| spaceguy said: Unions make all the difference.
Nothing stimulates the ecconomy like the middle class and this give the rich tax breaks has not worked and never has. |
While there's a good chance that there is a correlation, this graph doesn't prove it, or even provide strong evidence for it.
Union membership has been declining roughly linearly. Middle class share of aggregate income has been declining roughly linearly. Number of living people who attended Woodstock is probably declining roughly linearly. Given the right scales for each plot, one could easily line them up in order to make the argument that any two of the three are related. What people need to notice is that the middle class share isn't plotted to 0%, it's plotted to 42%. It is far more likely that this is a post hoc fallacy situation, and indeed, if there's a correlation, it's likely due to a common cause - that is, it's probably something like "trend towards corporations spending more money on election campaigns -> both reduced union membership (propaganda + changes in laws) and reduced middle class share".
What interests me more, in that graph, is 1993. Why did the middle class share of aggregate income suddenly drop so strongly between 1992 and 1993? Similarly, what happened in 1979 that began an exponential-shaped decay of union membership (which looks like it's going to stabilise somewhere around 10-12%)?
