With all due respect, your graph ends in 2007, right before it hit the fan. The income of the bottom 20% is virtually flat from 1980 to 2007 in that graph, with a slight, temporary, swell in the late 1990s. Add in the last 2 or 3 years on the tail of the graph, and that seems quite consistent with the article showing the bottom quintile (20%) losing a few percent of income between 1980 and then.
The other quintiles, even the 21-40% group, have made real gains, and that's good, and most of your arguments apply to the other 4/5. However, it looks like we are slowly creating an underclass.
Do these people really have clean drinking water? Safe streets, homes and schools? Clean, healthy, food? A decent public education? I'm not talking about cheap toys, I mean basics of life.
Final rant: this stuff is personal for me. My family and I are a single income family, near the top of the 4th quintile now (< $120 K may not sound like much in Sunnyvale, but it goes a little ways in Sacramento), but I spent most of my childhood fairly poor. I was about 16 when Reagan's reign of error started ("Reagan" being a figurehead to represent the era and all its players). I went to college in the mid 80s, and watched the door to inexpensive public education largely being pulled shut bit by bit during the 80s. My academic abilities were in about the top 2 to 5 percent, but how is a poor, but smart, kid supposed to go to college now without piling on many thousands of debt? Are we doomed to live in a world run by legacy dullards like W???
I had similar experiences in the Sacramento area, but almost exactly one decade after you (probably ten years younger) - the idea that stings me the most is the "door to inexpensive public education" being slammed shut - I've got to say that the door being slammed has greatly accelerated these past 6 years, as tuition has jumped. In the 70s, education at a UC school was nearly free. Today it costs $30k/year including your fees, books and living expenses.
In light of flat income growth, that means families either work more or do without. The scary thing (for me) is that we're reaching the maximum of the "work more" strategy when both parents work 1+ jobs. Where do people go from here, considering that they've reached the maximum of their family's earning potential while prices are still rising? I suspect that we're seeing the beginning of the real decline these past few years - with not only stagnant real income growth, but a decline in the amount of things we can afford, and that means less college education, a less educated work force, and rapidly accelerating (if it wasn't already) income inequality.
When you're priced out of a good education (can't afford one) that's when we cease to be a merit-based society where able people work their way up. That's the end of the American Dream in not so many words.
The other quintiles, even the 21-40% group, have made real gains, and that's good, and most of your arguments apply to the other 4/5. However, it looks like we are slowly creating an underclass.
Do these people really have clean drinking water? Safe streets, homes and schools? Clean, healthy, food? A decent public education? I'm not talking about cheap toys, I mean basics of life.
Final rant: this stuff is personal for me. My family and I are a single income family, near the top of the 4th quintile now (< $120 K may not sound like much in Sunnyvale, but it goes a little ways in Sacramento), but I spent most of my childhood fairly poor. I was about 16 when Reagan's reign of error started ("Reagan" being a figurehead to represent the era and all its players). I went to college in the mid 80s, and watched the door to inexpensive public education largely being pulled shut bit by bit during the 80s. My academic abilities were in about the top 2 to 5 percent, but how is a poor, but smart, kid supposed to go to college now without piling on many thousands of debt? Are we doomed to live in a world run by legacy dullards like W???