Economic Stagnation

I hate it when the headline writers try to be upbeat when the whole gist of the subsequent story is downbeat. The New York Times falls into that trap with today’s story about personal incomes: Census Reports Slight Increase in 2005 Incomes – New York Times

Now if you look quickly at the headline you’d think there is a pretty good story to tell. Not great, but definitely upbeat. The trouble is that’s not the case. The only reason that incomes rose at all in 2005 was the fact that people were working more and thus getting more hours worth of pay. Wages per hour actually fell.

This is just the kind of gloss that the Bush regime likes to put on its dismal record. After years of growth, productivity improvements, and profits, the average family in America is worse off than before Bush arrived on the scene. The distribution of incomes is increasingly skewed away from wage earners towards stockholders and towrads the very few at the top of the heap.

The Republican squeeze on the middle class is showing just the kind of results you would expect, and the middle class response is to work longer hours to try to keep up. It is not a triumph that incomes rose because we worked more hours. Those hours are lost to family time, to leisure, to community activities and to keeping informed. The American public already overworks. It has notoriously few holidays, and works ridiculous weekly hours.

No wonder no one has time to keep up with the news and to remain fully informed about the Republicans failure at economic management.

Then again maybe that’s part of the plan too!