Excerpts:
The Presidential race is boiling down to one dominant issue: which party’s policies will do more to help the financially stressed American middle class. President Obama’s campaign theme is that Mitt Romney and the Republicans cater to the rich, while Mr. Obama cares about struggling families.
He may care, but he sure hasn’t done much for them. New income data from the Census Bureau, tabulated by former Census income specialists at the nonpartisan economic consulting firm Sentier Research, reveal that the three-and-a-half years of the Obama Presidency have done enormous harm to middle-class households.
In January 2009, the month President Obama entered the Oval Office and shortly before he signed his stimulus spending bill, median household income was $54,983. By June 2012, it had tumbled to $50,964, adjusted for inflation. (See the chart nearby.) That’s $4,019 in lost real income, a little less than a month’s income every year.
Unfair, you say, because Mr. Obama inherited a recession? Well, even if you start the analysis when the recession ended in June 2009, the numbers are dismal. Three years after the economy hit its trough, median household income is down $2,544, or nearly 5%.
Add the authors: “The overall decline since June 2009 was larger than the 2.6 percent decline that occurred” during the recession from December 2007 to June 2009. For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.
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. The political left likes to blame the ebbing of union power. But nongovernment unionization fell dramatically in the 1980s and ’90s, and incomes rose.
So what does explain falling real incomes? Slow growth, yes, but another culprit has been rising prices—especially for food, gasoline, medical procedures and college tuition—that have eroded worker purchasing power. The Federal Reserve claims this is no problem because “core inflation” has been relatively contained. But core inflation excludes food and energy prices, which are two of the biggest components of consumer budgets.
The big pay freeze is also the bitter fruit of public schools that have failed to teach the basic skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a competitive global economy. Rising health-care costs have also forced employers to take money that used to go into higher wages to pay higher premiums.
A key driver of higher wages in the 1980s and 1990s was a surge of capital investment in computers, plant and equipment, which made Americans workers more productive. When Mr. Obama pledges to raise taxes on investment income (capital gains, dividends and small-business profits), he is making it costlier to innovate and modernize. That plays out over time into slower gains in productivity and wages.
Consider the toll from America’s corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the industrial world. A 2011 study by economists at the American Enterprise Institute found that because of the capital flight from the U.S. as a result of this high rate, “every additional dollar of tax revenue [from the corporate tax] leads to a $4 decrease in aggregate real wages.” American workers would be the biggest beneficiaries of tax reform.
The new income data reveal other eye-opening trends. The group that has suffered the most during the Obama Presidency has been black Americans, whose real incomes have fallen by more than 11%.
Mr. Obama also likes to say that government workers like teachers are hurting and the private economy is doing “just fine.” But the data indicate that over the past three years households with government workers saw their incomes decline less than households with private workers. The public-private pay gap is now wider than ever ($77,998 government versus $63,800).
Every age group has seen a decline in income—except the elderly. Those between the ages of 65 and 75 saw an average 6.5% gain in income, though most are not working and collect Medicare and Social Security.
The last time incomes fell this fast was during the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, and it’s no coincidence that economic policies then and now are so similar. If Mr. Obama succeeds in convincing voters that he really is the tribune of the middle class, it will be the political conjurer’s trick of the century.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577468750027784434.html
Vote No to Obama for four more years of crapping on the middle class!!!!!!!!
Obama,–This Country’s Biggest Disaster,—Ever!
Eric Williams for President
This article takes the cake. America was in free fall, literally, jobs being lost by the hundreds of thousands, massive layoffs, and the Journal is saying that the average worker under Obama has lost income??
Let’s start off with some real facts. For one, middle class incomes have been in steep decline since Reagan. Adjusted for inflation, middle class families have not seen gains in income at all. . Now this is due to multiple factors, namely technology and outsourcing, which is the major problem. However, the other major problem is the attack on workers’ unions and laws passed by the GOP which make it very hard to even join a Union.
Regarding the Obama years, we have to ask, what else could have been done?? Corporate profits are at an all time high, this is fact. Businesses have been able to produce more with less.
Let’s remember who passed the first stimulus, it was Bush, not Obama. Furthermore, the GOP wunderkind, Ryan, supported “stimulus” spending in 2001 and 2002. It was also Government spending right after 9/11 that played a major role in keeping unemployment down from 2001 to 2005. The GOP doesn’t want to remember the spending, so they only focus on the unemployment numbers.
You didn’t click on the link and read the article did you? The numbers for the 80’s and 90’s for the middle class were all right there. Things got better under Reagan and Clinton but were stagnant under Bush 1.
The decline started under GWB and rapidly accelerated under Obama. Obama likes to blame Bush but he is basically nothing but an amped up Bush doing the same stupid things and doing them faster.
There are many things that a financially savvy president could have done differently. Start by letting some Wall Street banks fail and by letting GM and Chrysler live by the same laws as the rest of the businesses in the country. GM will be bankrupt again soon because of Obama driven CAFE mandates and coddling unions.
Most of the stimulus was a failure. What did we get for all of the debt? Not much! We certainly did not get what we paid for. Healthcare?? Overpriced uncertainties and who knows what else. As it really kicks in after the election we will not know in time to us it in the decision process.
As the article said. The Obama recovery was worse than the Bush recession. Obama can’t hide from the numbers. I just hope that voting Americans still have enough sense to understand them and vote that rascal right back to Chicago.
Well it’s obvious that we are all just way better off under the Obama administration.
Today, I saw gas prices around 3.79 .
What’s bad about that?
Can’t swing 70 bucks to fill up?
Loser.
Seriously. Have you heard one news story about high gas prices?
See!
Obama has made 4 buck gasoline normal!
Just get with the program.
Don’t even think that gas price has an effect on other things.
That farmer that brings his produce to market brings it with environmentally gentle angel-ponies.
My kids were gathered at my feet last night and wanted to know what they should aspire to in their future.
I told them-kids, aim high.
Try to get a government job where you can steal without getting caught.
Get a degree where you can go to Washington and affect change.
Change and dollars going in to your pockets.
I said- “Kids”- ” If you can’t scam Washington now, you’ll never be able to.
“Kids-this is the ultimate. It does not get better than this.
Look at Solyndra–just look at it !
A shining scam on the hill!
You guys can make me proud.
You have the ability to shake down the whole economy be jillionaires and do your old man proud.
All you gotta do is get Obama in there for a bit more and you are on your way”.
With connections, and insider knowledge, you kids can be just like Washington.
Brother.
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