BITS & BRIEFS: Distorted antitrust regulations // Separating race from class in US // Prosumer capitalism and McUniversity // Effects of restructured corporations
“So, when people borrowed in the post-war era, they were able to pay back what they borrowed. That changed in the 1990s … and it wasn’t because people were borrowing more. It was because they were making less money.”
Simply not true. Household, at all income levels increased borrowing from 1989 to 2004, by -triple digit- percentages, per Federal Reserve data. During this same period, household incomes of the lower 80 percentiles largely stagnated, then declined after 2004, per U.S> Census Bureau data.
Thus, households substituted the lack of substantive income increases with increases in debt loads.
See pp. 3-5 in “The Vanishing Middle,” free download available on Google drive at bit.ly/1KHjBKy
Economic Sociology & Political Economy 
“So, when people borrowed in the post-war era, they were able to pay back what they borrowed. That changed in the 1990s … and it wasn’t because people were borrowing more. It was because they were making less money.”
Simply not true. Household, at all income levels increased borrowing from 1989 to 2004, by -triple digit- percentages, per Federal Reserve data. During this same period, household incomes of the lower 80 percentiles largely stagnated, then declined after 2004, per U.S> Census Bureau data.
Thus, households substituted the lack of substantive income increases with increases in debt loads.
See pp. 3-5 in “The Vanishing Middle,” free download available on Google drive at bit.ly/1KHjBKy