The income of the typical American family—long the envy of much of the world—has dropped for the third year in a row and is now roughly where it was in 1996 when adjusted for inflation.
The income of a household considered to be at the statistical middle fell 2.3% to an inflation-adjusted $49,445 in 2010, which is 7.1% below its 1999 peak, the Census Bureau said.
The Census Bureau's annual snapshot of living standards offered a new set of statistics to show how devastating the recession was and how disappointing the recovery has been. For a huge swath of American families, the gains of the boom of the 2000s have been wiped out.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Household incomes fall to 1996 levels
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that median household income has fallen to 1996 levels:
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Its OK. Everything will be fine once residential real estate values start climbing again. Any day now.... any day....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wtop.com/?nid=628&sid=2301476
James - do you happen to have the data in nominal (vs the reported inflation adjusted) dollars?
ReplyDeleteI ask because I anticipate a deluge of bears, siezing, knee jerk style, on this post, as if its proof that housing prices (which we all pay with nominal dollars) are going to get crushed.
Yet as your article points out since they are using inflation adjusted numbers, household incomes PEAKED IN 1999. Yet, did home prices peak in 1999? I think not...
Hey "guest" given that your source is WTOP, I take it you are local, and are using this article as proof that DC area home prices are headed into the crapper.
ReplyDeleteI invite you to take a look at the post before this where I disect the national data (as reported by WTOP), vs the local data which I have been tracking for a few years now.
If you do, you will find that not only are foreclosures NOT surging here, they are continuing to plunge as they have been for a few years now.
In any event, this is a devastating blow to your suggestion that a hike in national foreclosure rates will send DC home prices into the crapper. Yet further proof that ITS DIFFERENT HERE...
I'm in a time zone other than US EDT, but thanks for playing.
ReplyDeletePartisan, defined: http://bit.ly/oXpgFT
OK so if your not here, why link to the DC news outlet WTOP? While you likely wont admit it now, my suspicion is you posted to WTOP as evidence that DC is gonna tank. Yet as my datatracking shows, the local data blows your nationwide story out of the water. How embarassing.
ReplyDeleteBTW your link defining me is hilarious. In my case the decision tree doesnt work perfect because I never resort to personal/tangential insults (i.e. your mom). I instead choose to drive my opponent into the ground by hammering on the same point (in this case how the foreclosure story is irrelevant and the local story is far far better) over and over again. Dont get me wrong, im still a level 5 dick -- I just skip a step on my route to winning petty arguments on the internet.
Partisan, don't let our traveling biotech consultant, Saxon, mislead you. He was in Nashville, Tennessee when he left his comment, but he gets plenty of exercise and avoids obesity by walking the streets near his home in DC (or Arlington).
ReplyDeleteI don't have it easily available, but I could try looking it up if I'm not feeling lazy.
ReplyDeleteJames is a technologist in addition to a romantic (read his article on buying a diamond). Where am I now?
ReplyDeleteWhere am I now?
ReplyDeleteWhere am I now? I move fast, don't I? Am I a fighter pilot?
ReplyDeleteNow I'm in Germany, right James? Your technical skills will confirm that fact.
ReplyDeleteI'm off the coast of Ghana now, in the Gulf of Guinea... (Right James?)
ReplyDeleteYou're at your hotel in Nashville, Tennessee using Comcast cable and thinking that TOR is protecting your anonymity. Before you were commenting from work, but I'll keep your employer's name private between the two of us. And no, I'm not fat.
ReplyDeleteI'm back. I'm in Hamburg Germany today. James' technical prowess will confirm that fact. (80.237.226.73). The flights out of Ghana to Hamburg are limited, so I'm one tired biotech consultant!Here is a link to a hyper-local DC blog: http://www.princeofpetworth.com/Partisan's piercing psychological insights will tell you that by posting that link, it means that I rent a studio apartment on U Street, I'm expecting the local market to crash tomorrow so that I can buy for "pennies on the dollar" and that I'm insanely jealous of everything he's ever done.Either that, or the comments section of this blog is sort of a Rorschach test and you're both seeing what you want to see, and revealing your biases in the process. Wait, nah, it couldn't be that.... you're both too smart for that. We know, because you told us so.
ReplyDeleteI think I struck a nerve.
ReplyDeleteTOR is fun, isn't it. You seem to like traveling to places that start with the letter G: Germany, Ghana, ... Georgia.
Interesting post. For household income to be falling three years in a row, it's hard not to be discouraged by that. We really need that American spirit again.
ReplyDeleteSmoking, even all natural tobacco, is not the answer.
ReplyDelete