A Decade With No Income Gains

[Mosby]

The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.

To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was seven years, ending in 1985.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn’t seem to have happened since at least the 1930s.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/a-decade-with-no-income-gain/?hp

The '08 census report:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf

[DJ13]

1. .......

[intheflow]

2. Really good toon that says it all. n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. +1 nt

[Hannah Bell]

3. the bottom 80% make less than in the 70s.

[SoCalDem]

5. and costs have risen dramatically too

Housing costs back in the 70's were less than 20% of gross income (for most people)..ours was 13%..for a very nice 3 bedroom brick house.

and our health insurance was probably only about 5%..maybe less..

[HughBeaumont]

6. Possibly longer . . .

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/86

No wage gains, no buying things. No wage gains, more debt. No wage gains, no costly retraining.

Fundamentally flawed all the way around. Don't know why no one in power grasps this.

And yes, that cartoon is right. Rising tides only lift the YACHTS.

[scheming daemons]

7. The Bush legacy