"Downward Mobility" (NYT, 08/30/06)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/opinion/30wed1.html

If you’re still harboring the notion that the economy is “good,” prepare to be disabused.

Even the best number from yesterday’s Census Bureau report for 2005 is bad news for most Americans. It shows that median income rose 1.1 percent last year, to $46,326, the first increase since it peaked in 1999. But the entire increase is attributable to the 23 million households headed by someone over age 65. So the gain is likely from investment income and Social Security, not wages and salaries.

For the other 91 million households, the median dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under-65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full-time working men for the second year in a row, and among full-time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under-65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out.

Despite the Bush-era expansion, the number of Americans living in poverty in 2005 — 37 million — was the same as in 2004. This is the first time the number has not risen since 2000. But the share of the population now in poverty — 12.6 percent — is still higher than at the trough of the last recession, when it was 11.7 percent. And among the poor, 43 percent were living below half the poverty line in 2005 — $7,800 for a family of three. That’s the highest percentage of people in “deep poverty” since the government started keeping track of those numbers in 1975.

As for the uninsured, their ranks grew in 2005 by 1.3 million people, to a record 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent. That’s also worse than the recession year 2001, reflecting the rising costs of health coverage and a dearth of initiatives to help families and companies cope with the burden. For the first time since 1998, the percentage of uninsured children increased in 2005.

. . . more at

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/opinion/30wed1.html

the chumps in charge are abusing them? Why do people still insist the economy is doing so well? I just don't get it. Well, I do...but I don't want to.

unless they're safe and secure behind the walls of their suburbs.

It's the blow dried bobbleheads on the tube who are chirping about how great the economy is, which should give you a clue who it's great FOR.

The rest of us hear the propaganda every night and then confront higher gas prices, higher food prices, jobs that are under attack from predatory countries overseas, low wages, and a lack of hope for the future. If we've still got debt to leverage, we're using it to make ends meet because our paychecks will no longer allow us the necessities of food, shelter, clothing and medical care. Forget about vacations and retirement: those went out with the last generation, the one that pulled the ladder up after them when they put Reagan into the White House.

Only 23% now believe the networks are telling the truth, which is a good thing. They see the real news every day, the news that tells them that the rich have decided that they can finally dispense with the rest of us beyond a small servant class and that we're now on our own while they continue to steal us blind.

People aren't able to articulate this, by and large, but they've all felt the chill of being called redundant in the country they used to own.

Next comes the rage, and then the action. Bring on the tumbrils, my knitting needles are at the ready.

:sarcasm:

perfectly illustrates the tremendous transfer of wealth from poor, middle class, and upper middle class Americans to the wealthiest in our nation, via destruction of the social safety net, tax cuts for the very richest, outsourcing of jobs, corporate welfare, and so on.

It is also worth pointing out that Bush and the fiscally incontinent Republicans in Congress our borrowing money from America's unborn great-grandchildren and giving that money directly to their corporate cronies.

And I admit that I am kicking this thread with this post.