Voter____ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, let's see what it looked like to the rest of
> the country (hey, it's easy to double your income
> when you are still in your twenties):
>
> The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy
> in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long
> period of prosperity that is leading economists
> and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the
> underpinnings of the nation's growth.
>
> It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost
> decade for American workers. The decade began in a
> moment of triumphalism -- there was a current of
> thought among economists in 1999 that recessions
> were a thing of the past. By the end, there were
> two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was
> neither robust nor sustainable.
>
> There has been zero net job creation since
> December 1999. No previous decade going back to
> the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent.
> Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any
> decade since the 1930s as well.
>
> Middle-income households made less in 2008, when
> adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 --
> and the number is sure to have declined further
> during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first
> decade of falling median incomes since figures
> were first compiled in the 1960s.
>
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
> le/2010/01/01/AR2010010101196.html
>
> Capt. Obvious Wrote:
> >
> > +1
> >
> > 3.5 times for me. Looks like that is at least
> 2
> > data points.
My salary is 2/3 of what it was in 2000 - but I don't blame the Republicans for it. I blame recessions of which we had little control, and more recently 9/11 which was when my salary took a major hit due to layoffs tied to the severe downturn it caused. Bush's tax cuts had nothing to do with it (as they hadn't happened) - nor did the modest yearly deficit they had during the early Bush years. Funny to call those deficits modest, but the ones we are seeing today are out of control. I know when we continue to have poor salary numbers for years to come who is to blame, especially with the massive increases in health care costs we are incurring due to the health care changes - they will offset any positive salary gains for quite a while.
If you can’t model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future? - William Happer Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Princeton University