Obama's Accelerating Downward Spiral For America

New income data from the Census Bureau reveal what a great job Barack Obama has done for the middle class as President. During his entire tenure in the oval office, median household income has declined by 7.3%.

In January, 2009, the month he entered office, median household income was $54,983. By June, 2012, it had spiraled down to $50,964. That’s a loss of $4,019 per family, the equivalent of losing a little less than one month’s income a year, every year. And on our current course that is only going to get worse not better.

Obama never tires of telling us that the economy was in one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression when he entered office, as if he was the only President to have suffered a recession early in his term. But nobody expected that he would use the vast powers of the most powerful office in the world to make it worse. But that is what he has done.

Even if you start from when the recession ended in June, 2009, the decline since then has been greater than it was during the recession. Three years into the Obama recovery, median family income had declined nearly 5% by June, 2012 as compared to June, 2009. That is nearly twice the decline of 2.6% that occurred during the recession from December, 2007 until June, 2009. As the Wall Street Journal summarized in its August 25-26 weekend edition, “For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.”

The Journal elaborated, “The President portrays the financial decline of American families on his watch as part of a decades-long trend. He’s wrong. Real income for middle income households rose by roughly 30% from 1983 to 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” And MSNBC hosts, listen up, you might learn something. The Journal further explains, “The political left likes to blame the ebbing of union power. But non-government unionization fell dramatically in the 1980s and 90s, and incomes rose.”

True, income growth lagged from where it should have been during the Bush years. But that only reflected the abandonment of half of Reagan’s economic program during those years. While Bush’s tax rate reductions did promote growth, Bush and the Republican Congress lost control of federal spending during the 2000s. Federal spending as a percent of GDP increased by one-seventh during the Bush years, almost exactly reversing the gains that had been won under Speaker Gingrich’s Republican Congress in the 1990s. (Clinton played a good rhetorical game appearing to fight the spending reductions, but deserves great credit for substantively giving into them in the end.)

The problem is that Obama has only greatly accelerated everything Bush did wrong, and reversed everything Bush did right. So Obama’s spending has skyrocketed the federal budget by nearly one-fourth as a percent of GDP in just one term. Moreover, the Obama Fed has abandoned any semblance of control over monetary policy, buying most of the soaring federal debt issued to finance Obama’s record smashing federal deficits with newly printed money (actually created by computer record, a sort of cyberprinting). Of course, the whole point of Obama’s tax policy has been to more than reverse the Bush tax rate cuts, which is now already slated under current law to go into effect on January 1.

That is why it will all only get worse in a second Obama term, as the economy slides back into a double-dip recession in 2013 unless these Obama policies are swiftly reversed. I first began ringing alarm bells about that a year ago with the publication of my Encounter Books Broadside No. 25, Obama and the Crash of 2013. But now even the Washington establishment CBO is pealing the air raid siren as well.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/09/02/obamas-accelerating-downward-spiral-for-america/

will it 'only get worse' with a republican

article from 2009

A Decade With No Income Gains

By DAVID LEONHARDT


The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.

To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was seven years, ending in 1985.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn’t seem to have happened since at least the 1930s.

And the streak probably won’t end in 2009, either. Unemployment has been rising all year, which is a strong sign income will fall.

What’s going on here? It’s a combination of two trends. One, economic growth in the current decade has been slower than in any decade since before World War II. Two, inequality has risen sharply, so much of the bounty from our growth has gone to a relatively small slice of the population.

Catherine Rampell has more details on the Census report, including some good charts.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/a-decade-with-no-income-gain/


a party review

2000 - dem pres, republican controlled congres
2001-2002- rep pres, dem senate, rep house
2003-2006- rep pres, republican controlled congress
2007-2008- rep pres, dem controlled congress
2009-2010 - dem pres, dem controlled congress


its a numbers game,, really , as usual

if you go to the actual census bureau site and look up median household income,, the difference in the numbers is so sad its funny

as it actually seems to show some years with an increased median income and some with a decrease,, CONTRARY to media interpretation,,,

difference is in WHICH numbers are chosen, in the above piece there is a possible reference to a specific month (I say possible because I cant find that information for JANUARY on the actual census site yet)

if you look at the YEARLY averages, you paint a different picture


,,,all that to say,, numbers are easily manipulated,,even when they are true

This report presents data on income,poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the 2012
and earlier Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Summary of findings:

• Real median household income
declined between 2010 and 2011,
a second consecutive annual
decline.

• The poverty rate in 2011 was not
statistically different from 2010.

Median household income was
$50,054 in 2011, a 1.5 percent
decline in real terms from
2010 (Figure 1 and Table 1).
This was the second consecutive
annual decline in household
income.

• In 2011, real median household
income was 8.1 percent lower
than in 2007, the year before the
most recent recession, and was
8.9 percent lower than the median
household income peak that
occurred in 1999.

•• Median family household income
declined by 1.7 percent in real
terms between 2010 and 2011
to $62,273. The change in the
median income of nonfamily
households was not statistically
significant.

•• Real median income declined
for non-Hispanic-White households
and Black households
between 2010 and 2011, while
the changes for Asian households
and Hispanic households were not
statistically significant.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf

So explain again, how this is manipulated?

its manipulated by choosing the years to compare and the detail to compare in those years (percentage vs real dollar amount,,etc)


for instance, this paragraph:


• In 2011, real median household
income was 8.1 percent lower
than in 2007, the year before the
most recent recession, and was
8.9 percent lower than the median
household income peak that
occurred in 1999.



compares 2011 to 2007, leading some to immediately attribute the numbers to this administration, because they will neglect to look at what was happening in 2008 before this administration took office

in that year 2007-2008 , we saw an equal hit in median income that we have seen in the last TWO years of this administration

,,meaning, its been on the decline since 2007, but that rate of decline is slowing down,,

Your math is WAYYYYYYYYY OFF..

If 2011 was 8.1% lower than 2007 and 8.9% lower than 1999 then that means 2007 was .8% lower than the high of 1999..

So the real math shows that over the period of 1999-2007 median income fell .8% while from 2007 to 2011 it fell 8.1%.

Year No. of Households Nominal $Inflation Adjusted

2011 121,084,000 $49,103 $50,054
2010 119,927,000 $48,340 $50,831
2009 117,538,000 $48,855 $52,195
2008 117,181,000 $49,341 $52,546
2007 116,783,000 $49,258 $54,489

This doesn't include the drop from 2011 to 2012..


2007 to 2009.. 54,489-52,195= 2,294

2009 to 2011.. 52,195-50,054= 2,141

The numbers clearly demonstrate that during the recession years median income fell $2,294.

During the post recession years 2009 to 2011 it fell $2,141.


The point is that Obama's post recession numbers are as poor as Bush's recession numbers.

Is that what we have to look "forward" to.. More of the same?


"I have done slightly better after the recession ended than Bush did during the recession".

OBAMA 2012

One of the reasons that I voted to reelect President Obama is because the ecomony IS getting better. Only a little over a year ago, the unemployment rate was around 9%. Now it's 7.8% and continuing to fall. Those of us who've studiee the situation understand why it's taking so long, but we're confident that the economy IS recovering.

If you want support of my statement, just read: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-05.html

no offense, but this just gives me a headache at this point

this is the CENSUS BUREAUS numbers for the same years you post

50,054 2011 average for household median
50,831 2010
52,195 2009
52,546 2008
54,489 2007


this is what I posted, basically
the years are march through march the following year

the average from march 2007-march2008 was 54489
the average from march 2008-march 2009 was 52546
the average from march 2009-march 2010 was 52195
the average from march 2010-march 2011 was 50831
the average from march 2011-march 2012 was 50054


so, since obama took office in jan 2009

we saw a first year decrease (march09-march10) of (52546-52195) 351 dollars

we saw a second year decrease of (march 10-march11) of (52195-50831) 1364 dollars

we saw a third year decrease (march 11-march12) of (50831-50054)777


before obama took office in jan 2009

we saw a decrease(march 2008-march 2009) of (54489-52546) 1943 dollars


we have not returned to that large of a YEARLY Decrease yet

we have stepped away from the FREE FALL of the recession ,, thats called improving

are we still losing income? Yes,,,and we have a way to go to gain income again

but we are not losing it at the rate it had started to decline in the recession,,,

No, it can be found under the pile at the end of the donkey along with other lies.

The economy thrives under Democrats by history alone

President Obama had a hell of a challenge when he came into office.

He had to stop us from the free fall into a depression.

Which he did.

We are not worse off then we were at the start of his presidency because we are not free falling into a great depression.

Recession means loss of jobs and income but the recession is not President Obama's doing at all.

Of course if you hate President Obama for other reasons, facts don't matter now do they?

whom is he going to blame if he wins another Term?



http://peoplescube.virtualestates.netdna-cdn.com/peoples_resource/image/15866-new_mess.jpg

lets elect him and see what exactly there will be to 'blame' someone for,,,