Poverty level rising (37 million now in poverty, according to Census Bearuea), household income flat (again, Census Beaurea), manufacturing disappearing, another 800,000 medically uninsured, and have you checked your 401k recently? Mine has had negative growth for the least four years. The DOW or S&P still have yet to reach pre-9/11 levels. And you can knock off about a point of GDP growth when the housing bubble bursts. It all looks great on paper until you realize that “job growth” too often = one $60,000 a year job gone while two $20,000 a year jobs are created. This says it all:
"Although the economy expanded solidly in 2004, the inflation-adjusted income of the median household was unchanged and remains $1,700, or 3.8%, below its most recent peak in 1999, according to yesterday’s release by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
The main factor explaining this significant, ongoing decline in household income appears to be the faltering job market, especially regarding real annual earnings, which fell significantly for both men (-2.3%) and women (-1.0%). The decline for men was the largest one-year drop since 1990; for women, it was the biggest fall since 1995.
EPI’s analysis of the Census data shows that increased hours of work actually raised mid-level household annual incomes by 0.5% in 2004, but that real hourly wage decline subtracted that much and more (-1.3%) from income growth.
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_income20050831
When you start digging deeper, it doesn’t look quite so rosy.
But all this is icing on the cake. In the face of Medicare/S.S. bankruptcies we are running up massive budget deficits with no end in sight. Republicans have cut taxes, spent hundreds of billions on Iraq and Afghanistan, passed a huge highway bill loaded with pork($200 billion), and now we have to rebuild much of the Gulf Coast (perhaps another $200 billion). What the hell happened to the Republican party? They used to be fiscally conservative.
Edit: Here’s a source for my manufacturing claim:
“The factory sector continues to be an exception to the generally positive trend in payroll growth. Manufacturing employment fell again in August, shedding 14,000 jobs, surpassing July’s loss of 6,000. Thus far this year, factory employment is down 78,000. This represents a clear reversal of what turned out to be a short-term positive trend last year in this sector, when manufacturing employment was up 69,000 January through August 2004”
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_jobspict_20050902