Most, not all.
In the last thirty years,
most Americans have gotten poorer.
US net worth rose considerably over that period, which is what you would expect to see. Technology has improved and productivity increased, so society has a greater capacity for wealth building. America was also quite a bit older on average in 2013 than it was in 1983, so average wealth should have gone up.
But all of these gains went to the top 20 percent of the population. It's worse than that, actually. Over 100 percent of the gains went to the top 20 percent, because the bottom 60 percent of the population got poorer.
Much of the blame can be placed on the great recession and a sharp decline in home values, the primary savings vehicle for many Americans. All of the blame can be placed on policy decisions from the Reagan era to the Clinton era to the economic collapse and onward that have valued wealth-building by the upper classes (read: investment, capital gains, corporate offshoring) as a conspicuously more privileged enterprise than the wealth-building efforts of the lower classes (read: labor, pensions), and which seek to manage both tax policy and overall economic policy with an eye towards advantaging that investor class over that laboring classes.
But no, you're not imagining things. Despite sharply increased productivity and economic growth, the majority of non-wealthy Americans have ended up poorer. Not only has that been a the result of explicit policy choices dismantling wealth-building efforts by the lower classes, it's one that has continued with no meaningful adjustments even after the economic collapse. You may consider sixty percent of America to be a valuable part of the nation, or at least a respectable part of the nation, but as of the 2012 elections most of them were still being dismissed by presidential candidates as moochers who would do better if they weren't being coddled so much. If we only let the reins loose on the top percentage of Americans so that they could bring their growth to the rest of us, every single sodding conservative voice since the Reagan era has vowed no matter how much we had previously loosened those reins or how little it boosted the economic prospects of everyone else, we would finally be getting somewhere.
Hasn't happened yet. Hasn't happened ever. And now most Americans are worse off than they were thirty years ago, and a single wealthy family is planning out how to best spend something close to a billion dollars on their personal efforts to get their preferred candidate installed in the White House, because if we just got government and the little people off their backs they could finally get some things done around here.
Honestly, it's enough to make a person want to go out and buy some pitchforks.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—GOP 100% Against Economic Recovery:
Not a single vote in favor of the economic recovery plan passed today by the House. Nobody expected overwhelming GOP support. But for every single Republican member to oppose a new economic recovery plan?
After the 2008 election, that's just stunning.
But perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise. It's the same thing that happened in 1993, when not a single Republican voted for Clinton's stimulus bill after the first George Bush's presidency.
Hopefully the economy rebounds just as strongly this time as it did back then.
Tweet of the Day
Now that Ted Cruz is running the NASA committee they've reopened the Challenger investigation and determined it was, in fact, Obama's fault.
— @JohnFugelsang
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin re-enacts his APR for radio. Cook's 2016 brackets. AL's 1st openly gay legislator says she'll expose affairs of marriage equality opponents. And AL's Chief Justice Roy Moore doesn't believe in courts. Reid trolls McConnell. Why won't the Kochs stop leading? Good reasons not to vaccinate. "The Netenyahu Disaster." Is it baffling that MMA fights are illegal in NY? Gun rights vs. property rights. No PB&J in school, but unvaccinated kids A-OK! More on "scam PACs."
Joan McCarter visits to update us on the Lynch hearing, new GOP subpoena rules, GOP governors disguising Medicaid expansions, and ID's "Add the Words" campaign.
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