The Retrograde Decade

Republicans like to talk about how the Bush Boom was so great from 2003-2007, but the reality is the entire 2000-2010 decade was awful for America.

Median household income fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year and has dropped 7% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. Income was the lowest since 1996.

Poverty rose, too. The share of people living in poverty hit 15.1%, the highest level since 1993, and 2.6 million more people moved into poverty, the most since Census began keeping track in 1959.

Overall the American middle class basically never recovered from the 2002 recession.  The housing and credit bubble formed to pull us out of the funk while we spent billions on Iraq and Afghanistan rather than the US was five years of paper growth that detonated in our faces in 2008, but it lasted long enough to get Bush re-elected.  Overall the middle class has taken a serious hit in this country in the last ten years.  And 2012 may very well mean another even worse decade is ahead.