Isn't using median income like saying in a group of 29 paupers and 1 billionaire everybody is a median millionaire?
Light at the end of the tunnel?? That's a very unique perspective you have there. Sure it was good for US industries and jobs... but it came at a price WAY too high to pay... Tenths of millions of lifes ended during that conflict. And the risks were off the chart, fortunately the world was a much larger place in 1939 than it is today, otherwise you would've seen blitzcrete in the continental US... and once war gets out of the TV and into your reality... well... it stops being "light at the end of the tunnel" by any measure.
No, you've mixed up median and mean. Median is the point at which 50% of the people are above it and the other 50% are below it. The mean is where everyone comes out to be a millionaire.
Only a bit more research shows that there was a pretty significant shift in work force demographics from the Clinton terms to the Bush terms. The proportion of single workers (never married) rose by 7% under Bush. The proportion of Married workers in which the spouse was present fell by 3% under Bush. The proportion of divorced workers rose by 5.5% under Bush. All of these cause the median household income to fall , even though the median individual income is rising.
The decadence of family values in western civilization can hardly be blamed on the chimp... this is a trend that's been going on for decades, not only in the US but all over the west.
You're right, the numbers were presented in response to a ridiculous article that tried to blame Bush policies for lower household incomes. I felt I should provide the real numbers since I'm a bit bored right now. The nail in the coffin for that article are the stats for the number of workers per household. As a proportion of the total number of households from the Clinton to the Bush era. Single income households increased by 15%. Two income households remained pretty flat. Three income households fell 7%. And 4+ income households fell 10%. Contrast that with the change during the Clinton years. Single income = +17% 2 Income = +13% 3 Income = +10% 4+ Income = +16% There were simply a lot of people during Clinton pulling in a little extra money via the internet and working from home. I just wanted to make a case for the fact that if a person is going to believe and cite an article they had better double check the basis of the numbers.
The answer lies in the definition of middle class. Americans are in a race to become upper class, and will send more workers into the market to achieve it. Real individual incomes are increasing over time as I've demonstrated above. But that isn't enough for us. As a population we want to be upper class, not middle class. But that really doesn't have anything to do with unemployment. If you ask me, it is amazing that unemployment numbers have remained low even though we've had a massive influx of workers into the market, and "outsourced millions of American jobs" as the government likes to say.
So you are saying Americans can achieve home ownership, family car and TV set, food on the table 3 kids and capacity to afford health care with just one person working and the other staying home? Today?