Why so many are unsatisfied with the economy
The right frequently seems genuinely mystified as to why so many Americans tell pollsters how unsatisfied they are with the economy. Bush and his allies frequently say, “Look at GDP and unemployment rates! You guys should be thrilled! What kind of idiots are you people?”
Maybe news like this will help conservatives better understand the widespread discontent.
Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows. […]
The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income pie, the average remained smaller. […]
Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.
Got that? Income growth not only stopped after Bush took office, but the last five years are unprecedented in the post WWII-era.
But the really entertaining part of the story is the White House’s response.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, attributed the drop in average incomes to “the significant wrenching hits that our economy took in 2001 and 2002, so no one should be surprised that what a bubble economy created in the late 1990s and 2000, where economic data were skewed, would take some time to recover.”
Mr. Fratto said the fact that nearly all of the growth in incomes was among those in the upper reaches of the income ladder and that the majority of investment tax breaks went to those making more than $1 million “is not a very interesting story.”
Oh Tony, thanks for your input, but I think we’ll be the judge of what is and isn’t an “interesting story.”
The White House response is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, Fratto is struggling to blame everyone else for five years of Americans earning less money. I was particularly fond of Melissa McEwan’s translation of Fratto’s assessment: “Thank you, White House Spokesman Tony Fratto, for taking the time to create a new way of saying ‘Clenis!’ + ‘9/11 changed everything’ = ‘f**k you.’ Very refreshing!”
And second, as the NYT hints, Fratto’s perspective about a gradual recovery doesn’t add up because some Americans are doing quite well.
The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.
These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.
People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.
CTJ’s Robert McIntyre told the Times that he expected the select few at the top to benefit from Bush’s tax policies, but said the size of the savings “still takes your breath away.”
He added that the tax savings at the top, combined with lower average incomes after five years, “shows that trickle down doesn’t work.”
As if there was still any doubt….
The Bushies love to tout the fact that average income is up. It sure is. If a CEO gets a million dollar raise and I get nothing “our” average income went up $500,000. Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.
“Trickle down” doesn’t work, but pump it to the top certainly does!
If the economy was doing as great as they say, poor Tony Snow could have afforded to remain in his job.
I just went through the checkout line at the grocery store about an hour ago. The guy that rang me up must have been 75 years old. His fingers were bent an knotted from arthritis. The store is always looking for workers at their starting wage of $8.00 per hour, which is probably what the old man is making.
Not to worry, I’m sure if the old man scans and bags quick enough, he can pull himself up by his bootstraps and make assistant manager by the time he’s 100. I think that job pays $10 per hour… with benefits… a 10% discount at the store.
I was in the airport on Friday and Lou Dobbs’ show had one of those polls. Something along the lines of “Do you believe the economy is getting better?” The response was 95% no. I thought that was interesting. Well, as interesting as web polls on a demagogue’s website get.
#4 Haik
It’s really enough to make you throw up your hands!
I live in the reddest part of the first state to be declared for Bush in 2000, and the district next to mine threw out it’s reliably red history and the incumbent and elected a Democrat for the first time in 30 years (over a real bible-thumping, knuckle-dragging Republican).
Maybe folks everywhere are starting to catch on. You think?.
Many Americans live and die like animals. Like animals. That’s the truth.
Shorter Tony Fartto: Can we talk about something else?
I guess he didn’t want to steal the other Tony’s “It’s just a number.”
Sorry TF, If people remember having more money in Year One and know they have less money in Year Five, telling them that the data was skewed just makes you look like a particularly inept liar… Oops, I forgot. Carry on.
OT: I can’t decide who I want to replace Snow more if the choice is Fratto or Perrino.
The unemployment rates mean absolutely nothing these days. Take away a good-paying job, and the poor schmoe who loses that job gets counted one time in the core statistic, and one time only—when he files a “new” unemployment claim.
Granted, while he’s drawing benefits, he’s still listed as part of the overall unemployment picture. But—-if he’s still unemployed when the benefits expire, he’s dropped from the rolls, thus reducing the unemployment “big picture” by one—and is counted as “an improvement in the overall employment picture of the national economy.” If he finds himself a crummy little job that pays half of what he was making before, he gets “counted again.” If he finds a second job to supplement his meager earnings, he’s counted “yet again.”
In the end, this “Bushylvanian Math Protocol Scenario” shows a downtick of “one,” and an uptick of “three.”
That’s how they’ve dressed up a teetering economy to make it look healthy—while simultaneously having to inject billions of dollars into the nation’s domestic banking network, just to keep their collective doors open….
so no one should be surprised that what a bubble economy created in the late 1990s and 2000, where economic data were skewed, would take some time to recover
Errm, Tony — your administration managed to give us an unsustainable economic bubble (real estate) — combined with declining wages, decaying national infrastructure, an exploding deficit and a dollar that holds less and less value worldwide. Wonder why the markets are all riled up?
Quite a hat trick, ass clown.
Once again, the Bush administration rise to new heights of cretinism.
(Isn’t the GOP supposed to know about, like, economics and stuff?)
Back when Reagan was President and he touted “Trickle Down Economics” there was a cartoon circulating titled, “Trickle Down Economics,” with some rich guy pissing on the masses. That pretty much summed up the reality of “Trickle Down Economics.”
It was proven then that enriching the rich produced no benefits for average Americans and as we can see today, that has not changed. The rich just keep it all to themselves.
having to inject billions of dollars into the nation’s domestic banking
We need to bring back the gold standard. Ron Paul has that right.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070821/ap_on_bi_ge/foreclosure_rates;_ylt=AsgGH4RetP2zlUaKHoYG3lyyBhIF
Foreclosures are up 93% from July last year, also. How does the Bush Administration respond to that? Crickets?
For me, it is as easy as looking at the Canada/US exchange rate. Currently it is $1.06 CDN to the US $.
During the late 90s, when everything was booming it was $1.67 CDN to the US $. Made for some very expensive trips to the States.
FYI, I have read that Canadians who make the same salary in CDN as an American who gets paid in USD has the same earning power when the exchange rate $1.19 CDN to the US $. Mostly this is due to programs like universal health care and other programs.
I’m sure the people working two and three jobs at a time just to make ends meet are contributing to the reduced unemployment rate. Though I’m quite certain that isn’t included in their analysis of the statistics.
JACK S: What people have to understand is the real meaning of “trickle down”. It’s not the hard spurt at the beginning of the act; it’s the last one or two drops that are left for the last jiggle!
Re: Haik @ #12
Agreed. Anything other than an arbitrary “standard” set by a Private Cabal of Banksters. The Federal Reserve is not “federal” and there is no “reserve.”
Take cover. I feel an “idiot” coming on.
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” —Amschel Mayer Rothschild
Regarding the recent market injections — $120 billion and counting (!!!) — by the Fed in an attempt to curtail the subprime mortgage fallout:
I’m not sure he’s right, but I like what Richard X. Bove, a Florida-based analyst with New York investment-banking firm Punk, Ziegel & Co., had to say.
In a report cited by Bloomberg News, Bove opines that the Fed’s move may prevent a 1987-style stock-market crash, but it may also start a 1973-style recession.
“I believe that the Fed acted precipitously to protect monied interests and bad business policies,” he wrote. “It may have certified rather than prevented a recession.”
Complete Denver Post opinion piece I quoted above can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/yqfywb
i’d like to pick up on another aspect of fratto’s remarks, the notion that “wrenching hits” to the economy took place in 2001 and 2002. what bushit!
we had a two-quarter recession in 2001. period.
9/11 was not a “wrenching” economic hit in 2001. period.
and 2002 was a year of recovery, so i really have no frickin’ clue what he’s even trying to say.
of course, he’s a bush administration spokesperson: i never have a frickin’ clue of what they are trying to say other than “we’re great, bush is perfect, and anything else is inexplicable democrat carping.”
And then there’s this: In Bush World, when you’re poor and you lose your house to foreclosure, your world of pain has just started. It’s a perfect Catch-22: You lose everything, but at least your debt is forgiven, but because the debt is forgiven, it’s income, and now you have a new debt to Uncle Sam, one with penalties and interest added, because of the time that elapsed since you “earned” that income.
It all makes perfect sense in Bush World, though. What else is the I.R.S. to do? The rich are off limits. Middle class people fight back. So why not go after the poor and disadvantaged? I.R.S has to collect taxes somewhere.
I was particularly fond of Melissa McEwan’s translation of Fratto’s assessment
I’d like to thank Tony Fratto, without whom I wouldn’t have such wonderful, heaping piles of stinking horse$hit with which to work.
Laughing at Tony Fratto is in extremely poor taste, because he is absolutely right. The American Economy happened to be in WTC number 7 on the day Osama bin Laden with his co-pilot, Saddam Hussein, drove into it on a long-range crop duster drone. Consequently, it suffered a “significant wrenching hit”. Just remember, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
[…] grocery store about an hour ago. The guy that rang me up must have been 75 years old. His fingers were bent an knotted from arthritis — Haik Bedrosian,@4
In my little town, we also have retirees working as bagger “boys”, shopping cart shufflers, etc (not so much at check-outs). And more and more elderly women are now babysitting. What ticks me off about that situation is not just that someone that age ought to be able to retire in some semblance of comfort, after having spent years and years working.
There’s another side to the retirees being forced back into the labor market. It’s that the teenagers, who had done those jobs previously, can no longer get them. Being able to earn your own spending money and, by extension, being able to decide how to spend it (ie telling the parents where to get off) is good for one’s self-esteem. Having to show up to work on time, learning to be polite to customers, etc is good for acquiring a sense of responsibility. IOW, for teens, working is a way of becoming a better — and better adjusted — citizen. But, given the poor economy, jobs that they’re capable of doing are now going to adults, because living money takes priority over spending money.
As a society, we’ll be paying for this misalignment for a long time.