Median Income Quotes

The median family income in the U.S. is lower than it was a quarter-century ago, and if people don't have income, they can't consume, and you can't have a strong economy. There's significant risk - actually it's no longer a risk - a significant likelihood of a marked slowdown not only in China, but also in a lot of other countries like Brazil, which is in recession. All of the other countries that depend on commodities, including Canada, are facing difficulties. So it's hard to see a story of a strong U.S. economy.

Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire population of America is walking past you in a single file of ascending income. The owners of losing businesses are invisible; their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor who are midgets. After half an hour, the strollers are still only waste high as the median income is have the mean [average].… Then the normal size people enter. Soon, giants thunder by and are 12 feet tall and they get taller. When the last 400 people walk by at the end, each is two miles tall.

The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.

There will be a debate on Firing Line between Buckley and Gore Vidal on the proposition: "This nation cannot survive as long as the income of 50 percent of the population is below the median." Mr. Vidal will take the affirmative.

There's no such thing as median income; there's a curve, and it really matters what side of the curve you're on. There's no such thing as the middle class. It's absolutely vanishing.

If you are born into a family below the national median income, we provide you with an additional $500, and for every contribution made to a child's account below the national median income, we match it dollar for dollar - the federal government will.

The poverty line in the U.S., for example, has nothing to do with the poverty line in India. It is a relative poverty line. It is reset from time to time but it is related to U.S. median income, so if I set that to be the absolute poverty line everyone in India would essentially be poor.

While easy to understand, the income-based poverty line has limitations. Specifically, the median monthly household income measures only income without considering assets.

The basic thing that made Trump popular is that he blamed others for the problems that we have in the United States. We have a problem. Let's face it. The typical income, median income, of a full-time male worker - and the workers who have a full-time job are the lucky ones - is at the same level it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real wages in the United States are at the same level they were 60 years ago.

I was raised by a single mother. We were definitely below the median income of our area.

There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation and inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody's well-being. That trickle-down hasn't happened. We've seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.

Median compensation in America has been stagnant over 25 of the last 30 years, the only exceptions being the last 5 years of the 1990s.

And wages - we'll see the end of this decline we're having. The median income in America is down 10% in just the last four years. That's got to stop. We've got to start seeing rising wages and job growth.

You can pay certain people more money and stuff but that's just going to be a transfer from one group to another. The only way people's wages are going to rise overall, or average median income is going to rise, is if you increase productivity.

Since 1994, unemployment rates are lower. Median household income is higher. A greater percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Home ownership rates are higher. And the violent crime rate has decreased.

Real median household incomes in the U.S. were basically the same in 1989 as in 2014. But we are also seeing similar challenges in the U.K. in the stagnation of real wages.

This is a critical time in American history. [Donald's Trump] strength is willingness to stand up to political conventions, take on Republican and Democrat leaders, and, in effect, do so in defense of the legitimate interest of people who make less than median income in America, is the key to victory.

If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.