We're Going Backwards

This is indeed a disturbing trend. It is very easy and simplistic to blame it on Wall Street, or big business, or the prior administration (if you're Obama), but it goes much deeper than that. Ever since the onset of globalization, our economy has been undergoing massive changes. When agreements like NAFTA and LAFTA were put in place years ago, when tariffs were amended, when Japanese cars started to be better than American cars, the people who were most affected were the middle class. Gone are the days when a high school graduate with a good pair of hands could get a factory job that could support a wife, two kids, a house and a car. Yes, the politicians who favored and pushed globalization were convinced of the rightness of what they were doing. But, those annoying unintended consequences got in the way as they always do. It's not just in the U.S. The Euro Zone was going to be a smashing success. Well guess who got smashed. Ask the people in Greece or Spain how things have worked out.

This is what we are now experiencing, the unintended consequences of a globalized economy. People are frustrated because they are powerless to do anything about what is happening. Government is also powerless because the horse is out of the barn and too far down the road to get back in.

Wonder why people are worried about the unintended consequences of Obamacare? What is scary is that both political parties have their heads firmly ensconced in their rectums. The Republicans now seem fixated on the utterly impossible strategy of defunding Obamacare, and the Democrats are oblivious to what companies are doing and won't call a halt to fix some obvious problems with the law.

This may turn out to be the winter of our discontent.

US families make less than they did in 1989

America's middle class has seen its median income drop by $600 since 'The Simpsons' first went on the air.

By Jason Notte 29 minutes ago

The Census Bureau's poverty report issued earlier this week included some income statistics that were a bummer for middle-class families hoping for a return of the good old days of prosperity. Turns out that even in those days, families were bringing in roughly the same as now.

According to the Census Bureau, median household income in the U.S. in 2012 was $51,017, which is still beneath the 2011 median of $51,100. That 2011 number followed two straight years of decline and is nowhere near the $56,080 average salary from 1999. In fact, 2012's real median household income is still 8.7% lower than it was in 2007, just before the recession.

Even by those mileposts, the news is discouraging for the middle class. But before those relative boom years just before the crash of the early 2000s and the absolute cratering of 2008, median income in 1989 -- just before the recession of the early '90s -- was an inflation-adjusted $51,681, according to The Washington Post's Wonkblog.

That means middle-class families have not gained any ground in the last 24 years. Worse, they actually lost about 660 bucks over that time. The price of the average movie ticket then was $4 compared to $8 now. And the price of a gallon of gas hovered around a dollar compared to the $3.60 average now. But sure, why not dock middle-class families a few Benjamins and see how the economy likes it?

For members of Generation X wondering if all the angst they had as teens about being the first generation not to do as well as their parents was misplaced, fear not. It may be only a slight difference and the least of your worries. But middle-class Gen Xers are bringing home less than their parents were when they were sitting the family down for new episodes of "Doogie Howser," "Family Matters" and the first episodes of a little show called "The Simpsons."

That American incomes have changed roughly as much as the yellow, four-fingered, ageless cartoon family in the latter show should be cause for concern. Even with only Homer's salary at the Springfield nuclear power plant to support them, the Simpsons managed to grow from a Bart-led, "Don't have a cow, man" novelty to a Homer-supported national icon with a movie deal.