“Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909,” writes Pear. And if you add in the direct hit from the recession, incomes have dropped almost 10 percent. It’s the worst blow to incomes in decades.
And yet the Establishment Consensus is that the middle-class needs to sacrifice more.
Corner Stone
The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History(tm) continues a pace.
lacp
Clearly the only solution is to slash Social Security and Medicare.
Seriously, this is indeed very, very bad. We’re in for some very rough sailing for at least several years.
Sly
Get another job, hippy!
Short Bus Bully
But El Rushbo and others will happily inform us that some of the rich lost more than 10% and have to scrape by with like $400k a year these days…
The Ancient Randonneur
FSM forbid that a banksta should have to wait another season to buy a new Mercedes. But never fear, God’s Own Parasites will make sure that awful scenario doesn’t come to pass.
namekarB
@lacp:
My kid says there are plenty of jobs out there. He alone has 3 of them.
cleek
…Congress shall make no laws inconveniencing nor repudiating the Establishment;
that’s the real Establishment Clause.
jl
Note that the simplest explanation for this sad drop in income is a deficiency in aggregate demand. And that was caused by a financial panic. And that was caused by realization in 2008 that the face value of all the outstanding paper debt was way larger than the value of the underlying assets. And that was caused by irresponsible deregulation of the financial industry.
Or we could go with the people who insist that we are always in macroeconomic equilibrium. And then look for some new excuse every day why them lazy, or worthless, or pampered, or structurally mismatched or strategically whining OWS lesser person interest groups, or shosulist Yuurrp, or fear of communist regulations that may or may not appear (and far smaller than many that have come decades before that did nothing to destroy business confidence at the time) or something, explains the problem. With no theory.
Stiglitz, who had a dead on analysis of the problem that he was trying to expound, in real time, was right. Way more face value of paper debt than value of real assets backing it up.
Inflation will be unfair to financial industry, forgiving students unfair to previous students (who got jobs in a much better labor market, forgiving mortgage debt unfair to ‘responsible’ homeowners (many of whom are no underwater).
In this situation all solutions will be unfair to somebody or other. But the stagnation caused by the debt overhang that may drag on for another decade is unfair too.
PeakVT
A 10% drop in income is a small price to pay for compared to the character-building it provides. Once everyone has good character again, I am sure our overlords will graciously let our incomes go up higher than ever.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“All those young people are sitting in a park they don’t even own. Obviously they are making so much money that they have free time to spend yelling at us oppressed rich people when they could be working.”
jl
Sorry, was too kind to the macroequilibrium peopled, meant to type
“With no theory or evidence”
beltane
Everything I read lately makes me more and more enraged.
@PeakVT: Thanks for the college advice in a previous thread. CCV to JSC does sound like the sensible option.
El Cid
Look at the top tenth of one percent of incomes.
The top 0.1% of income getters (“earners” is a loaded term) number approximately 150,000 people, gain about $5.5 million / year, and from 1970 to 2008 saw their yearly income (inflation-adjusted) increase by 385%.
The bottom 90%, meaning anyone earning less than $127,000, saw their yearly adjusted incomes fall by 1%.
The top 0.1% is less wieldy a phrase, but that’s where the real parasitism begins to be so clearly seen.
Someone can be in the top 1% with 250K. Fine. But not too many people can claim they’re among the top 0.1% getting $5.5 million / year.
And these aren’t figures or notions beaten into the ground, either. G. William Domhoff:
Remember that the next time an interviewed economist begins talking without data about how people overestimate the degree of inequality given that they might be among those who’d estimate the wealth share of the lower income population to be 7 times greater than what it is.
trollhattan
@El Cid:
Staggering numbers. Glad I’m doing what I can to ensure that 0.1% keep on keepin’ on, so I can dream my pie higher.
beltane
@El Cid: We are the 99.9%? Works for me.
geg6
I know that anecdotes are not data, but just my own experience told me this well before I read the data here.
In the last 3 years, I have gotten one raise, for 1.5%. For two years, we have not gotten any raises at all due to extraordinary cuts in the state allocation that we get and so that the cuts wouldn’t unfairly impact students and families through large percentage increases in tuition rates. Hell, we were grateful that, instead of the 51% cut in the state allocation, all we ended up with was a 20% cut. This now means that the largest and most famous “public” university in the state only gets a little over 6% of its budget from the state.
dj spellchecka
you know what would fix this? more tax cuts…..
signed
the koch brothers
piratedan
and when they do fire people for cratering the economy, they send them off with a golden parachute to the tune of millions in severance pay… great gig when you can get it. Wish I could be paid generously for screwing up the economy by not being a better consumer and adding more debt to the ledger.
PeakVT
@beltane: YW. The CC route has some problems. But right now it might be better to get a 2-yr degree and be debt-free than a 4-yr degree with $60-80K of debt. Even if he has to use 100% loans to tack on the bachelor’s degree, he would end up with a lot less debt. It all depends, of course, and keep in mind you are getting this advice for free…
YoohooCthulhu
I’ve found the most interesting politically-related questions you can ask a person these days is: what do you think the median/average income is in the U.S? What do you think a middle-class income is these days?
The higher your own income, the more you’re likely to get these numbers insanely wrong. I’ve even heard 80-90k quoted as a “standard middle-class income”, when it’s the ~75th percentile.
YoohooCthulhu
@El Cid:
An interesting postscript to these numbers is that the bottom quintiles frequently have substantially NEGATIVE net worth. So that explains the 0.3%.
William Hurley
Here’s a couple of items to add to your “this is very bad” collection:
The Obama-created Super Committee is negotiating how much cost burden should be shifted onto seniors who receive Medicare assistance. The Reuters report, and other analyses, highlight the efforts to force the burden shift in ways that obfuscate clear understanding of the changes in service of political deniability for all involved – that’s the committee itself, the entire Congress and the President as well.
The other item is a clear-eyed analysis of the economy’s performance generating jobs & pay. The analysis includes 2 eye-popping charts that are must-sees. The author of the analysis is David Altig, an SVP & Director of Research at the Fed’s Atlanta Branch.
Anyone unsure as to why its imperative for the Democrats to nominate a different candidate will find clarity on the matter via the information these reports provide. The body of data coming down on the side of the President’s impending electoral defeat is mounting at a geometric rate.
El Cid
@beltane: Remember that it gets more and more difficult to get income and wealth specifics on the top .01 or .001% because you’re getting to numbers about whom government agencies can’t release information — like the Census has to do in various microlevels of information — without it easily being used to identify individuals.
So, awkwardness or not, ‘we are the 99.9 percent’ could be the ‘triple 9’s’ or ‘999’ of the not-Herman-Cain crowd.
Although it’s easier to talk about the “Oh Point Ones”, or, for that matter, the “Point Oh Ones”.
I.e., ‘These are policies which are there to help the Point Oh Ones, but not help you a bit.’
In that same Domhoff link, note that by 2007, the Point Oh Ones got 6% of all wage & salary pay in the nation. From 1973 to 2000 (much less to more recently), this marked a six-fold rise in the (adjusted) income by the Point Oh Ones.
From 2000 to 2008, according to Berkeley economist Emanuel Saenz’s project (along w/others) of having an online worldwide comparative database of top incomes, the Point Oh Ones increased their share of the nation’s total income (among incomes of individuals, not GDP) from 2.84 to 3.34. Excluding capital gains.
Given a total personal income in 2008 (from US Dept of Commerce figures, I’d link but I don’t want to suffer moderation) of $12,451,599,000,000, this means that about $415 billion of yearly total income goes to the Point Oh Ones — roughly 15,000 people.
So, we, the 99.99ers, those 160,000,000 of us in the work force, need to sacrifice so that 15,000 people getting roughly $10,000,000 or more / year may see their incomes and share of the national income and wealth grow greater.
So, you know, all them jobs get created.
ALL POWER TO THE POINT OH ONES!
Oh, whoops, right; they have it already. Well, that’s only sort of true. The real movers and shakers, those dominating (over time, on average, not in each case, etc) US policy are the Point Oh Oh Oh Ones.
Yutsano
@William Hurley: Amazing that neither of your links suggest that Obama is the thing that needs changed. Go away ratfucker.
William Hurley
@Yutsano:
How so?
Yutsano
@William Hurley: Presidents do not make law. Congress does. Don’t make me break out the Schoolhouse Rock here.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Why you people so hardon the blowjob creators?
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Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Yutsano:
Yutsano is right, Mr. William Hurley. And they don’t enforce it, either.
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William Hurley
@Yutsano:
Is that the story you’re going to stick with?
I could introduce you to legislation that Obama claims as his own. But, by your definition, his claim of “title” is nothing more than an attempt to politically appropriate the labor and genius of Congress for his own gain.
Or I could point you to the “I’m Just a Bill” Schoolhouse Rock cartoon. Given your understanding, you’ll be surprised by the ending.
Now, which of these 2 means of impeaching your silly retort shall I use???
piratedan
@William Hurley: well the next fact that I see you post here will most likely be the first. You must be from marketing because all of your positions are pretty much vaporware…. I await your specific response that doesn’t offer any tangible proof with morbid anticipation.
djork
@YoohooCthulhu:
I had this conversatiuon recently with a FOAF. Her husband pulls in around $300,000 /yr. and they live in a house that’s worth close to $1,000,000, thus allowing her to be a stay at home mother. All 3 kids are in private school, even though the public elementary school they would attend is top notch. She swore up and down they were middle class. I finally googled the per capita income stats for her to see for herself. I’d like to say it was eye opening for her, but I doubt it.
geg6
@William Hurley:
Ratfuckers gotta ratfuck. You are doing a marvelous job of it.
Bill Arnold
@djork:
If they’re a layoff and a year (or two) away from losing that $1000000 house and lifestyle, then they’re quite arguably upper middle class. If they have assets enough to weather such a personal storm, then they could well be lower (very) upper class. Sounds like they’re spending all their money though. Depends on the level of assets. Wealth is a buffer providing some protection from the travails of reality, like business cycles.
Rafer Janders
@Bill Arnold:
It depends a lot on where they live, but I’d bet that if they have three children in private school, plus the mortgage on a $1mm house, then they’re spending every penny of that $300K annual salary.
After taxes they probably only clear $180K, figure the mortgage gets them down to $120K, then three private school tuitions at about $30K each gets them down to $30K to cover all other incidentals…yep, there’s probably very little to nothing left over at the end of the year. (Discounting, of course, the fact that the mortage payments have increased their equity stake in the house, but that’s not really cash they can access).
Which doesn’t mean they’re not rich — it means they have wealth but are choosing to spend all of it on schools and shelter, which is why they don’t FEEL rich. And I’m guessing if the husband loses his job there’s nothing to fall back on, so they are indeed just a catastrophe away from, well, catastrophe.
Or, as John Guare put it, they’re hand-to-mouth, just on a higher level.
William Hurley
@Rafer Janders:
There’s a big difference between “wealth” and “income”.
You’re post speaks to the latter not the former.
Tim Connor
@William Hurley: @William Hurley: Since you appear far too lazy to research anything for yourself, I have attached a link to a graph of the national income distribution. It shows the same concentration as wealth (what a surprise!):
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/live-reporting-occupy-wall-street
William Hurley
@piratedan:
Believe what you need to, even if it requires you to discount empirical facts.
What’s interesting about your reply is that the complaint you register is premised on the purported lack of evidence for my points, yet you offer no – as in none – evidence as to which body of data I provided was incorrect, in your view, let alone how or why such information fails your purity test.
Is it really the case that the evidence I provided is lacking or is it truly the case that the data’s robustness and the implications for Obama they project is a reality that’s too complex or too emotionally unbearable for you to handle?
Why do you and those like you who gather around this blog react so impulsively, so negatively to those of us who are so deeply concerned about a GOP win that we’re willing to honestly wrestle with the actual state of the actual electorate who will actually vote in ways you (and I) will find deeply distressing?
Why do you claim to see a better future for Obama despite hiding behind “Peril Sensitive Sun-glasses”?
Election 2012 is Bigger than Barry!
Hoping or wishing that fact away condemns the Democrats to opposition status where we may be witness to horrors worse than those the GOP created from 2002-2007.
OzoneR
@William Hurley: No one on this thread brought up Barack Obama until you did in comment #22, not a single mention of him before that.
You’re right, 2012 is Bigger than Barry, so why do you keep bringing him up?
Zifnab
Inflation! Inflation! Inflation!
/pundit economist shock jocks
William Hurley
@OzoneR:
Hmm, who do you think the item Dougerhead used as a point of discussion, predicated by the phrase “this is very bad” was meant to refer to? Who is the news Dougerhead posted “very bad” for?
If the President is not the first (and maybe only) person to pop into your head, you’re lying to yourself.
William Hurley
@Tim Connor:
I posted a link-heavy reply consisting of definitions of “Wealth” and “Income” as well as items discussing measures of national wealth and/or income and how it is each financial category is used by economists, accountants and bankers in their respective fields.
Let’s hope it is released from “moderation” so that we can finally arrive at some clarity of terms and their importance.
OzoneR
@William Hurley:
the American people…us. I don’t know what you’re obsession with Obama is about, but it’s a little sick…seek help.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: Not until comment #22 isn’t much of an indictment, especially when discussing a thread about the regression of wages.
William Hurley
@OzoneR:
You have a curios, though transparent, habit of arriving at your predestined conclusions despite the fact-at-hand.
From Dougerhead’s entry:
Who is more “Establishment” that the President?
I know the answer, and so do many others. I ask mostly out of curiosity as to where your answer will diverge from reality.
Bill Arnold
@William Hurley:
Uhm, the difference between income and wealth is exactly what Rafer and I were commenting on.
William Hurley
@Corner Stone:
One thing that’s axiomatic about aggregate “falling wages” is that aggregate demand also falls.
The ARRA – the tax-cut heavy, spending-light attempt at economic stimulus – was not only too meager in sum but was the wrong medicine for the problem that’s actually crippling the nation’s economy.
See 1st paragraph for problem statement. See the chart linked in the OP for the duration and decline of the wage/salary slope. PS – its shocking but not shockingly new news.
piratedan
and I wonder exactly who Hillary would have appointed to serve as her financial team if she had managed to win the nomination and the national election. Hope you enjoy the pie.
William Hurley
@Bill Arnold:
I’ll readily admit to having not read the entirety of your exchanges. I read the one I replied to.
In that post, the error I noted was made.
Sorry to have intervened.
Tim Connor
@William Hurley:
geg6
@OzoneR:
William “Ratfucker” Hurley blows his own cover with all this “Barry” and “primary Barry!” bullshit and has done so for several days/weeks now. If he isn’t an O’Keefe in training, I don’t know what he is. He sure isn’t any liberal, despite his protestations to the contrary.
OzoneR
@William Hurley:
Banks, Corporations
Rafer Janders
@William Hurley:
Um, actually, the difference between wealth and income was precisely what I was illustrating.
Joseph Nobles
Meanwhile, productivity has soared as household income plummeted. THAT is how the recession ended, on the backs of labor. And now we are told we must find a way to help these pore compnees get all their expatriated profits into the country to makee all the jobbeejobjobs start happening again.
If I was dictator for a day, I’d make it so that if Europe crashes, the tax on all that cash immediately doubles. That’s right, you want the safe haven of America, such that it will be? Get that money here now, or you’ll effin regret it, buddy boys. Americans have been working harder for less to pull us out of the mire, and it’s time for these bastards to get down here and start pushing as well.