The Census Bureau
has just issued its latest, and it's an atrocity. Behold the Bush economy, where the poor indeed get poorer, and grow their ranks by the day.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 - Even as the economy grew, incomes stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years...
The census's annual report card on the nation's economic well-being showed that a four-year-old expansion had still not done much to benefit many households. Median pretax income, $44,389, was at its lowest point since 1997, after inflation.
But that doesn't deter Magoo Machiavellis from spinning the business cycle and hoping against all hope:
After the report's release, Bush administration officials said that the job market had continued to improve since the end of 2004 and that they hoped incomes were now rising and poverty was falling. The poverty rate "is the last, lonely trailing indicator of the business cycle," said Elizabeth Anderson, chief of staff in the economics and statistics administration of the Commerce Department.
Given the
latest polling, it appears the Bush Administration knows a little some about trailing, and loneliness.
Even the wingbats at the American Enterprise Institute aren't buying it:
"It looks like the gains from the recovery haven't really filtered down," said Phillip L. Swagel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group in Washington. "The gains have gone to owners of capital and not to workers."
There has always been a lag between the end of a recession and the resumption of raises, Mr. Swagel added, but the length of this lag has been confounding.
Income inequality is near an all-time high, median income is down, and employer-provided benefits are down as health costs have risen.
But cue Louis Armstrong and listen to those birdies sing: Dear Leader
says its all okay.
He and his friends would know, after all.