Did anyone decide to read the article or did they just decide to bash it? There are so many crap comments here that I can't even read them all, let alone point out why they're wrong, but I'll try my best.
Calling this article Republican propaganda, and its author an apologist is incorrect, here's why
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-747833.html
What's this? It's an article about the same topic written in October 8th 1997, in the middle of the Clinton administration.
The article has a few differences but the main idea is the same, and it's supported by the mostly the same causes in the article above.
Mr. Topcan2001 put up a good point with only a small amount of pretentiousness. Apparently 2007 was a boom year for the housing bubble and should be compared to another peak in order for accuracy.
Oh but what's this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble#cite_note-Fortune_deadzone-15
That's odd, it says here the housing industry began declining in 2006 and led to a crisis in 2007 of August, that sure doesn't sound like an economic peak to me.
The Real Economic Scorecard
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Remember the dot-com binge. Wages rose sharply; bonuses and cash incentives mushroomed. Unemployment and poverty dropped. In 2000, the jobless rate among white men 20 and over was 2.8 percent. But all these gains reflected a boom that, though pleasurable, was temporary and unsustainable. Stocks are now trading below their 2000 highs. Using these years as the base for comparison makes later years look bad.
Picking 1997 -- the last pre-boom year -- is more realistic. From 1997 to 2007, median household income rose $2,600, roughly 5 percent. Though hardly spectacular, that's not stagnation. The poverty rate in 2007 was slightly lower than in 1997.
Second, immigration distorts commonly cited statistics.
Low-skilled immigrants, concentrated among Hispanics, outnumber the high-skilled. They drag down median incomes and raise poverty and the number of uninsured. One way to filter out the effect on income is to examine groups with few immigrants or their American-born children. Consider non-Hispanic white families. From 1997 to 2007, their median incomes rose about $6,000, to $69,937, a gain of about 9 percent. For black families, the increase was also about 9 percent, though only to $40,222. Again, not stagnation.
Immigration's effects on poverty and health insurance coverage are greater. Since 1990, Hispanics numerically account for all the increase in the number of officially poor. Similarly, immigrants represented 55 percent of the increase of the uninsured from 1994 to 2006, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Many unskilled workers can't get well-paid jobs with insurance.
Third, the census figures understate income gains by not counting fringe benefits.
Discuss