Monday, September 21, 2015

Why Are Voters Mad As Hell?

This might be one of the main reasons:
The typical man with a full-time job–the one at the statistical middle of the middle–earned  $50,383 last year, the Census Bureau reported this week.
The typical man with a full-time job in 1973 earned $53,294, measured in 2014 dollars to adjust for inflation.
You read that right: The median male worker who was employed year-round and full time earned less in 2014 than a similarly situated worker earned four decades ago. And those are the ones who had jobs.
This one fact, tucked in Table A-4 of the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, is both a symptom of an economy that isn’t delivering for many ordinary Americans and at least one reason for the dissatisfaction, anger, and distrust that voters are displaying in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Now one major caveat is that this number doesn't include health insurance costs, which have skyrocketed and have eaten up every bit of the additional compensation the average worker would have gotten over the last 40 years.  But, in fact, everyone making less than the median income has fared even worse.  No wonder so many voters are pissed off.

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