Not to be one of those 'gotcha' folks but the article keeps talking about how all their figures are in 2017 dollars, but the animated chart says it's in 2018 dollars (twice). You'd think in a very short piece that's almost entirely about maths they'd catch such an obvious mistake, at least if anyone even remotely competent was involved.
Also, think about how much work is being done by the conversion to 2017 dollars. Overall inflation is calculated in a way that doesn't account for different segments of society having different spending habits. If the prices of caviar, luxury cars, mansions and yachts crash (to pick an extreme example) then this would decrease the calculated inflation for that year, without helping poorer folks out at all.
There's also no information about how people have moved around within each bracket. If the average income in the low-income segment has plummeted, it's going to mean a lot of real hardship for a lot of people. And it won't show up on that graph.
One last point - depending on changes to government programs, an equal income can lead to very different qualities of life. In a city with good social safety nets, well-funded parks and libraries, subsidised childcare, good public transit, your (for the sake of argument) $25,000 can give you a better life than elsewhere.
Also, you can click through to the report that the numbers come from for a more thorough statistical analysis. I'm kinda curious as to what methodology they used; the emphasis on 'households' makes me think that homeless people are entirely excluded, for example, and if it's a phone poll it will be biased towards elderly folks.
You can download all the data and have a look for yourself here: https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html.
Edit: Just had a quick glance through the table for median incomes, and a few points immediately jump out:
the year-on-year changes are small and have high error bars
everything is from 2017, so several years out of date (things will be much much worse now, for obvious reasons)
The methodology starts with the following introduction:
The Current Population Survey (CPS) is the source of the official Government statistics on employment and unemployment. The CPS has been conducted monthly for over 50 years.
Aka it's a political tool used by the current administration to show off good stats. I'm British, and we have an equivalent - here's a good article on why it's bullshit https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-in-the-uk-is-now-so-low-its-in-danger-of-exposing-the-lie-used-to-create-the-numbers-2017-7
The remainder of the assigned housing units are found to be vacant, converted to nonresidential use, contain persons with residence elsewhere, or are not interviewed because the residents are not found at home after repeated calls, are temporarily absent, or are unavailable for other reasons.
Aka anyone who has a criminal record, is an undocument immigrant, has had bad experiences with the government/social workers in the past, has reason to not be open with their identity (e.g. is trans) is unlikely to be covered by these figures.
I don't want to sound like I'm shitting on these stats too hard, because honestly this is about as good as you're gonna get. But there's a tendency for every layer of reporting to hide more of the flaws in the underlying data, so you eventually get an article that just says 'proof that everyone in the US is getting richer!'
Not to be one of those 'gotcha' folks but the article keeps talking about how all their figures are in 2017 dollars, but the animated chart says it's in 2018 dollars (twice). You'd think in a very short piece that's almost entirely about maths they'd catch such an obvious mistake, at least if anyone even remotely competent was involved.
Also, think about how much work is being done by the conversion to 2017 dollars. Overall inflation is calculated in a way that doesn't account for different segments of society having different spending habits. If the prices of caviar, luxury cars, mansions and yachts crash (to pick an extreme example) then this would decrease the calculated inflation for that year, without helping poorer folks out at all.
There's also no information about how people have moved around within each bracket. If the average income in the low-income segment has plummeted, it's going to mean a lot of real hardship for a lot of people. And it won't show up on that graph.
One last point - depending on changes to government programs, an equal income can lead to very different qualities of life. In a city with good social safety nets, well-funded parks and libraries, subsidised childcare, good public transit, your (for the sake of argument) $25,000 can give you a better life than elsewhere.
Also, you can click through to the report that the numbers come from for a more thorough statistical analysis. I'm kinda curious as to what methodology they used; the emphasis on 'households' makes me think that homeless people are entirely excluded, for example, and if it's a phone poll it will be biased towards elderly folks.
You can download all the data and have a look for yourself here: https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html.
Edit: Just had a quick glance through the table for median incomes, and a few points immediately jump out:
The methodology starts with the following introduction:
Aka it's a political tool used by the current administration to show off good stats. I'm British, and we have an equivalent - here's a good article on why it's bullshit https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-in-the-uk-is-now-so-low-its-in-danger-of-exposing-the-lie-used-to-create-the-numbers-2017-7
Aka anyone who has a criminal record, is an undocument immigrant, has had bad experiences with the government/social workers in the past, has reason to not be open with their identity (e.g. is trans) is unlikely to be covered by these figures.
I don't want to sound like I'm shitting on these stats too hard, because honestly this is about as good as you're gonna get. But there's a tendency for every layer of reporting to hide more of the flaws in the underlying data, so you eventually get an article that just says 'proof that everyone in the US is getting richer!'