Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-are-40-poorer-than-before-the-recession-2014-12-12

by saadmalik01 • 12 years ago

117 79 12 years ago

coldcode• 12 years ago

40% of a random number is still a random number. People calculate stuff like this all the time without any actual basis in fact. Unless you have a rigorous knowledge of statistics and a careful process, most of these definitive statements are basically pulling numbers out of your ass.

thaumaturgy3• 12 years ago

Here's the link to the original article from the Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealt...

You should consider contacting them to explain exactly what they did wrong.

josefresco• 12 years ago

Why are they using the height of the real-estate bubble (2007) as the measure of previous net worth? If home prices were so out of whack in 2007, I would think their values might be influenced considering they include "homes" in the valuation.

pvnick3• 12 years ago

"The recession is over" has always struck me a political double-speak. We never left the recession; mainstream America just collectively forgot how it felt to have enough money. We have become accustomed to the 60 hour work weeks for folks fortunate enough to have jobs, chronic unemployment for those unfortunate enough to work outside of tech, the cheaper processed food, the increasing debt, and the lower standard of living. Being poor is the new norm, and "the recession is over" translates to "get used to it buddy, it's not getting any better."

Given that's the case, I wonder what the phrase "double dip recession" we hear thrown around referring to impending repeat economic troubles actually translates into?

jpetersonmn2• 12 years ago

How do you figure we haven't left the recession? Since June 09 we've been growing and not shrinking, which means the recession was over. It may not be the boom we all want, however the recession is over by any reasonable measure.

aero142• 12 years ago

The word recession has a technical definition about a shrinking GDP, and a common usage that basically means, lots of people or companies have job/money problems more than normal. You have to figure out which one people are talking about from the context.

itbeho• 12 years ago

Not to debate whether the technical term of recession is applicable or not, it seems to me like the the labor participation rate is a reasonable measure to look at.

http://www.businessinsider.com/labor-force-participation-rat...

glesica3• 12 years ago

It takes about 10 minutes on Google to conclude that, regardless of any technical definition of a "recession", the economy is terrible unless you you're in a handful of industries or happen to make your money by owning the means of production (shocking that the group for whom the system is named always seem to do just fine...)

Here's a good example:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor...

Some groups have actually seen their real wages fall over time, even since '09. If your wages are falling, then your economy is contracting, that's a recession. Over-aggregating and being pedantic about technical definitions adds nothing to the conversation, just like saying "my wages have gone up, therefore things are fine" adds nothing to the conversation (not saying you did the latter).

Edit: I'm not saying accuracy in terminology is never a good thing, if you're writing an academic or professional article then, by all means, be precise. But this isn't that kind of forum, so significant contextual inference is called for.

aliston• 12 years ago

You have to also factor in that the G component of GDP (C+I+X+G) has increased dramatically under president Obama [1]. The government can temporarily pull the economy out of a recession by paying people to dig holes and fill them up again. A bigger question is whether all of the government spending has created sustainable economic growth.

[1] http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FGEXPND

bmm6o2• 12 years ago

Given that there's an objective definition of "recession" it's not correct to call it double-speak. You can say that people talk about the wrong thing, or that growth isn't what's important, or whatever, but that's a different argument.

I wonder what the phrase "double dip recession"

Not as rigorous, but not made up whole cloth: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/doublediprecession.asp

pachydermic• 12 years ago

"Recession" means that GDP is shrinking, not growing. That's the definition of that word:

noun: recession; plural noun: recessions

1. a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

So technically, the recession is over. There's not much room for interpretation there unless you choose a different definition of "recession".

All of the bad stuff you listed are symptoms of an empire in decline as well as a massive change in how the economy works. Industrialization changed the world and so will computers and information related technology. We're right in the thick of things. We don't know how things will turn out in the long term - that's for historians 200 years from now to figure out.

It looks like this period of drastic change will be a mixed bag. People being put out of work by automation puts pressure on the labor market. Educational systems set up in a bygone era are failing to adapt. People are having fewer children and living longer which puts stress on everything from social security to labor markets.

It will probably just take a while for society to sort all of this out. And it may or may not suck in the meantime. I think most people reading this will be just fine and probably live really nice lives. Also it'd be nice if the USA and China could avoid a war/proxy wars while trying to figure out the new world order.

sillysaurus32• 12 years ago

Even though pvnick was incorrect about their claim that the recession isn't over, we should try to look past that.

Their more important claim was that people have forgotten what it's like to have enough money. It's hard to dispute that. In the tech sector, most of us have "enough" money, but it's not the case anymore for the vast majority of people in the US.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

Not sure if this was meant as a contradiction or not.

First you said: "All of the bad stuff you listed are symptoms of an empire in decline as well as a massive change in how the economy works"

Then at the end you said: "Also it'd be nice if the USA and China could avoid a war/proxy wars while trying to figure out the new world order."

I do agree we are seeing the US in a state of decline. Too many wars, a destroyed economy just starting to recover, educational issues, floods of illegal immigrants. There's only so much one country can take. Add in the massive amounts of financial aid we give other countries and fight their wars for them, it is very reminiscent of the fall of the Roman empire.

The Roman Empire was stretched too thin and soon became overrun by other neighboring tribes. It eventually took a toll after years of invasions and recoveries. Then education began to suffer, crime increased, production decreased, and cities began to shrink.

Also keep in mind the dark ages followed the fall of the Roman empire. As such, I hardly think we've seen the end of this very turbulent time period.

pvnick3• 12 years ago

Your narrow technical definition of the word "recession" is by no means universally accepted [1] [2]. In addition, as another post adjacent to your's points out, there is a common meaning used by everybody outside of economic-savvy circles that refers to periods of general economic difficulty. It is this definition which is more important because this is what the technical definitions of recession attempt to formalize with math and economic indicators, and the tendency to play semantics and say "since GDP hasn't fallen for two successive quarters the recession is over" when the economy is clearly still in shambles ignores the real struggle of millions of Americans who are not seeing the benefits of our "recovery," other than hearing about it on the news.

[1] http://www.nber.org/cycles/recessions_faq.html

[2] http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/11/23/what-is-the-difference-b...

TheOtherHobbes• 12 years ago

There's not much room for interpretation there unless you choose a different definition of "recession".

Inexplicably, the mainstream definition of GDP omits to explain how GDP growth is distributed.

Equally inexplicably, almost all of mainstream economic policy and theory makes similar - let's be kind - interpretations about economic experience which privilege a certain perspective while ignoring other equally valid perspectives.

So technically you're correct.

Politically, in terms of the everyday experience of most of the population, 'The recession is over' is raving nonsense.

It will probably just take a while for society to sort all of this out.

I'm betting on a millennium or two. (At least I would if it were practical.)

I think most people reading this will be just fine and probably live really nice lives.

So that's just fine, I guess?

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

"Being poor is the new norm" -- you're talking about America, a country that has extremely high living standards compared to most other large (>25M) countries.

potatolicious• 12 years ago

And yet even in that context, regression of the standard of living is still a bad thing.

The "but other people have it worse" argument does not negate the need to address bad things happening at home.

nodata• 12 years ago

What high living standards? I'd say medium living standards. Take Scandinavia if you want to claim high.

tjradcliffe• 12 years ago

You've unfortunately sparked a fairly pointless litany of quibbling about language, which I don't think was your intent.

The problem is that GDP is a lousy measure of median economic well-being, which is what matters most in social policy, yet it is the overwhelmingly popular summary statistics for (mean) "economic well-being". The problems with using arithmetic means rather than medians are so large and well-known that it's astonishing anyone still uses them, but the historical inertia of such measures is huge. There are decades of social science and economic research that needs to be re-considered in the light of median measures.

The article in question is part of this process, as it focuses on median measures, and anyone who is paying attention acknowledges that median measures are far more appropriate in many cases than mean measures.

"The GDP is growing" is no more relevant to a person who can't afford to buy winter boots than "Boot production has increased". And if the median person can't afford to buy boots, that indicates a major social problem. We need to move the discussion on from GDP and talk about the median person. It's still an imperfect measure, but a much, much better one.

A "double dip recession" translates in those terms to "things getting much worse for the median person."

bmm6o2• 12 years ago

You've unfortunately sparked a fairly pointless litany of quibbling about language

Perhaps unfortunate, but very predictable. We have to agree on the definitions of the words we're using otherwise we're just monkeys at keyboards. And starting from a false premise is one of the worst ways to construct an argument.

As an aside, I'm always intrigued when people use words whose meanings they don't really comprehend. I think it's interesting how we try to infer meaning from contexts and how rarely we actually check that model against reference sources.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

mainstream America just collectively forgot how it felt to have enough money.

Yeah, no more easy line of credits for deadbeats and people with zero collateral who want to flip a home they can't afford and sell at a price that won't work. Banks shouldn't provide insurance for investing.

We have become accustomed to the 60 hour work weeks for folks fortunate enough to have jobs

This kind of thing happened way before the recession and the mythical 1950s worker who went home right a 5 is just that, a myth.

chronic unemployment for those unfortunate enough to work outside of tech

Tech sucks. I know blue-collar guys who paint or install drywall making my salary. Except they have no student loans, no office politics, etc to worry about. Granted a lot of them pay union dues, but its okay as Joe Taxpayer has agreed to pay their pensions. Do nothing jobs like HR pay six figures. The average salary for a Chicago school teacher is $85,000. If you think tech has all the money you obviously have no finance, lawyer, or doctor friends.

Being poor is the new norm

If you're an American, you're far from poor, globally.

It bothers me that there's so much whining from people nowadays. Its like they never became a bazaillionare so they buy into the fallacious "things were better in the past" mumbo-jumbo. Yeah, the past wasn't too bad but try not to be black or asian or latino or a woman back then if you wanted to get ahead.

It also helped that the rest of the world was rebuilding from WWII while we had all our infrastructure, business, etc still intact. Maybe being relatively poorer is a good thing if it takes a world war to make us "rich."

dubfan• 12 years ago

I've been seeing a lot of these types of articles lately, trying to convince how bad off the American worker is and how those fat cats in the 1% are siphoning all of the wealth away. I've also noticed a recent uptick in socialist-populist activity. I'm not sure which is the cart and which is the horse but it seems like articles like this have a specific political agenda in mind.

kyllo2• 12 years ago

Do nothing jobs like HR pay six figures

Not to fresh college graduates, they don't. Six figures in HR is seniority pay.

The vast majority of entry-level office jobs available today pay very poorly compared to junior SDE. An entry-level HR coordinator is typically making ~$20/hour.

forrestthewoods2• 12 years ago

Absolute trash analysis. Worse than garbage. I say worse because the analysis is so catastrophically wrong that the complete inverse could be true.

It's using average. Average is a terrible data point. I think if you replace 'average' with 'median' you'll have something more useful >95% of the time. Maybe more.

For example, it is widely circulated that the gains have all gone to the rich. Well the losses also went to the rich. It's theoretically possible that the median household, or even 90% of all households, have exhibited slow but linear growth since just before 2007. Meanwhile the upper echelon could have swung wildly down than up.

Now I'm not saying that's the case. What I'm saying is that could be the case. The data presented provides insufficent information to make any type of determination on how "Americans" are doing.

Bah hum bug!

Edit: Yup. I deserve that for failure in reading comprehension. Oops.

rayiner• 12 years ago

It's clearly using median net worth. As indicated by the label on the chart that says "median net worth."

wavefunction2• 12 years ago

I downvoted you for your trash analysis. I will be back this evening (1:45PM here at the moment) and I will cite sources until you scream for mercy. The loss of wealth for the average American (note I didn't say MEDIAN lol) is well-established at this point.

api4• 12 years ago

I periodically see these press releases from places like AEI (the American Enterprise Institute) and similar trying to argue that the loss of wealth for the average American is some kind of illusion and "things have never been better."

Reminds me of the stories I've read about the glory days of the former USSR. As collectivized farming failed, Pravda printed endless stories about how farm yields were exploding. People read these stories as they starved. I'm sure the cognitive dissonance was almost comical.

There's something oddly Soviet about the self-assured parallel universe fantasizing of American conservatism. I'm sure it's from decades and decades of fanatical anti-Communist propaganda warring. You become that which you fight.

forrestthewoods2• 12 years ago

I failed reading comprehension 101 so I don't think this is required. But I'm always interested in reading interesting links if you have anything you'd still like to share.

Someone1234• 12 years ago

They did use median[0] in the research.

[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealt...

jinpa_zangpo• 12 years ago

The article says "median net worth."

lottin• 12 years ago

It looks like they don't know the difference between nominal value and real value. In a housing bubble, the nominal worth of your house increases, but its real worth stays the same - unless, of course, you have a stock of houses that you can sell, but that's not the case of most Americans.

api4• 12 years ago

The trouble is when nominal value shrinks, it shackles people to endless cycles of debt slavery. Either that or people default, which causes follow-on cascades of defaults.

If we had a low-debt cash-only economy this might not be the case, but our economy is so far from that it's not even worth talking about. We are absolutely a credit economy, and when the numbers get smaller in a credit economy pretty much everything breaks.

Eventually the collapse of the middle class will drag down everything else, including the rich.

Amezarak• 12 years ago

FWIW, the US is actually doing a great job of deleveraging its private debt, especially relative to other countries.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/global_capital_markets/unev...

hawkice• 12 years ago

Calculating how poor people are based on comparing against a time known to have unrealistically high and unsustainable housing prices, which made up a very large portion of net worth, seems like clickbait. We haven't re-entered a housing bubble massive enough to make every a paper millionaire. We shouldn't sulk about that.

branchless3• 12 years ago

Yes! Great post. As you note this is good news. If house prices stay at sane levels we will be able to have true wealth creation instead of money printing via housing which leaves the next generation impoverished.

We should celebrate a reduction in house prices as we celebrate the reduction in the cost of a laptop. More disposable income for the next generation and less going to the banks for creating money on a screen and then crediting your account with it.

sillysaurus32• 12 years ago

It doesn't seem like clickbait. It seems pretty important to think about, actually.

Little story: In 2007, a member of my family landed a lot of signed contracts to commission him to do a certain type of job. These were actually so lucrative that he quit his dayjob.

Then 2008 happened. All of those signed contracts became meaningless. People simply said no, we're not paying you anymore, sorry. Fast forward a month, and he's contemplating ways to kill himself to make it look like an accident so that his family will keep their house via life insurance payments.

Luckily, things didn't turn out that way. He was able to get his job back. Somehow.

Might it be true that comparing the present to the lucrative year of 2007 isn't necessarily productive? Possibly. Probably. But it's an interesting historical perspective, and it's also interesting to remember how much people's faith in the economy matters. The type of work he was being commissioned for wasn't anything related to tech or housing. The ripples are profound, both in the upswing and the downswing.

branchless3• 12 years ago

Sorry to hear of his issues, but surely perpetuating high house prices means his children would also be under huge stress as they stretch themselves to the limit (and assume zero unemployment like this guy).

The "wealth" created by pulling forward demand through credit through housing wasn't real. That's why living standards fell - we stopped creating wealth and started adding zeros to numbers on a screen.

Reducing house prices means more disposable income for our children. And their children. And theirs.

Yes there was a hit to the housing crash, but only because the loss in living standards was a result of the misallocation during the "boom". 2008 was just Wile E Coyote looking down having already run off a cliff.

Want to avoid a fall? Don't run off the cliff. Not looking down isn't an option long-term.

thaumaturgy3• 12 years ago

I found a slightly older article which appears to use methodology that's at least mostly similar to Pew's (which is where this article came from). It includes a nice little graph: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/12/chart-of-th...

The $81,400 median net worth number cited in the article is roughly comparable to 1995 numbers in the article I found, which very well pre-dates the period that most people consider to be the beginning of the housing bubble.

The housing bubble is readily apparent in the 2004-2007 period in the graph I found, but there was still a period of rising median net worth from 1992 to 2004, most of which shows comparable or better median household net worth than today.

The article also directly addresses your point: "In 2007, median household net worth was $126,400, while the median amount of home equity was $110,000; in 2010 net worth had dropped to $77,300, while home equity had dropped to $75,000. These days, home equity is net worth." (i.e., the net value of a family's home is now pretty much their entire net worth; in 2007, that wasn't the case.)

nostromo• 12 years ago

I'm really worried about our economic future.

I think job creation has been decoupled from economic growth. That's terrifying for the lower class today, and will eventually be terrifying to nearly everyone.

I also think central banking has lost its effectiveness. We've had 6 years of 0% interest and money printing -- the pedal is to the metal -- but labor participation for working-aged citizens is stuck at a low not seen since the mid-1980s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/09/E...

Scary stuff...

spiralpolitik• 12 years ago

Indeed. It's hard to have a comsumption based economy if 99% of the population have no money to spend on things.

thaumaturgy3• 12 years ago

I'm not so sure.

Most of what I read suggests that American workers are as productive as ever; the generated wealth just seems to be getting concentrated into the hands of a smaller number of people. It's not really employment or even industry that's broken, it's the exploitation of workers (and not just in the U.S., although it's pretty bad here right now), and since it is politically incorrect to suggest anything that smells even a little like wealth redistribution, the problem will continue for a while until there is sufficient public unrest.

The situation looks to me a lot like the one in the late 19th century (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_b...), except now the political fat cats and monopolists are in the news and communications industries.

gaius• 12 years ago

Man, I hate it when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.... Ooh look, new iPhone!

pcarolan• 12 years ago

This study uses 2007 as it's baseline which is like saying that lake levels are 40% lower than they were at the height of the last flood. Asset prices were overinflated in 2007, so you'd probably want to baseline somewhere between 2003 (the end of the early 2000s recession and 2007 to get a sense of how much worse off people actual are.

dumbfounder• 12 years ago

And that doesn't even take into account inflation. (at least the article makes no mention of it, maybe the original report does)

vondur• 12 years ago

I'm guessing most Americans net worth is based on the value of their homes, and property values for the most part have declined since 2007, this would make sense.

eyeareque3• 12 years ago

This makes me want to ask: Where did all of the money go? It had to go somewhere, right?

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Its actually imaginary points. It doesn't have to go anywhere.

eyeareque3• 12 years ago

Sure, but if someone lost their house and the bank took it, wouldn't that mean the banks ate up all of the assets?

delecti• 12 years ago

The article seems to be discussing the median. The money went to the top of the curve.

DrJokepu• 12 years ago

Money is not wealth. It's a (very efficient) mechanism for exchanging wealth. "Where did all the wealth go?" would be a better question to ask. The answer is that nothing in life has inherent value, only perceived. If the perception changes, wealth can be lost (or gained).

mynewwork• 12 years ago

It didn't have to go anywhere, and in many cases it didn't. Imagine you have a house (500k) and a car(20k) in 2007. Today you still have the same house (now valued at 400k) the same car (now valued at 10k). Your net worth has dropped substantially but the money didn't go anywhere, nobody else gained by the depreciation of your car or the market price correction of your house.

eyeareque3• 12 years ago

I'm assuming that people who lost their homes lost their equity. I'd assume there was a transfer of wealth in those situations.

patmcguire• 12 years ago

Is this page violently broken for anyone else on desktop?

zo1• 12 years ago

Broken for me, too. Running Firefox

pistle• 12 years ago

Should have drawn a trend line to avoid a comparison that includes the bubble in real-estate value... but then it wouldn't likely be such an ominous number.

russelluresti• 12 years ago

So, everyone's already pointed out that it's dumb to compare the amount of money you have now to the amount of money you had at the height of a bubble (where that money was unsustainable and over-inflated).

One thing that's missing here, though, is the idea of amount of money to cost ratio.

For example, say you had $1000 in 2007. Now say that, in 2007, a loaf of bread cost $1000. In that year, you had enough money to buy 1 loaf of bread. Now, in 2014, you have $600 (40% less than 2007). But now, instead of $1000, a loaf of bread is $100. Now you have enough money to buy 6 loaves of bread. You technically have less money, but the value of each dollar you have is significantly more. So, are you really "poorer" now?

The issue with just looking at a single number when analyzing economic health is that it will never tell you the whole story. I can have a million dollars and still be in poverty if a gallon of milk costs 2 million.

Negitivefrags• 12 years ago

One thing that's missing here, though, is the idea of amount of money to cost ratio.

That isn't missing at all. It's specifically accounted for. See how the graph says "in 2013 dollars". That indicates that they are using inflation adjusted values.

tokenadult• 12 years ago

It's really amazing to contrast this thread with the thread currently up about the Gates Foundation report on good news in reducing disease in poor countries. I live in the United States, I do NOT own a house (I never have), I've had several career changes (bad planning on my part, no one else to blame) but I still consider myself very well off. I have use of this amazing device called the Internet to have intellectual conversations with friends any hour of the day or not. That alone would have been unimaginable in my childhood. There has been a lot of progress, and Americans are staggeringly wealthy by any reasonable worldwide standard. Moreover, Americans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, and mostly don't even notice that.[1] So, sure, many Americans don't have as many on-paper financial assets as they appeared to have at the peak of the housing bubble, but so what? Americans can still take care of their children, still enjoy leisure, and still change where they live and what they do for a living with a freedom unknown in much of the world. If this is what it's like to be poor in America, I have no problem with being poor. (Disclosure: I have lived outside the United States, and I have been to places with stark poverty. I have a point of comparison as I type this.)

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_... http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession

Related Stories