On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 04:24:28 GMT, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
Well, you can take the position of the conservative think-tank, the Cato
Institute, and point out that a careful analysis of the quintile divisions
of family income in the US indicates that the middle class is doing just
about as well as it's done since the early '70s.

Then, like the Cato Institute, you could ignore the fact that it now
frequently requires two incomes for a family to remain in the middle
quintiles, where it once required one.

A doubling of job seekers in the marketplace can do that. When
women entered the workplace, they diluted the value of labor
by providing a glut of supply. With households bringing in more
currency, they naturally chased more goods, driving up prices.
The end result of all that supply push and demand pull is that
everyone wound up in about the same place with respect to
standard of living as the inflated currency buys about the same
amount of goods as before.

Gary