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I think if he trolls hard enough, his comments might show! Haha.
You’ve gotta LOVE the snots
who have to post long testimonials
assuring the world they DON”T READ THE TROLLS….
.
sure you don’t……….
See? I have no idea what stupid shit he mighta just said. But he’s still talking. TO NO ONE. It’s so awesome. You really should try it, Venom! 🙂
I agree that you’re being willfully obtuse, David. First of all, if you actually knew anything about economics, you would know that GDP/capita is a terrible measure of the overall well-being of a society. Sure, it can point to overall growth/decline trends, but says nothing of what the average family is experiencing. For a more nuanced understanding of the state of our economy, take a look at this guy’s work: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/ , specifically the first link under “income and wealth inequality.” The table for 2007 is striking. The cutoff for the top 10% of income earners is a scant $109,000, barely enough to care for a family in many areas of the country, while the cutoff for the top 1% jumps dramatically to almost $400,000. The median income for the population as a whole approaches $60,000, while only taking into consideration the bottom 90% (um, yeah, that includes the so-called “middle class” as defined by the income of the middle 50% of income earners) is a scant $32,000.
Now for time periods. In 1981, the top 10% of income earners earned about 33% of the income in the U.S. In 2007, they earned 45.51%. In 1981, the top 1% earned a little over 2% of the income, in 2007, they earned a little over 8%. I also like the table attributing this “fabulous income growth” you have noted between the top 10% and all us regular folks. And I also like the year-to year comparisons, which show that most of this income isn’t even going to the top 10%, but the top 1%+. In fact, the % of income earned by the top 5-10% has held nearly stable from 1981-2007, while the higher income groups have grown.
In short, while the economy and, therefore, the median income or GDP overall *has* grown rapidly as you state, the average (and even above-average) joe is no better off for it, and may actually be worse off for it. Clinton gets no pass in this, as he changed hardly any of the policies that allowed this runaway income inequality to manifest. Too bad this study doesn’t look at the bottom, I think the results between “middle class” and “poverty level” would also be very astonishing. There are a whole lot more interesting tidbits in the data, but I’ll let you come back to me with questions.
@15- Yes, those were/are stupid people. You could say they were ignorant, but they’ve chosen to be ignorant and that means they’re just fucking stupid.
@56 – or Supreme Court Justices.