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Posted on 02/24/2006 6:24:09 AM PST by Sam's Army
WASHINGTON - After the booming 1990s when incomes and stock prices were soaring, this decade has been less of a thrill ride for most American families.
Average incomes after adjusting for inflation actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.
Many families were struggling in the aftermath of the 2001 recession and the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000, the Fed's latest Survey of Consumer Finances showed. The comprehensive look at household balance sheets comes every three years.
Average family incomes, after adjusting for inflation, fell to $70,700 in 2004, a drop of 2.3 percent when compared with 2001.
That was the weakest showing since a decline of 11.3 percent from 1989 to 1992, a period that also covered a recession.
The average incomes had soared by 17.3 percent in the 1998-2001 period and 12.3 percent from 1995 to 1998 as the country enjoyed the longest economic expansion in history.
The median family income, the point where half the families made more and half made less, rose a tiny 1.6 percent to $43,200 in 2004 compared with 2001.
Economists said the weakness in the most recent period was understandable given the loss of 2.7 million jobs from early 2001 through August 2003, when the country was struggling with sizable layoffs caused by the recession, the terrorist attacks and corporate accounting scandals.
The weak income and the stock market decline in the early part of the decade, which wiped out $7 trillion of paper wealth, had an adverse impact on family balance sheets.
Net worth, the difference between assets and liabilities such as loans, rose by 6.3 percent in the 2001-04 period to an average of $448,200. That gain was far below the huge increases of 25.6 percent from 1995 to 1998 and 28.7 percent from 1998 to 2001, increases that were fueled by soaring stock prices.
The 2001-04 performance was the worst since net worth actually declined by 9.9 percent in the 1989-92 period.
The report showed that the slowdown in the accumulation of net worth would have been even more sizable except for the fact that homeowners have enjoyed big gains in the value of their homes in recent years.
The gap between the very wealthy and other income groups widened during the period.
The top 10 percent of households saw their net worth rise by 6.1 percent to an average of $3.11 million while the bottom 10 percent suffered a decline from a net worth in which their assets equaled their liabilities in 2001 to owing $1,400 more than their total assets in 2004.
"This is the continuing story of the rich getting richer," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "Clearly, the gains in wealth are going to the top end."
Democrats used the new report to blast President Bush's economic policies, contending it would be wrong to make permanent his tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthy.
"These statistics show why, even though GDP is rising, most people do not feel better off," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
The Fed survey found that the percentage of Americans who owned stocks, either directly or through a mutual fund, fell by 3.3 percentage points to 48.6 percent in 2004, down from 51.9 percent in 2001.
Analysts said this was an indication that investors burned by plunging stock prices in the decade's early years have been leery about getting back into the market.
The share of Americans' financial assets invested in stocks dipped to 17.6 percent in 2004, down from 21.7 percent in 2001.
Reflecting the housing boom, the share of assets made up by home ownership rose to 50.3 percent in 2004, compared with 46.9 percent in 2001.
The Fed survey found that debts as a percent of total assets rose to 15 percent in 2004, up from 12.1 percent in 2001. Mortgages to finance home purchases were by far the biggest share of total debt at 75.2 percent in 2004, unchanged from the 2001 level.
There was concern that families might start to feel even more squeezed as the cost of financing their debts increases along with rising interest rates.
Although surging home values have supported consumer spending in recent years, analysts worry about the economic impact if, as expected, the home price surge begins to slow this year.
"This report shows a race between factors boosting net worth, such as home ownership, and factors pushing the other way, such as weak wage growth," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
What most people probably don't know, however, is that the primary factor in this decline is not economic changes, but social changes. "Family income" has been declining primarily because families are getting smaller, and we have more people earning more money than ever before -- but in separate households.
...not only that, but the fattest people are getting the most food.
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What you're pointing out here is what the likes of the Cato Institute never seem to understand: that economics is not simply a numbers game based on reason alone.
There are people involved, making decisions that are almost never entirely rational; and quite often making their decisions based on fundamentally irrational impulses.
In terms of stratifiction helping socialism to win, you're absolutely correct. Whether it's right or wrong, it's just human nature to think ill thoughts about why that small group is extremely rich, and most everybody else is barely scraping by. A stout defense of the status quo by the very rich, simply aggravates the issue. Cato can come up with all sorts of analysis to show why that's just hunky dory, and the best possible thing. Commies, however, are tapped into that human tendency to resent those whose lives appear to be built on their labor.
What's particularly interesting here is that the idea of strict "I got mine" capitalism tends to produce and defend the stratification of wealth; whereas a paying more than is strictly necessary -- to take care of those less fortunate, I suppose -- both spreads the wealth and diffuses the dissent noted above.
Yes, but it is freemarketeers who are irrational. If you have choice between having modest food on the table, modest roof over your head, very basic medical care and education for your children or having only "free" market system with "free" press you will chose the first.
Socialism with human face is better than capitalism without human face.
I would feel a great deal better if Sen. Schumer would shove two sharpened pickle spears up his nostrils.
You guys support some limit on wealth creation, or some level of redistribution of wealth?
I'd like for you to continue your logic a little farther, since my perception from your responses is that your thinking is itself rather socialistic.
However, I concur with your thoughts that as long as their is inequality, socialists and politicians will play on the envy of whotever occupies the bottom rung. But eliminating the bottom rung merely makes the one that was above it the bottom.
Nor, IMO, is the existence of envy, or the use of it by politicians, even remotely a justification for the elimination of the free market or for forced equality, if that's where you are heading.
Ouch! LOL!!!
That this twit is an Economist and makes such an utterly stupid statement should be an embarrassment to all Economist everywhere.
To compare the best two years of the Clinton Era to a period of War and Recession is intellectually indefensible. More lying with statistics by the junk journalists.
This also gives the lie to the liberal and often conservative claim that wars are "good" for the economy.
Not what I said.
I was simply acknowledging a fact about human nature -- people tend to resent perceived inequality, and the perception is strengthened when those "above" defend their position in terms that make them sound greedy. Whether it's right or wrong to resent the inequality is somewhat beside the point: the feeling is there anyway.
Communists and leftists understand this feeling, and are very, very good at exploiting it.
Conversely, if the wealthy folks pay more than is strictly necessary, wealth is inevitably spread more widely, and they end up diffusing the resentment -- socialism loses traction as a result. Moreover, I think this probably also ends up increasing productivity and creativity, so that everybody ends up with more wealth.
I'm not "socialistic." On the other hand, I also think that we do have moral obligations to help those who aren't as well off as we are; and I think this ends up being congruent with long-term self interest -- which is about what you'd expect from a morally correct stance.
At the same time, I think those below have a moral obligation to work for their own improvement -- they should appreciate what help they get, but should not expect it as a right.
IMO, is the existence of envy, or the use of it by politicians, even remotely a justification for the elimination of the free market or for forced equality, if that's where you are heading.
I agree with you -- I think there's a lot of empirical evidence to back you up on this.
On a more esoteric level, I think we're seeing a dynamic in the US economy that could lead to some interesting, if unpredictable results along the lines described by this article.
"Outsourcing" is popular because, in manufacturing especially, Americans cost too much to employ. American workers want to maintain or increase their current compensation -- sometimes even to the ruination of their employers. American corporations want to decrease their overhead and increase their bottom line, so they get rid of their American workers. This is beginning to happen even in traditionally white-collar sorts of things, such as engineering and design.
My sense is that this is an unstable situation -- one way or another, American workers are going to end up making a lot less than they currently do; and American corporations are going to end up having a much smaller domestic market than they've come to expect, because their former employees can no longer buy as much.
The question is how this will be dealt with when (if) it occurs.
There should be no limit on wealth creation, as long as it is legally accomplished.
Just curious; where is capitalism currently operating "without a human face"?
All well and good -- but you're making Cato's mistake: you've not accounted for human nature, and thus will end up surprised when socialism makes another leap forward.
Moreover, I think you're making a poor assumption in your own right: that the pie can only get bigger, not smaller. However, a moment's thought will tell you that a pie can get smaller. And a pie can get domestically smaller, even if it's getting bigger on a global scale.
And the way it can get smaller is if companies start paring your domestic middle-income jobs in favor of much cheaper workers elsewhere. The economic pressure from this tends to concentrate incomes at lower levels and at higher levels -- in both cases where it's more efficient to do things locally, rather than to import the services/materials. But the middle stuff can be done elsewhere.
"And to him who has much, more shall be given". So what's the objection?
Your job has never been outsourced, I take it....
Special prize to the first poster to link (and mean it) Wal-Mart or tax cuts to this "problem".
There is no such thing as a human face on socialism - it is either a mask on a monster, or a transient freakish occurrence [actually, it is both: it is a transient freakish mask on a monster]. One should never put any trust in either.
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