The rich are getting richer — and the poor are getting richer too, by any reasonable measure:
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a study on the “Living Conditions in the United States, 2005” with detailed information on the “Percent of Households Reporting Consumer Durables,” and those percentages are displayed in the table below for: a) all U.S. households in 2005, b) households with income below the official poverty line in 2005, and c) all households in 1971.Not surprisingly, the percentage of U.S. households owning basic home appliances increased between 1971 and 2005 for all appliances except traditional telephones, which have gradually been replaced by cell phones. Certain appliances such as air conditioning, clothes dryers, color TVs, and dishwashers that used to be luxury items owned by a minority of American households in 1971 became so affordable that by 2005 a large majority of households owned all of those appliances. And some household items such as microwave ovens, VCRs, computers, and cell phones that were virtually nonexistent in 1971 became so affordable by 2005 that more than two of every three American households owned those items.
But what is even more impressive is the comparison of the living standards of households living below the poverty line in 2005 to all U.S. households in 1971. By almost every measure of appliance ownership, poor American households in 2005 had much better living conditions than the average American household in 1971, since poor households in 2005 had much higher ownership rates for basic appliances like clothes dryers, dishwashers, color TVs, and air conditioners than all households did in 1971.
As economist Steve Horwitz commented recently about these improvements on the Austrian Economists blog, “Life for the average American is better today than 35 years ago, life for poor Americans is much better than it was 35 years ago, and poor Americans today largely live better than the average American did 35 years ago. Hard to square with a narrative of economic stagnation or decline.”