Chart of the Day: Household Income Finally Beats 1999 Record

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The Census Bureau has finally gotten around to calculating household income for 2016, and the news is good: adjusted for inflation, income was up 3.2 percent last year. In fact, household income is now at an all-time high:

And now for the buzzkill portion of this post: this means household income has increased a whopping 0.6 percent since 1999. That’s $22 per year.

On the other hand, this is better than the top .01 percent has done. According to Piketty and Saez, their income peaked in 2000 and is down 4 percent through 2015 (with some spikes in between). Will 2016 be the year that they too beat their 20th century high? P&S take even longer than the Census Bureau to make their calculations, so we’ll have to wait and see. But I’ll bet they do.

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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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