Mk said:
Chomsky says in this video that "Real wages have either stagnated or declined for about 30 years."
A commenter says: "Real wages for working people stagnated in the late 70's, started a steady decline around 1980, and they continued to decline right through the "so-called Clinton Recovery. There are now 19 percent more families in poverty, than eight years ago (before Bush). Real median household income is down, but Corporate Profits are up 68 percent."
In typical fashion, he's mixing and matching statistics to paint an inaccurate picture, with a few misleading statements and flat-out lies mixed-in for good measure. He's a classic crackpot.
The first statement is tough to justify at best, but perhaps he can manipulate the definition of "working people" some way to make it true, but I doubt it (data later). Certainly during a recession - and a bad one - income is going to drop and poverty is going to rise. But he's being intentionally deceptive trying to connect the current cycle to a long term trend. He does that.
And corporate profits. Profits can be expected to vary widely from one year to the next, decade to the next. People like to connect corporate profit to personal income in a way that shows a disparity in numbers, but it is important to realize that one number is
profit and the other is
income. Corporate profit is
income minus expenses. Personal income is just income. The numbers are not discussing the same thing.
Where can I read more about these statistics or discussion on them?
Most of the numbers come from here: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/inchhtoc.html
"Real median household income" isn't exactly on here, but if you take the mean of the middle fifth, you're approximately at the median. So that's this table (second one on the page): http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h03AR.html
The data says that in 2000, the mean of the middle fifth was $50,850 and in 2007 it was $49,968, or a little less than 2% lower. 2008 data should be out shortly, and is likely to be about the same or slightly below 2007. So how 'bout 1970 and 1980? It was $41,405 in 1970 and $42,407 in 1980. So by 2007, incomes near the median had
risen 23%.
Now, how relevant is "household income" to questions about progress? There are a few important things to note:
1. More
families (not households) have two wage earners than decades ago, but...
2. The average household size has dropped from decades ago.
Now, for poverty. Poverty is more difficult because the definitions constantly change to reflect what people consider an acceptable standard of living. As a result, the poverty rate has essentially been adjusted to keep the poverty rate constant while the standard of living of those in poverty continues to rise. I'm personally against that concept for the most part, but to some extent understand it. Ie, the average life expectancy of people in the US is about double what it was 100 years ago - that idea is incorporated into our definition of what is acceptable.
Here is the wiki on poverty in the US, with some graphs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
The first graph shows poverty has been bouncing between 10 and 15% since the mid-1960s. As you can see from that, a 19% increase (or decrease) is not surprising in the middle of an economic cycle. The rate is certainly going to go much higher during this cycle - it may even top 15% again, which would be an increase of about 40% from the low in 2000.
So on the title claim, he's essentially flat-out lying. For his overall message, though, he's like a clock that stopped, he's right for a year every 8 years or so when we go into a recession. For the other 7 years, he's wrong.
