AlterNet: Bush's Painful, Lopsided Economic 'Recovery' Continues

[marmar]

Bush's Painful, Lopsided Economic 'Recovery' Continues

By Heather Boushey, AlterNet. Posted August 30, 2007.


New data shows that while top earners are OK, this may be the first upswing in history in which middle-class families never fully rebound.


Global markets have been volatile over the past month and mainstream economists are now talking about whether recession may be just around the corner. A recession would certainly not be good news for America's working families, especially since most have not yet recovered from the last one.

The current economic rebound, which began in the middle of 2001, has been relatively weak, generating fewer jobs and less income growth than previous recoveries. And, companies have not been offsetting lower wages with better benefits. The opposite is true; the number of working people who get healthcare from their employers has fallen sharply in recent years.

On Aug. 28, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest numbers on income and poverty. According to the data, despite the fact that the median household saw its income grow by 0.7 percent between 2005 to 2006, it remained 2.0 percent below where it had been in 2000, at the last economic peak. So far, this recovery has generated less income growth than prior ones: at this point in the recovery of the 1990s, household income was only 1.3 percent below its prerecession peak and at the comparable point in 1980s, household income was only 0.9 percent below its prerecession peak.

And what growth we have seen in family income has gone mostly to those at the very top of the income distribution. Since 2000, families in the top fifth of the economic ladder have seen their income rise by 1.0 percent -- they were the only ones to see any growth at all -- while those in the bottom fifth saw theirs fall by 4.5 percent. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/61004/

[DrDan]

1. seems to me that this administration likes to justify it's economic success

by citing growth in the DOW. But isn't that a measure of investor confidence, and not consumer confidence or any measure of economic progress?

And I have been curious for some time about whether this corrupt admin could pump enough money into the market to keep it artificilly high so junior would have something to claim as a legacy - a healthy economy. We know he fudges the other numbers . . . could he manipulate this as well?

[whistle]

2. Nothing is trickling down to the lower 80% income of working Americans