Federal Reserve's 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances

[arebelspy]

The Federal Reserve does this study every three years, so the data is from 2013, updating from 2010.

Joshua Kennon has some good commentary and breakdown of the data:
http://www.joshuakennon.com/federal-reserve-released-2013-tri-annual-survey-consumer-finances/

Links to the spreadsheet files and 41-page PDF summary are in the first paragraph of his article.

Highlights:
Median income is down (bad), median debt is also down (good), median net worth is down (bad), the sprinkles are cursed (bad).

Average everything (income, net worth, etc.) is pretty much up, while the median is down - aka more of the rich get richer, the middle class sliding down to poorer.

Only about 25% of people in the bottom half of income own stocks, compared to about 95% of those in the top 10% of income.

Some good analysis, worth reading.

[Nords]

aka more of the rich get richer, the middle class sliding down to poorer.

I'm always baffled that this is greeted by the media as shocking, simply shocking, news.  There are plenty of individual examples of the rich getting poorer, but as a group they tend to keep improving the skills which got them rich in the first place.

Maybe we should rejoice that the rich keep getting richer-- so that we can join their ranks?

[arebelspy]

aka more of the rich get richer, the middle class sliding down to poorer.

I'm always baffled that this is greeted by the media as shocking, simply shocking, news.  There are plenty of individual examples of the rich getting poorer, but as a group they tend to keep improving the skills which got them rich in the first place.

Maybe we should rejoice that the rich keep getting richer-- so that we can join their ranks?

Sure, I don't mean to imply it's a bad thing, though there is usually a negative connotation.

It's be nice if everybody got richer though, even if the rich got more of it.  Seeing median income/net worth go down is a bummer.

[deborah]

The sprinkles are cursed (bad).

OK, is this an Americanism? What are sprinkles?

[arebelspy]

The sprinkles are cursed (bad).

OK, is this an Americanism? What are sprinkles?

Heh, I was just paraphrasing an old Simpsons clip.  Ignore me.  :)

[austin]

aka more of the rich get richer, the middle class sliding down to poorer.

I'm always baffled that this is greeted by the media as shocking, simply shocking, news.  There are plenty of individual examples of the rich getting poorer, but as a group they tend to keep improving the skills which got them rich in the first place.

Maybe we should rejoice that the rich keep getting richer-- so that we can join their ranks?

Skills such as: being born to rich parents, being born into economically privileged classes, being born in economically privileged places.

[Nords]

aka more of the rich get richer, the middle class sliding down to poorer.

I'm always baffled that this is greeted by the media as shocking, simply shocking, news.  There are plenty of individual examples of the rich getting poorer, but as a group they tend to keep improving the skills which got them rich in the first place.

Maybe we should rejoice that the rich keep getting richer-- so that we can join their ranks?

Skills such as: being born to rich parents, being born into economically privileged classes, being born in economically privileged places.

I don't have a link at hand (although I'll look), but my point about "rich getting richer" is that the skill part has much more to do with it than luck.

[NorCal]

The Economist had an interesting article about "the rich getting richer" (at least in incomes; not net worth) theme recently.

It turns out, most of if is driven by the rise of dual-income couples.

50 years ago, most households had a single earner.  Whether you were a doctor or a line cook, the wife would most likely stay home.  And for those couples where a woman did work part time, it was in lower earning households, so this would pull up the lower income household closer to the middle. 

These days people are generally marrying people with similar career interests. So doctors are marrying doctors, lawyers are marrying lawyers, and waiters are marrying waitresses.   So when you have dual-earning couples with $100K+ salaries, it really impacts the household income statistics in an unprecedented way.  No one earned money like this two generations ago.

So I guess if you want to blame anyone for rising inequality, you can blame the feminists ;-)