reply to post by jackinthebox
I had to turn off ignore to see why people were referring to charts I was not seeing. I'll turn it back on again if (when?) jackinthebox starts with
the insult throwing - again.
Chart #1 Using seasonally adjusted numbers is fallacious and deceptive unless the trend you are predicting is seasonal (tourism dollars, farm worker
income, etc.). The first chart contains data that is not seasonal, so using seasonally adjusted dollars distorts the picture. You are additionally
using deception to display PRODUCTION WORKERS, which are a specific section of the economy WHICH WE KNOW has been declining as we transition to a
information economy. Additionally, your playing with percents. All this chart does is show that the annual percentage change in average hourly wages
for production workers has INCREASED every year, just not as much as it used to before 1980. This is unsurprising, as again 1980 marked the transition
to the knowledge economy and off shoring of production industry. However, even your chart shows that INFLATION ADJUSTED INCOME for these workers is
INCREASING every year, without fail.
Chart #2 A fundamental deception of the CPI. The CPI number is innately meaningless because it's product is supposed to be a deflated or inflated
nominal value depending on the base year you use. For any year you choose to base CPI, it becomes 100. The years below that are less than 100, the
years above that are more than 100 - AGAIN, because the CPI as a number is meaningless, and it is supposed to be used as a deflation/inflation number
to convert nominal dollars. If you used that same number to examine average wages from 1913 to 2003, you'd see they'd gone up =O but that wouldn't
fit your agenda.
You reach the conclusion that they are opposing trends and yet they aren't because they do not actually respectively measure income or inflation as
stand alone measures. The first chart could never be a comprehensive measure of income and the chart of the CPI is flawed because the CPI only has
meaning when used to actually adjust a nominal value.
The source of MY chart is quite clear: its from Berkley, and uses US Census Data. If you'd like to claim that there is some sort of conspiracy at
either Berkley or the US Census, then this really has devolved into being pointless. What, exactly, by the way IS more important when determining
whether people make more money than they have previously if not average income and inflation? Simply declaring your cherry picked and fundamentally
deceptive data as "more credible" does not lend any credibility to your argument.
This is very common knowledge, in fact its almost economics 101. If you want to be truthful with your economic data, you should only use seasonally
adjusted numbers for data which actually has seasons, and you should not pick a unrepresentative sample of the economy and make a sweeping
generalization.
You can disagree all you like. I
was only ever opposed to the idea that people are poor on their own right - we all (working class) deserve to be in good financial standing, that is
the definition of a good economy. Besides the obvious drug-addict or maniacal shopper, no person should REALLY be struggling to make ends meet in the
U.S. We are in that position on account of the system being designed to decay this way and compound our personal and collective debt. 
