Middle-income question: Were you better off in the 1990s?
As I mentioned earlier, I鈥檝e been collecting stuff on kids and their economic well-being. Here are a couple of figures that provide an intersection of a number of points I鈥檝e tried to stress a lot in recent weeks.
It鈥檚 just a simple plot of real median income for families with kids, 1989-2010, followed by two bars showing the trough to peak of income growth in the two recovery periods.
The difference between how middle-income families fared in these two periods is really quite remarkable. I mean, when it comes to income growth, there are always lots of moving parts, but at first blush, if you鈥檙e a middle-income family with kids, you might want to keep these pictures in your mind when listening to the economic agendas of those who would be President.
That is, it鈥檚 hard to take seriously those who claim that 鈥渟upply-side鈥� tax cuts, as in the Bush years鈥攍arge breaks tilted toward the top that are supposed to trickle down to the middle鈥攚ill deliver for the middle class, compared to the more progressive tax regime of the Clinton years. It鈥檚 even harder to imagine how 鈥渟huttering the EPA鈥� will make the difference.
There were important, real differences between these periods: the job market was much tighter in the former decade, job growth was about four times as fast on an annualized basis鈥攊mportantly, the 1990s recovery lasted longer than that of the 2000s, in part because the only way for many families to get ahead amidst the flat income growth of the latter period was through cheap, easy credit. (In other words, there鈥檚 a linkage here between flat middle class incomes, the debt bubble, and the big crash.)
But so far, the road map I鈥檓 hearing from the R鈥檚 sounds like that of the 2000s, and that shouldn鈥檛 inspire anyone in the middle class on down.
