I just read something in the WSJ that kind of astounded me.
“Shrinking Middle Class A Threat to Stability”, p. A6 of the dead tree edition, below the fold. Basically it says that in order to be considered middle class, a household has to have income between 75% and 200% of the median. (This is per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD.)
“In the U.S.,” the article says, “a single person would have to earn between $23,400 and $62,400 to be part of the group.”
$23,400 is less than $12/hour at a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job. Are millennials really having that much trouble finding decent, full-time jobs in this booming economy? Or are they just lazy?
The article goes on to state, “While 70% of baby boomers were members in their 20s, that has fallen to 60% of the generation known as millennials.” It doesn’t indicate, however, what the percentage is in the US — this appears to refer to millennials in “developed countries”. So I wonder if it really means the number of millennials who are considered “middle class” in the US is actually dropping to that extent.
Of course, around the middle of the article, it becomes clear that what the OECD really wants is for countries to expand their middle classes by imposing “lower taxes on middle-income workers, and higher taxes on the rich to pay for that, as well as steps to limit housing, education, and health costs.” In other words, eat the rich, go socialist, become middle-class.
Don’t think it works that way. And no thanks.
I found this article (not from the WSJ) a lot more heartening, and I hope millennials are hearkening to Ms. Ahlgren’s clarion call, rather than sitting around waiting for everything to be given to them as the OECD seems to think is the way forward.
(By the way, the dead tree version of the WSJ article cuts off in an odd place, and the reason for that is the online version is a lot longer and has data graphs — and there’s a lot of important stuff in the part left out of the dead tree version. If you can find a way to get around or through the WSJ paywall, I’d recommend doing that rather than grabbing a copy of today’s dead tree edition.)