7-2 Additional Analysis Where Has All the Income Gone? Proper Measurements Paints  a Better Picture Source Wellbeing Proper Measurement Paints a Better Picture

Politicians and Media use quickly available and lowest income growth estimate. Since 1965 fringe benefits and household composition affected income growth. Measuring Middle Class Wellbeing Requires Adjustments for these and the use of the most appropriate inflation measure.   See Economic Normality 1945-2015 and Americans- Forget How Good They Have It   Source  See Problems With Economic Measurements Over Time. 5 min video

4. Rich Have All the Wealth  The major source of lower income Cohort, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are not considered wealth accumulation. See 7-3 Additional Analysis   Editor's Note: About 20 years ago I read where people concerned over the budget wanted to tie government salaries and SS to a more realistic measure of inflation and I was not surprised when government employees making the decision took about ten years to make the change. SS still uses a  CPI Index to adjust benefits which gives recipients a bonus. "...many economists, ...conclude that the CPI overstates inflation." "... only some of the upward bias in the CPI have been eliminated."   "The Chained C-CPI-U is another step toward eliminating the substitution bias remaining in the CPI-U and CPI-W. Source As of 2005 the BLS reports "The C-CPI-U to our knowledge currently is not used in any federal legislation as an adjustment mechanism."     Recently when the IRS came under fire for going after conservative non profits  I thought the reason was they thought liberal would want more government, more employees, more promotions ...