Economist: Ive crunched the numbers, and the American Dream is dead

These anomalous compensation packages can be spun as "fleecing the shareholders, 1% elitism, insider good ole boy networks" as MSM inevitably spins them, or we can look beneath the propaganda to the truth:

Sophisticated corporate talent negotiating with equally sophisticated boards for bargained for compensation. Very often, if not always when a company is in trouble or when a company wants to play more into the big leagues with name executive talent.

Let's make a sports analogy because the public is too ignorant to comprehend the business realities at play here. You own a basketball team in dead last place with the unprofitable franchise threatening to fold entirely. A top center is coming on the market as a free agent. You decide to make a last ditch gambit and pay the center $50 million a year, which his highly paid, sophisticated advisors negotiate with your equally highly paid, sophisticated advisors as a consequence of 1) the revenues he has brought to prior teams, 2) his assumption of risk of playing his good years at a loser team, 3) a host of other factors, tangible and intangible.

Two years later, despite some boost from the superstar, the team is still a loser and getting ready to fold for good. Superstar must still be paid. Certain sports commentators make a deal of "Well they are paying Superstar $50 million!! What a ripoff of the team and fans!" When in actuality it takes lots of MONEY to get a SUPERSTAR to jump into, or remain in, a swirling toilet with one hand clinging to the slippery bowl.

That's exactly how simple this is in corporate America, that's the truth, don't believe MSM lies to the contrary.

.002% of the companies in the country are large, publicly traded companies. The average private company compensation in the other millions and millions of companies for CEOs is under $400,000 a year. Those are indisputable facts. Don't buy into the leftist-gov-edu-contractor-grantee lie narratives about executive compensation based on emphasis of outlier occurences in a very large corporate environment. Those examples are almost always based on above board, totally transparent negotiations between top corporate talent and companies in trouble.

"Take the risk that the company's failings that I didn't cause will tarnish my career? Well OK, but get ready to pay out the nose and guarantee that pay no matter what happens!"

It really is that simple.

 

Next page of your article:

Nonetheless, youth and parents from less-advantaged families continue to favor an earlier departure from the home than do those of more advantaged means.44 Advantaged youth are far more likely to attend a residential college and possibly graduate school (which the Census Bureau classifies as still living with parents), enjoying a period of semi-autonomy that may or may not include part-time work and cohabitation. By contrast, youth from lower-income families, if they attend college at all, are likely to do so while still residing with their parents.​

The contrast in how college-educated young adults (most of whom are also from more affluent families) form families is striking. In-depth interviews with nearly 500 young adults in four sites conducted by the Mac-Arthur Network on Transitions to Adulthood show that most college-educated young adults complete their education and gain some work experience before marrying and certainly before having children.​

 

Why thanks for the additional support!

The whole question is can you exceed your parents class. You start off advantaged, you stay advantaged. You start off poor, you end up that way.

There are all sorts of metric you can use. Age to Marry. Age to Leave Home. Average Starting Wage. Percent Invrease in Wages Over Ten Years.

You want a particular date when it changed? I'd pick when we replaced the WWII / Vietnam Era GI Bill which enabled millions of veterans of all classes to go to college and buy a home. It certainly provided me with some much needed breaks.

 

Hang in there, CPicturetaker. I realize that convincing people the American Dream is dead is an integral party of keeping them on the Poverty Plantation. What would happen to liberals if people figured out they can leave, they can improve their life, than can be successful. What if they find out that President Obama was simply lying when he said that if you have a business, you didn't build it. What if people found out that you can succeed.

No, liberals can't have that. Dead people voting can't carry elections all by themselves. Bringing in millions of illlegal aliens won't carry the elections either. Liberals have too much at stake to let blacks off the Poverty Plantation.

 

The original claim is that age of marriage is indication of wealth building potential. It isn't.

That has nothing to do with age of marriage.

All of which have additional factors that could change the result.

Maybe I am not clear on your point.

What exactly are you trying to say?

 

I am so glad he concluded that American Dream is dead. I think is was George Bernard Shaw who said, "If all economist were laid end to end they would reach a conclusion." But, one far left economist can reach a conclusion that meets the needs of his party.

 

100 years of inflationary monetary policy and counterfeited interest going into the hands of the rich.

 

people are just stupid, that's all. The men will marry some drone who can't make a dime over what it costs to keep the kids in daycare. the women marry some jerk who'll beat them, run off and leave the kids, or both. When either one could marry an MD from overseas, get paid 200k (over a 6 year time span) cash, off the record, legally. Invest that in the right place, and do right by your investment, and you're retired, man.

 

I can answer that.....YES. My dad has done better than my grandfather, me and all of my siblings have done better than my dad, and my son is on track to do better than me. Hell if my family keeps this up in a few more generations we may have someone in the 1%.

Sanskit and jcarlilesie - I understand where your coming from and thanks for the conversation.

 

Actually, Age of Marriage is a fairly good predictor of your wealth accumilation. It is one of few metrics we have the historic data for and provides indiction of what we really would like to pin down, the Age of Entry for Full Participation in the Labor Force. We know from Labor Statistics that young people are entering the work force at a older age. Age of Marriage is a reasonable stake in the ground that says the youngsters are fully participating and actively accumulating their net worth. Your wealth at retirement is your income over time and your income grows over time. Shorten the time of accumilation and you are giving up your statistically greatest income, thus less net worth.

I'll agree it's not a direct, linear measurement and that it changes over time. But the readiness of historic data available for validation of your model and refinement of the relationship makes it an attractive metric. The nice thing about measuring time you don't get bogged down in all of the factors that effect the income side of things like inflation rates, median income changes, real estate markets, cost of living, etc.

 

I think I need to challenge this claim. Statistically your family would be about one in two thousand. To change class for data collection purposes is to move 20% income in relation to the general population. To put some modern numbers to it, Granddad made no more than about 18K a year, Dad made 34K, you and all your siblings make somewhere around 80K each, and the son is going to make more than 248K a year. That's in today's dollars and what you can buy today. I hope your son buys Grandpa a house.

 

Pretty close and education is the reason. Granddad made it through middle school, dad through high-school, me and my siblings some college, of course my son isn't there yet, but he is on track for a good college education. I also want to point out that the numbers represent a standard work day which means no overtime which many put in to get farther along.

 

No, the numbers are the maximum equivalent total household income in today's economy. That would be Poor, Lower Class, Middle Class, and Upper Middle Class, at least for a family of 4 in 2012.

Your family must be truly exceptional. About 1 in 6000 at least. For multiple siblings to emerge from a lower class home, not get a college degree, and still each of them jump to 80K per year is pretty remarkable in itself. To fund a Post Doctorate education on a Middle Class income is notable in itself. Put that together with beating the overwhelming odds for 4 generations in a row puts your family in some very rarified air.

 

Everything in BOLD above is nothing but sour grapes!

No where do you clearly define 'The American Dream'? What is it?

All you have here is a diatribe whining about individual failure!

 

People who worry about which 'group' they are in have already lost the battle...it's 100% meaningless except regarding ego and jealousy!

Sheep like to be in 'groups' while people who are smarter than sheep should understand individual development.

Each individual 100% decides for themselves what they wish to achieve, how they live, etc. People who do not like their situation need to make better decisions.

Every person has a potential and it is up to that person to achieve their full potential or something less...

 

The following video brings up some interesting details about the question of income mobility in the U.S.

For example, according to their information from 1967 to 2009 the mean income of the top quintile in the U.S. increased 71 percent, so the rich got richer, but the bottom quintile also increased their real mean income by 25 percent, so they got richer too. That doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, since the people in those quintiles changed substantially over time, with many people dropping out of the highest quintile and many rising out of the lowest quintile. The video and article linked below are both worth watching and reading.

http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/is-there-income-mobility-in-america/

 

Yes, and also income alone is utterly meaningless in determining quality of life and prosperity. For example, how much income is a 20 year gain in life expectancy worth?

 

Over the last 40 years America has become more and more socialist and in the last 6 years it has doubled down. If the dream is dead blame the right people which is the people on the left.

 

Statistically?!? So can you provide such statistics? It sounds like you just made that figure up. My step father (who raised me) has done better w/o a high school diploma than his father (an retired E9). I don't know if I'll outpace him - he's a computer genius, but I'm set to do well.

And I DON'T have to do BETTER for the American dream to come true. The American dream isn't a flat guarantee that you'll "make it" (big), it isn't a guarantee that you'll do better than your parents, it's a guarantee that those without can become those with - a poor man can become middle or upper class. And the statistics from the op are baloney. Medieval England, really? How about we compare ourselves to the existing world, not medieval England, Narnia, or other such currently non-existing realms? The data on modern world shows that opportunity I'm America I'd real, and it's better. (I'm on my phone, but I'll post the source later from my computer)

 

Can you point to an economic theory that when put into practice has made poverty any less sticky for the poor?

 

You are misunderstanding the context. I'm not putting anyone anywhere. The standard percentiles are simple division, ( 5 groups, 20% per group ) and classifications a stack, Lower, Middle, and Upper class with a couple of tiers in between. Every study of Class Mobility references the classes to divide the population by income. There is nothing more implied.

 

Sucking at capitalism doesn't mean capitalism doesn't work. It just means you suck at it. The problem is all in that big scary word that starts with an "R" that lefties are so afraid of; responsibility. When you take the responsibility to look at your own self, your own thoughts, your own actions, and your own habits to examine them for flaws that you can correct to improve yourself, you'll be amazed at how much more mobility you have. But as long as you believe you are perfect and that anything wrong with your life must be the fault of someone else or the system, it is your own lack of insight that is keeping you where you are. Essentially, to quote Suicidal Tendencies' Mike Muir.....

Oh, what's that?
So, now you say life sucks
Well, ninety-nine percent of it's what you make of it
So if your life sucks, you suck

 

Nothing magic here. In the study I pulled up the chances of some changing quintiles was roughly 13%. If you are going to change class 3 times in a row, it's 13*13*13 = 2197, or about 2000.

And I rather taken back about how much you want to read into simple numbers. As soon as you say social mobility you went to something that is often measured. There are hundreds of online studies on the subject and many of them reference the same simple social model, household income. Household income data is readily available both for current and former years. So, if you are going to chat about mobility, you use the standard quintile model referenced by all the academics. From there it is just a measurement, a number. Nothing judgemental about it.

 

Any study that relies on raw income quintiles alone outside of a mountain of necessary context is irredeemably flawed and ideologically suspect on its face. A vast amount of context would be necessary to turn raw income numbers into meaningful conclusions about social mobility, so go ahead and actually cite the study you are using and we'll see to what extent it's credible. Let's see how they account out low intelligence and disability, behavior and choices, income versus capital appreciation choices in entrepreneurs and others, and risk/reward factors into their methodology... to start. Any study that doesn't account these things is at most statist hackademic vapor, and at least not at all useful.

 

The American Dream is alive and well in my life. I am one of thirteen children. We were a distinct minority in one of the most violent cities in the U.S. I have only a 10th grade education. We raised seven children of our own. I retired last year at only fifty years old after being self-employed since 22 years of age. That, my friends, is the American Dream alive and well.

I will admit this much. The generation of Americans that I competed against was the easiest generation of Americans to compete against in American history. THANKS LIBERALS !!!!