The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment on the figures on the economy released by the Census Bureau:
Real median household income—the exact halfway point of the earnings distribution—was statistically identical to the 2013 median. The $53,657 for 2014 follows two consecutive years of decline in 2011 and 2012 and remains 6.5% lower than the median in 2007. About the only indicator of well being that hasn’t declined in the Obama recovery are measures of income inequality.
These trends would be less worrisome were there more mobility over time, but the Census data suggest that fewer people are moving up the pay ladder compared to earlier periods. Some 57.1% of households were cemented in the same income quintile between 2009 and 2012.
Meanwhile, the official poverty rate of 14.8%—in human terms, some 46.7 million Americans—also didn’t budge for the fourth straight year and is still 2.3 percentage points higher than in 2007. The most notable finding of 2014 is that poverty increased among groups that are traditionally less vulnerable: married couples with children and people ages 25 and older with at least an undergraduate college degree. From 2009 to 2012, 34.5% of the population had a spell below the poverty line for two months or more.
To me the astonishing thing is that no one in Washington seems particularly concerned by any of this. The White House has never produced a growth plan for the economy, no plan it has ever produced would have put the people who lost their jobs during the recession back to work. They’re too busy counting partisan coups and endlessly fighting the culture wars.
Why should anyone in DC care?
The functionaries are doing well just as long as the government keeps getting bigger. The lobbyists are doing GREAT as the government keeps getting bigger and more obtrusive.
Congress, universally reviled except for the people paying Congress off, keeps re-electing a large share of its members no matter what – and they all bail to K Street when they do get bumped.
The regulators are all captured crooks on the take, but very legally so, so they don’t give a shit.
The President doesn’t give a shit because he’s going to be pretty much as rich as he wants to be, and every hardcore Democrat and almost every single black person everywhere worships him like he really is Black Jesus Christ. So he’s got no real reason to give a fuck about any of the little people.
And the people paying for all of this are getting by wonderfully with “record corporate profits” and ever soaring stock valuations. They’ve certainly got no reason to want anything but to run the people down further, as it works GREAT for the rich when everyone else gets poorer.
Why on Earth would you expect anyone getting rich off the current system to want anything else BUT the current system is beyond me.
I believe it was TB in a comment yesterday who pointed out that the objective view of Obama’s presidency shows the very things he supposedly deplores and was going to change has only hardened in place. Oh, I suppose the important issues like gay marriage have changed……
If you made it a project, Ice, you could probably construct a much longer list. But you can summarize it with just one notion: an ever increasing intrusion of government into the functioning of the country and peoples lives. I, for one, can’t imagine why anyone is surprised. Government is what it is, the electorate is generally comatose, and media have no desire to bring them out of the coma.
So let’s get back to it, hey!? Tastes great! Less filling!
@Icepick
In the comments of the previous post, you identify the gist of the problem. The voters keep electing the same people, but they expect different results.
It is no different anywhere else. People want to be protected by the government, but they do not want the intrusiveness actual safety would entail. People proudly proclaim they are aware they have benefited from their white privilege, but they are not willing to renounce it. People denounce the government giving away free stuff using unsound money, but they do not have a problem with creating as much unsound money as possible. And so on, and so on, and so on …
The modern welfare state or Keynesian economics requires unsound money, and unless the government just hands out checks, Wall Street and banks are required to give legitimacy to the money supply. Since the left is wedded to the welfare state, they are wedded to Wall Street and the bankers. End of story – slam dunk – case closed.
Modern free-market capitalism is not free, and it is based upon unsound money. Many on the right do not understand this, and they may not be wedded. There are also others who are not wedded. Amazingly, the right is more independent of Wall Street and the bankers than the left.
The top Wall Street and bankers rarely defend themselves from the charges of the left. They are well aware of their position in relation to the left. The left can never win. The best they can do is to allow a mostly free-market capitalist system using mostly sound money, and they can skim a little off the top.
If any of these schemes actually worked, Venezuela would be thriving, but instead, they can barely keep toilet paper on the shelves.
The right can has an additional option. They could endorse a fully free-market capitalist system using totally sound money, but it is probably just a libertarian fantasy.
I hate ‘lite’ beers on principle.
And Drew, you missed a trick. Obama was against gay marriage, too, remember?
C’mon, Ice. He “evolved.” Kind of like he evolved to love large corporate.
I see in Hillary speeches, who evolved to love Goldman Sachs, is now evolving back to the champion of the Average Joe. I’m sure it’s genuine. Guar-on-teed.
Who could possibly doubt Hillary’s sincerity? Why, she’s a regular Conrad Birdie!