Yep, The Economy Really Is Starting to Deliver Higher Earnings

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Paul Krugman posted an interesting chart today, which I’ve simplified on the right to show only household income. It comes from Sentier Research, which tracks income in a more timely manner than the Census Bureau (though they use Census data). I noted the other day that if you looked at total worker compensation (including things like health insurance), then we’d finally seen a fairly healthy upward trend in 2015. But according to Sentier, even if you look only at ordinary cash income, we’ve pretty much recovered from the Great Recession. Household income has grown at the rate of 3-4 percent annually for the past two years. It took a long time to get there, but the recovery really does seem to finally be showing up in higher earnings.

This helps explain the sharp upward tick in Gallup’s poll about personal satisfaction that I wrote about yesterday: it’s because the economy really did start performing better for a lot of people in 2015. Now it’s time to try to persuade everyone that the country really isn’t going to hell in a handbasket even if Fox News and MSNBC spend every primetime evening telling us otherwise.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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