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The American Middle Class Is No Longer the Worlds Richest
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: April 29th, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle...
The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades. After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada substantially behind in 2000 now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans. The numbers ... suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality. The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true. The findings are striking because the most commonly cited economic statistics such as per capita gross domestic product continue to show that the United States has maintained its lead as the worlds richest large country. But those numbers are averages, which do not capture the distribution of income. With a big share of recent income gains in this country flowing to a relatively small slice of high-earning households, most Americans are not keeping pace with their counterparts around the world.
Note: For more on income inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
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