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Comment by myowncrapulence | Hacker News Reader

You just described the entire American Economy.

Funny thing is this also describes the job market. Very low wages at the bottom, not even enough to sustain a living, nothing in the middle, high wages at the top. Hollowing out of the middle. All a result of supposed efficiency, but really it's just externalities pushed onto the employees. It's not as if they can afford it, they have no choice.

>Very low wages at the bottom, not even enough to sustain a living, nothing in the middle,

This is false. 15 percent in the US are at or below the poverty line. The remaining 85 percent certainly aren't at the top.

I am not saying it's there. But it's getting there.

This shows it more clearly.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Distribu...

You assume that $1 above poverty line is "middle".

I certainly don't.

Median income in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_Unit...

"nothing in the middle" is a blatant lie and hackernews discussions are much better when they are backed by facts and logical arguments rather than political clap trap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

71% making less than $50k/y.

51% of households.

A median says close to nothing about repartition. That's not a fact that you can use in a logical argument against your opponent's claim about repartition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

There's quite a few households and quite a lot of people between $35k and $100k. The claim that there is no middle class is blatantly, provably false. The very, very top has a lot. I don't think anybody is disputing that (I'm certainly not). But there are a lot of people who make a solid, middle class income.

The share of total national income for the middle class has been in decline for 50 years. The piece of the pie that the middle class represents is shrinking.

https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/...

You're assuming the poverty line is a relevant metric. And regardless of the accuracy of that assumption, you still don't offer any information on the income spread over percentiles, nor a source for your one claim.

The poverty line is very relevant when the entire discussion is about getting by.

Again assuming the meaning of "getting by".

> In 2015, in the United States, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was at an annual income of US$11,770; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$24,250.

Do you consider this getting by?

24k for a family of 4... That's easily just the cost of an apartment/utilities for a year here in Austin. Damn. :-/

That's why it's called "poverty."

I think that's the general setup you get when an economy cartelizes. The untold story of American inequality has been the reversal of decades of antitrust work by the state, resulting in the oligopolization of most major labor, consumer, and capital markets. http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaug-2016/popul...

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