Comments on: The lost decade continues

By: Ryan McM

Ryan McM — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 02:41:35 +0000

The income data is from the 2008 report on income poverty and health insurance by the Census bureau. The debt info is form the St Louis Fed’s statistical web site called “FRED.”

By: George

George — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:41:52 +0000

“If this were only a short term phenomenon, it would be one matter, but when looking at what has happened over the past decade, the continued malaise is really just more of the same in spite of the fact that it was masked by a brief bubble in the middle of the decade.

For example, American median household income in 1998 (adjusted for inflation) was $51,295. Ten years later, in 2008, it was $50,303. Over the same period, household debt increased 139 percent.”

Can you please cite the sources from where you derived these figures?

By: Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:27:47 +0000

Craig, you’re wrong. They’re smaller than they were 40 years ago. There’s no relevant different with 10 years ago at all.

And even if they were different, using per capita income would still be useless because per capita income is much less helpful in making judgments about rents or any other household expense. No one uses per capita income in policy making anywhere that I’ve ever encountered, and for good reason.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:07:07 +0000

Craig, according to the US Census website. Household size was 2.59 people/house in 2000 and 2.61 in 2006 – 2008. Where do you find that households are smaller?

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event=&geo_id=01000US&_geoContext=01000US&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=&_state=&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&_submenuId=factsheet_1&ds_name=DEC_2000_SAFF&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null&reg=&_keyword=&_industry=

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:58:09 +0000

Please don't cite household income as the basis for any serious argument. The only figure that matters is individual income; households are smaller than they once were. Individual income is up about $12,000 during the same period.

By: Hugh Pendleton

Hugh Pendleton — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:47:24 +0000

This trend becomes even more alarming if we look at the rate of inflation as calculated by the old government methonds (which have been revamped several times to lower the rate). On that basis real household income has declined fairly dramatically over the last ten years. These inflation figures can be found at shadowstats.com by John Williams. This is a very interesting site for historical statistics untainted by political realities.

I hope all we face is years of deleveraging. As it is we are defaulting on our promises left right and center by basing our COLA’s on the current statistics which show inflationat close to zero as opposed to the rate calculated by Mr. Williams (currently about 9.7%). Frightening.