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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Census counts only money income -- wages, salaries, dividends, interest payments. But compensation growth is increasingly channeled into fringes. From 2000 to 2007, only 53 percent of the increase in average compensation came from wages and salaries, says economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution. The rest went to health insurance (21 percent), pension contributions (19 percent) and payroll taxes (6 percent). Americans understandably feel they're on a treadmill. They don't see fringe benefits in their paychecks, and small year-to-year cash gains barely register.
The real economic report card is both better and worse than imagined. The big advances of the rich (which occurred mostly in the 1980s and 1990s and reversed slightly last year) haven't prevented most Americans from achieving grudging gains. But a continuation of present trends would imperil future prosperity.
If health-care spending remains uncontrolled, Americans will see more of their compensation diverted from take-home pay into insurance that mainly benefits (as insurance should) a small proportion of very sick people. Similarly, if the immigration of low-skilled workers continues unabated -- whether they're legal or illegal -- the ranks of the poor will swell, as will the uninsured or the costs of providing government insurance.
Given the 2008 economy -- higher unemployment and inflation -- next year's census numbers will probably be worse than this year's. But it's the long-term threats that really matter. Obama and McCain don't confront them realistically because doing so would be unpopular and there's no strong public case for action. That's the biggest cost of misreading the economic report card.
© 2008
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