{"id":23316,"date":"2016-11-10T21:17:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T02:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=23316"},"modified":"2016-11-10T21:24:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T02:24:13","slug":"goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2016\/11\/10\/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Washington&#8217;s Blog<\/em> has the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/10\/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year.html\" target=\"_blank\">Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year<\/a> by  Michael Snyder.  Here are the numbers that <a href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2016\/11\/10\/donald-trump-defeats-hillary-clinton-why-she-lost-whats-next\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Previous post where Jimmy Dore quoted the numbers\">Jimmy Dore quoted<\/a> from the article.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.<\/p>\n<p>-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.<\/p>\n<p>-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.<\/p>\n<p>-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Being a stickler for not misusing statistics, I immediately saw the flaw in these numbers. The following sentences that Jimmy Dore did not quote may give you a hint at what I knew.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThat first number is truly staggering.  The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The first set of numbers are about what an individual worker makes.  The poverty level number is for a family of five.  There is no simple and straightforward translation between what a single worker makes and the total income of a family of five.<\/p>\n<p>I made the following comment on this blog article:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Did you forget that most families these days have 2 workers, by necessity?  Yes the numbers are bad for the USA, it is just unfortunate that you have to use numbers in a slightly misleading way to make your point.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let us always try to stick to the unadorned truth as we  make our arguments for how to make the country better.  It may be easier to make a point when we embellish, but in the long run it hurts your credibility.  Part of this country&#8217;s problem is that people have lost sight of the fact that there is a long run.  Well, at least there always has been a long run.  That may not be true of the future.  However, it is best to base your behavior on the possibility that there will be a long run.  If there isn&#8217;t one, then why worry?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington&#8217;s Blog has the article Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year by Michael Snyder. Here are the numbers that Jimmy Dore quoted from the article. -38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year. -51 percent of all American workers made less [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23321,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23316\/revisions\/23321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}