Reviving the Dream - Bob Herbert

A co-worker and I were talking about how angry people are. Angry and reactionary was I think the term he used. The "Sarah Palin types" he said. I pondered why this is most of the day. This Herbert column hit on an important point. The decline in working American's income.

Op-Ed Columnist - Reviving the Dream - NYTimes.com:

"America used to be better than this.

The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)

But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.

As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.

Men have done particularly poorly. Men who are now in their 30s — the prime age for raising families — earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age."

One impact of lower taxes, and cuts to government programs, that come from the conservative revolution is that people feel squeezed. And when you feel threatened you react... and not always in the most productive ways.