House of Paine

roller coaster rides :the " take home " version

  seems
"  hackademic scholars 
                      now agree 
over the last 30 years 
   the individual  lines 
                of  household  income 
                have
           grown more restless
                 more choppy 
                      more...treacherous 


so the question gets asked....

how many 
in our vast  fleet
   of tiny familly arks 
              can safely say
                "no matter what comes
                          "we "
                can weather the   tempests....
                                    all by our selves"

============================================


NYT march 20 2005:
  by Daniel Gross 


------------------------------------------



" scholars ( sic)
         have concluded 
that incomes are much less stable
today than they have been in the past"

best availible estimates:

" household income volatility 
has  been  increasing
since   at least 1975.....

 it accelerated in the 1980's

 turned down some 
               in  the early 1990's

 and then accelerated again 
towards  
       the end of the 1990's "
   ----------------------------------------


" According to 
"the Hacker volatility index"

over all household  income 
                       volatility 
              rose 88 percent 
                between 1975 and 2000"
-------------------------------------------------------
The further  problem :

" while volatility has risen 
 real incomes haven't risen"
and whats more 

 "this  volatility has grown faster  
for those who can afford it least"
----------------------------------------------

" in the 1970's
 income for middle-class Americans
 tended to fluctuate

  by 16 percent
               a year

 But in the 1980's and 1990's

 middle-class incomes 
   fluctuated

 an average  
                 of 30 percent"

" For those whose earnings
        placed them 
                      in the bottom fifth
 income volatility
 rose 
from 25 percent

 in the early 1970's 

to

 50 percent 

in recent years" 

-------------
 note:
do you  share my  wonder
 at
   how  a household gets 
               defined
     into one or other  quintile?


in a properly longitudinal study 
                this is serious

my guess
here

its 
  " starting  household income 

(the income at the beginning of the study period )

    that defines 
          a households study  quintile
                      once and for all
                             its where the household starts
                      that
                  what makes a household
                           middle or lowest etc 
   and 
  after they start 
   their journey through the observation period
   
 their free
        to   
 criss-crossing quintile lines  
             like crazy
without a label change  

on second thought
 picking any year 
at random would work just as well

prolly 
the volatility of the volatility
by changing honest labeling methods 
gets to be tiny 
but my intuition 
is like my singing pitch....
shitful        ----------------------


-----------that not being enough
     there's more grim-ery ....
 "the familly's  nut"
    these days
             takes a bigger bite  ...:----------------


" fixed  household commitments 
          have risen 
as a percentage
           of total income....

 the typical American household 
              in the early 1970's spent
                                 about 

                    54 percent
 
                        of its income 
                                on big fixed expenses

 - home mortgage, health insurance, car, child care - 
with the rest left over for discretionary spending.

 By the early part of this decade
 however, the typical family 
was spending 

75 percent 

of its income 
on these large fixed costs"



and

 factors that functioned 
as internal shock absorbers
have weakened 

---------- under pressure
    household
offer up to the job market
  more of their hours
    butt fuck 
now that two jobs  per household
  is the norm 
where's are the availible 
            surplus hours gonna come  from?------------- 

 external buffers?
                they've 
                      shrunk  too

 " Over the last three decades, 
the percentage of workers 
covered by defined-benefit pension plans 
and employer-provided health insurance 
 has declined"

--------------------------------------

  ray of sun shine.... 

" Social Security provides 
a vital kind of insurance"

however here comes the heffalump

"The real issue' sez Hacker  
"lurking behind this republican effort  
is whether we should even have
                      a program like SSI...
a program 
that provides 
 bedrock protection 
                   against economic risk." 

-----------------------

ps paine and abel 
need to build us a nice model 
forth this eh?


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