In absolute terms real income for the bottom quintile has increased. In addition, technological progress has drastically reduced the cost of many luxury items and put them in reach of the poor. Today the "poor" in America not only have clean drinking water and electricity they also have cell phones, internet access, large screen tvs, dvrs, cars, refrigerators, dish and clothes washers, etc. In short they have the ability to live at a much higher quality of living than in any previous era.
Sure it sucks to be poor, believe me I know, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the developed world is devolving into some dickensian nightmare when nothing of the sort is happening.
Edit: a helpful graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...
No, you really don't know. Because being poor for you was temporary. I'm technically "poor" right now, but having a wonderful time because to make that amount of money I only have to work a few hours per week. Whereas some families at my daughters' school have both parents working two jobs to make less than I do. I've visited their home and no dishwasher, no clothes washers. They aren't working on a fucking startup.
let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the developed world is devolving into some dickensian nightmare when nothing of the sort is happening
My brother works in poor communities in the UK. It is happening. If trotting out graphs showing a single metric is all you need to do to convince yourself and voters like you otherwise, then I predict its only going to get worse.
The other quintiles, even the 21-40% group, have made real gains, and that's good, and most of your arguments apply to the other 4/5. However, it looks like we are slowly creating an underclass.
Do these people really have clean drinking water? Safe streets, homes and schools? Clean, healthy, food? A decent public education? I'm not talking about cheap toys, I mean basics of life.
Final rant: this stuff is personal for me. My family and I are a single income family, near the top of the 4th quintile now (< $120 K may not sound like much in Sunnyvale, but it goes a little ways in Sacramento), but I spent most of my childhood fairly poor. I was about 16 when Reagan's reign of error started ("Reagan" being a figurehead to represent the era and all its players). I went to college in the mid 80s, and watched the door to inexpensive public education largely being pulled shut bit by bit during the 80s. My academic abilities were in about the top 2 to 5 percent, but how is a poor, but smart, kid supposed to go to college now without piling on many thousands of debt? Are we doomed to live in a world run by legacy dullards like W???
In light of flat income growth, that means families either work more or do without. The scary thing (for me) is that we're reaching the maximum of the "work more" strategy when both parents work 1+ jobs. Where do people go from here, considering that they've reached the maximum of their family's earning potential while prices are still rising? I suspect that we're seeing the beginning of the real decline these past few years - with not only stagnant real income growth, but a decline in the amount of things we can afford, and that means less college education, a less educated work force, and rapidly accelerating (if it wasn't already) income inequality.
When you're priced out of a good education (can't afford one) that's when we cease to be a merit-based society where able people work their way up. That's the end of the American Dream in not so many words.
That being said, I can't imagine raising kids on that wage.
Your graph shows no growth in family income between 1970 and 2007.
But in 1970, Dad worked a shift and maybe Mom, while in 2007, to make the same money, Dad works two jobs and so does Mom.
That was rather the whole point of the original article, but you seem to have missed it. People may have the same amount of money, but a) they work every waking hour of the day and b) they have other costs that offset the income, such as health care. But they could have state-paid butlers washing their clothes and cooking their meals and it wouldn't offset the lower quality of life that comes from working multiple jobs, never seeing their kids, and being homeless the moment they get sick.