{"id":12705,"date":"2007-08-29T14:25:58","date_gmt":"2007-08-29T18:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12705.html"},"modified":"2007-08-29T14:25:58","modified_gmt":"2007-08-29T18:25:58","slug":"working-more-for-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/working-more-for-less\/","title":{"rendered":"Working more, for less"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NYT’s headline makes it sound like the latest data is encouraging: “Census Shows a Modest Rise in U.S. Income.” The article<\/a> reflects a more dispiriting reality.<\/p>\n

The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high.<\/p>\n

Experts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace or working longer hours. Average wages for men and women actually declined for the third consecutive year.<\/p>\n

“There’s lots of evidence that more people are working,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal policy group in Washington. “The important theme going on here is a labor market that’s definitely offering people more work and more hours, but at lower wages.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The headline, in other words, left out the most important part. Americans’ income inched up slightly, not because wages are up, but because people are working more for less money.<\/p>\n

The NYT then added this gem:<\/p>\n

Some Republicans seized on the new data as evidence that Bush administration policies had been good for people’s pocketbooks. In a statement, President Bush said the news was a sign that Congress should not raise taxes. The data, he said, confirmed “that more of our citizens are doing better in this economy, with continued rising incomes and more Americans pulling themselves out of poverty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously, it’s as if Republicans are trying<\/i> to appear foolish and out of touch. People are working more for less and the GOP responds to the news by saying, “See? I told you we knew what we were doing.”
\n
\nWhat about the drop in the poverty rate? That’s good news, isn’t it? It is a positive development, but the closer one looks, the less encouraging it appears.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the poverty rate fell in 2006 for the first time this decade. But Hispanics were the only ethnic group with a statistically significant drop, to 20.6 percent from 21.8. The number of whites, blacks and Asians living in poverty was virtually unchanged.<\/p>\n

About 24 percent of blacks lived in poverty in 2006, compared with 8.2 percent of whites and 10.3 percent of Asians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s more, since the poverty rate got worse every year Bush has been in office, the modest improvement still reflects broader economic policies that offer very little to those at the bottom.<\/p>\n

As Matt Yglesias said<\/a>, “So if Bush wants to be judged by the impact of his policies on the poverty rate he, well, sucks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NYT’s headline makes it sound like the latest data is encouraging: “Census Shows a Modest Rise in U.S. Income.” The article reflects a more dispiriting reality. The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high. Experts said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}