nemov.net

Debrah shouldn't like McCain. It means more Republican nonsense. Clearly she cares nothing for making America better.

8/8 years of Bush +
6/8 years of GOP congress =

Median incomes shrank from $50,588 in 1999-2000 to $49,901 in 2006-2007 - Census Bureau's Current Population Survey

Nice.

Measuring the growth of incomes or the inequality of incomes is a little like Olympic figure skating- full of dangerous leaps and twirls and not nearly as easy as it looks. - Alan Reynolds.

The median income stat might be good for a campaign ad but is basically a meaningless statistic.

Nothing like dragging the CATO institute into the fray.

Talk about rhetoric.

Median income is hardly meaningless. It gives us a snapshot of incomes by largely minimizing the impact of of the outlier. You know, the super rich and the super poor? What do you want to use? Average income? C'mon as an economist, you must have taken some statistics. You see, the outlier on the low side is zero. The outlier on the high side is theoretically infinite. Now, that would be silly but with the widening income gap, median income becomes a more realistic view of household yearly income. With the wealthiest watching their income have seen an annual increase of 9%, the bottom 5th have seen incomes decrease by 2.5%. By using median income those who buy into supply side blindly nonsense have the benefit of ignoring these trends. Unfortunately the result has been a drop in median income. Whoops.

I will give it up for the drop of 1 million unisured Americans. 46 million to go!

Median household income is a poor measure over time because "households" are changing in the United States. Income comparisons using household stats aren't as reliable as individual income because households vary in size. Real gross national income per capita paints a clearer picture, but again, it's not the be all and end all.

your utopian invisible hand supply side obsession with "per capita" everything is a great tool for obscuring the issue of distribution. even the link you provide quotes warren buffet acknowledging this: "The national income, divided by the population, is a very abundant $45,000 per capita, he said, a number that reflects an affluent nation but also obscures the lopsided income distribution intertwined with the prosperity."

will you ever discuss u.s. economics in terms of distribution? or will you perpetually hold fast to an ideology that blames the poor for being poor and resists any historical contextualization of social arrangements of power?

Speaking of distribution... median income doesn't factor in "income distribution." People in the bottom 20% of income receive two-thirds of their real income from government transfer payments. That's not even factoring in subsidized-housing.

You Utopian liberals who are obsessed with redistributing wealth make it seem like the normal United States citizen is like living in the dust bowl. I've lived in poverty as a child. It certainly wasn't easy, but it wasn't as dire as some of you bleeding hearts would like to believe. If you feel so bad about poverty do something about it. Government intervention doesn't work. There's not one long-term historical example of government intervention reducing poverty. Zilch, nada, zero.

Main Entry: uto·pia
Pronunciation:
\yu̇-ˈtō-pē-ə\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place
Date: 1597
1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

300 years of increased free market activity has resulted in the greatest economic achievement in history. Government redistribution has failed in every historical example, and yet liberals still want to do it. That, is a fierce belief in utopia in the face of all evidence.