Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Wow, it's great to be a working person in America today:

From the New York Times Thursday:

"for the fifth straight year, median household income was basically flat, at $44,389 in 2004, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That's the longest stretch of income stagnation on record."

"1.1 million more people fell into poverty in 2004, bringing the ranks of poor Americans to 37 million."

"income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. And additional census data obtained by the Economic Policy Institute show that only the top 5 percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling."

And from Paul Krugman's column on the 26th:

"According to Labor Department statistics, the purchasing power of an average nonsupervisory worker's wage has fallen about 1.5 percent since the summer of 2003."

2 comments:

SheaNC said...

I'll bet the median income is actually lower than what they list, since they average in the mega-rich incomes of the top few %, who take in a much larger percentage of the nation's wealth.

Mike V. said...

no, I think that's right.
you'are thinking more along the lines of average.