Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
- 16,829
- 2,492
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The failed 'conservative' revolution over the last 30 years is coming home to roost. Tax cuts for the wealthy created ZERO private sector jobs over the last decade.
And the right wing pea brains and teabaggers want to do MORE of the same, but this time with malice toward the middle class, the unemployed and the poor.
Lost Decade for American Income - WSJ.com
The downturn that some have dubbed the "Great Recession" has trimmed the typical household's income significantly, new Census data show, following years of stagnant wage growth that made the past decade the worst for American families in at least half a century.
The bureau's annual snapshot of American living standards also found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008the highest since 1994. Some 43.6 million Americans were living below the official poverty threshold, but the measure doesn't fully capture the panoply of government antipoverty measures.
The inflation-adjusted income of the median householdsmack in the middle of the populacefell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.
"It's going to be a long, hard slog back to what most Americans think of as normalcy or prosperous times," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
The data, released Thursday, underscore the extent to which U.S. households relied on government benefitsand each otherto weather the recession and how living standards at the middle of the middle class have stalled. The report comes as the economy is at the center of a vigorous debate over how government policy can best help the poor and unemployed.
...
The median household income fell 0.7% to $49,777 in 2009, down 4.2% since 2007, when the recession started, the Census Bureau said.
The bureau said that the drop in income in the recent recession, so far, wasn't much different from those recorded in the early 1990s and early 2000s recessions, and was actually smaller than the 6% drop recorded in the deep recession of the early 1980s.
But there is a difference this time: In the prior three recessions, incomes fell after years of upswing, then resumed growing once the downturn ended. The decline this time comes on top of a long period in which incomes stagnated even through the recovery of 2003 to 2007.
And the right wing pea brains and teabaggers want to do MORE of the same, but this time with malice toward the middle class, the unemployed and the poor.
Lost Decade for American Income - WSJ.com
The downturn that some have dubbed the "Great Recession" has trimmed the typical household's income significantly, new Census data show, following years of stagnant wage growth that made the past decade the worst for American families in at least half a century.
The bureau's annual snapshot of American living standards also found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008the highest since 1994. Some 43.6 million Americans were living below the official poverty threshold, but the measure doesn't fully capture the panoply of government antipoverty measures.
The inflation-adjusted income of the median householdsmack in the middle of the populacefell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.
"It's going to be a long, hard slog back to what most Americans think of as normalcy or prosperous times," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
The data, released Thursday, underscore the extent to which U.S. households relied on government benefitsand each otherto weather the recession and how living standards at the middle of the middle class have stalled. The report comes as the economy is at the center of a vigorous debate over how government policy can best help the poor and unemployed.
...
The median household income fell 0.7% to $49,777 in 2009, down 4.2% since 2007, when the recession started, the Census Bureau said.
The bureau said that the drop in income in the recent recession, so far, wasn't much different from those recorded in the early 1990s and early 2000s recessions, and was actually smaller than the 6% drop recorded in the deep recession of the early 1980s.
But there is a difference this time: In the prior three recessions, incomes fell after years of upswing, then resumed growing once the downturn ended. The decline this time comes on top of a long period in which incomes stagnated even through the recovery of 2003 to 2007.
