Five Years Of Declining Middle-Class Incomes... Thanks Mr. Bush

For five straight years, productivity in the USA has increased. (In fact, it’s up 33.5% in the last ten years.)

For five straight years, the economy has grown, after a short but dramatic recession, from $9.8 trillion in 2000 to $13.2 trillion in 2006.

And for five straight years, your income, and mine, has decreased in real terms. (I’m presuming that you’re not a billionaire.)

You see, as the Boston Globe reports – “Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year.”

Health care is up 40% in the same period of time. Gas is up 100%. Housing is up 30%.

And your income is down 5.4%. (Poverty is up from 11.7% in 2001 to 12.6% now, despite all this growth.)

So where has all the money gone? All the money from this huge increase in economic activity, productivity and booming industry?

I’ll tell you. To the rich, and to corporations. According to the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities, in the first half of 2006, the share of national income going to wages and salaries was the lowest on record, while the share going to corporate profits was the highest since 1950.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest amongst us have gained vast tax breaks from the current government. Their wealth has expanded at a phenomenal rate – in 2006, according to Forbes, America’s billionaires piled an average of an extra 18% onto their existing nest-eggs. (You and I funded this.)

And of course, corporations such as ExxonMobil and Conoco are making tens of billions in profit, while regular people are tightening their belts to pay for inflated gas.

The following information is derived from the Tax Policy Center and describes in detail where Bush’s tax cuts have gone. It is accurate only to 2004 – so you can imagine how much more skewed these figures are today:

• The one-fifth of households in the middle of the income spectrum will receive an average tax cut of $647.

• The top one percent of households will receive tax cuts averaging almost $35,000 — or 54 times as much as that received on average by those in the middle of the income spectrum.

• Households with incomes above $1 million will receive tax cuts averaging about $123,600. The tax cuts for millionaires will cause their after-tax income to jump by 6.4 percent, nearly three times the percentage increase received by the middle fifth.

The overall shares of the tax cuts that are going to different households also are illuminating. The Tax Policy Center data show that:

• In 2004, the middle 20 percent of households will receive 8.9 percent of the tax cuts.

• By contrast, millionaires — totaling just 0.2 percent of U.S. households — will receive 15.3 percent of the tax cuts. In other words, the small handful of millionaires will receive total tax cuts far larger than those received by the entire middle 20 percent of households.

This pisses me off royally. But for some reason, the rest of America doesn’t seem to care.

AMERICA – YOUR WAGES ARE DOWN 5.4% UNDER GEORGE BUSH! WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE! (That you can’t afford!)