Three consecutive years of declining real incomes, that's why

  Economy Is Great. Why Are Americans in Such a Rotten Mood?

 

Real median household income has contracted for a third year in a row in 2022

 

Big whoop: Real median household income rises $384 to new high after 17 years, says Census

From $58,655 in 1999 to $59,039 in 2016.

That's a total rise of 0.6546756 percent.

Don't spend it all in one place.

Stephen Moore tells some whoppers: Income was FALLING long before the 2013 increase in the capital gains tax rate

From Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, here:

"When Mr. Obama entered office the capital gains and dividend tax was 15 percent. Then he raised it to 20 percent and then he added a 3.8 percent investment surtax, bringing the rate to 23.8 percent. The tax rose by more than 50 percent. ...

"Wages have stagnated under Mr. Obama as taxes have risen on capital."

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Nice try at hiding the chronology, Moore, but no cigar.

Real median household income and real gross private domestic investment crashed in tandem and in concert with the 2007 recession. The investment side rebounded quickly, but real household income did not, and still hasn't. What's more, the whole phenomenon preceded any increase in the capital gains tax rate, which didn't pass until January 2013, with Republican support by the way. 

And it won't do to talk about wages stagnating, either. Real incomes have actually fallen, and fallen big. Employers figured out that the 2008 crisis gave them the cover they needed, their golden opportunity, to shed millions of expensive workers and rehire younger, cheaper ones. It's the biggest scandal in recent history, much bigger than the lies about ObamaCare, but no one is going to talk about it, least of all libertarians who are happy that the business inputs cost less.

The incredible rebound in investment is on the backs of all this labor shed in the crisis, helped along by rock bottom interest rates for those who are first in line for the money: bankers and businesses.

So-called conservatism never looked so bad.  

Obama says you're better off than when he took office, except you are not

click to enlarge

Obama says, quoted here:

"Like the rest of America, black America in the aggregate is better off now than it was when I came into office."

On the contrary:

Full-time jobs have not recovered to their 2007 peak and won't until summer 2015, if we are lucky. That will be eight years later, when full-time jobs in the past have always bounced back after at most three years in post-war recessions. Obama has done nothing for jobs, except to let the problem fester and try to heal itself.

Health insurance costs much more, covers much less and has narrower and less convenient networks. The proof of this is in the polling, where the majority of Americans remain opposed to ObamaCare. The minority which likes ObamaCare is benefiting from it at the expense of those who don't, who are more numerous. It's called income redistribution. Otherwise known as socialism. You know, like in Cuba, Obama's new best friend.

Owners' equity in household real estate stands at 53.94%, still almost 10% below where it was in 2005. Completed foreclosures in the last month are still running 95% above normal.

More than half of the 66% of Americans who have saved anything for retirement have individually saved less than $25,000. American taxpayers are forced to contribute on average 13.5% to the pensions of the country's government employees and save for themselves only at the rate of 5%.

But perhaps the most damning indictment of Obama is how Americans of all stripes have been impoverished under his watch. Real median household income in the US is lower now than when the recession ended in Obama's first term in 2009, and much lower than when he took office:

"At this point, real household incomes are in worse shape than they were four years ago when the recession ended."

Lies told often enough can become the truth, but they are still lies.