How Are We Doing This Year on the $400 Expense Question?

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

The Washington Post gets us up to speed on the Fed’s latest report about the wellbeing of American households:

Are Americans benefiting from the strong economy — aside from the rich? A Fed report raises questions.

….Almost four in 10 people (39 percent) said they wouldn’t be able to scrape together the cash to meet a $400 emergency expense.

Just to save everybody some trouble next year, here’s how that question has been answered since the Fed started asking it:

So the answer is: yes, the non-rich have benefited from the strong economy. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they haven’t benefited nearly as much as they should have: