something, though, right?

Right?

Read my sig line.

[Patroklos]

All of these products, except for cars, got cheaper because the price was high in the first place. Indeed, the wealthier have the latest and best devices with more gadgets, and the poor have the old models with out all the bells and whisles.

Yes Kid, in order for things to be cheaper now they had to be more expensive before, very good.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Yes Kid, in order for things to be cheaper now they had to be more expensive before, very good.

When new products with new features on them come out they have to make the old products cheaper. Do you understand that?

[Vanguard]

Lying with statistics. It's easy and it's profitable!

In the first place, the data in this editorial are highly questionable. In particular the editorial doesn't clearly explain why the lowest income people can spend twice as much as the earn.

The only reasonable way to explain this is assume that consumption by retirees on Social Security is included in this amount. Which is ridiculous. Even worse, counting retirees as zero income because they don't work, but counting their non-voluntary purchase of overpriced health care as consumption is outright deception.

This BS data alone invalidates the entire editiorial. This is nothing but deliberate misinformation.