Deacon923
Scooter Banks
well, without getting into who is to blame, it sounds like we agree that there are some issues offsetting, to one degree or another, the increased utility factor.
Now, how does high systemic unemployment play into this? Contrary to most of 1970-2000, we now have a situation where around 7.6% of the population is unemployed. Another, unknown percentage of otherwise productive people has given up looking for work and/or have gotten on disability. Some say that if you include this "shadow" unemployment, you get closer to 16-18% unemployment. Labor force participation is at an all time low. There are 3 people looking for jobs for every one job available, which is crazy high. American's dependence on government benefits for their income has doubled, as a share of income, since 1969 according to this link (which was the best I could find on short notice): http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html?_r=0 I think we can all agree that having that many people reliant on government benefits is not good, although no doubt there will be disagreement over the causes of that reliance. According to this story (which attributes the number to the Census Bureau) only 36 percent of government benefits flow to the bottom quintile of households. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html Most of it goes to the middle class - people with jobs.
Does anyone know whether the income numbers as generally quoted include income from government benefits? According to the story linked above, if you exclude government benefits, per capita income excluding government benefits fell 3 percent nationally, inflation adjusted, between 2000-2010.
