OPINION: Life is not the Indy 500

This week several readers asked: What percent of households had incomes less than $25,000?  The answer: 23.6 percent, nearly a quarter of all households in the United States, had incomes in 2014 under $25,000, according to the Census Bureau. That’s like working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks, at $12.50 per hour.

However, if we back up to the Good Old Days (1967) and adjust for price changes, then 27.3 percent of American households had less than $25,000 in 2014 dollars.

In 2014, 46.8 percent of households had income less than $50,000. A half century earlier, in Limbaughland, that was 58.2 percent of households.

Yes, it’s called progress, but it’s slow and uneven. Yes, in the aggregate, it’s what we want: a rising standard of living for increasing numbers of people.

But there is a problem.

In 1967, the top 10 percent of households had at least twice the income of the median household. By 2014, they were up to three times the level of the median household. That’s significant change. It means in 1967, the top ten percent could out-spend the median household by at least $49,000. By 2014, that differential grew (even after adjustment for inflation) to $104,000.

Over the same period, the median household’s income remained four times higher than the lowest 10 percent of households. People in the middle were slipping compared to the people at the top and not separating themselves from those at the bottom.

The upshot? Those in the top 10 percent could enjoy at least 13 times more buying power in 2014 than households in the bottom 10 percent. This was up from a nine times advantage in 1967. The top was drawing away from the middle and the bottom.

If this were going on at the Indy 500, we’d say nothing is wrong. It’s meant to be this way. Some teams find ways to get more speed from their cars while others do not. It’s a competition, the rules are the same for everyone, and to the skillful and the lucky go the rewards.

Or we could slow down the fast cars with governors on the motors. Alternatively, give the slower cars the front rows and put the fastest cars qualifying in the trailing rows.

But the Indy 500 is not the model for the kind of nation we want. We don’t want our neighbors to be spectators, watching others compete for great rewards, while they themselves struggle to figure out what is going on far out of their sight.

Far out of sight may be the root of the problem. We tend to see people who are like us and ignore the others. People at the top don’t socialize with people at the bottom. People at the bottom only see what the people at the top leave in their wastebaskets at night. We are often blinded by the little that we see. Therefore it’s easy to believe what we are told about them.