Free Republic

The good news. Real GDP growth was revised for Q3 up to 3.6%. The bad news. Personal consumption expenditures fell to 1.4% for Q3. There has been a steady decline in personal consumption expenditures since 1998. The good news. Private investment in residential real estate rose 13.0% in Q3! And nonresidential structures grew at 13.8%. The bad news. Real median household income (only through 2012) continues to decline. We have a “GINI Paradox.” Since 2007, real median household income has fallen while income inequality (GINI) has risen. AND we have rising residential real estate investment? The US needs real GDP...

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, caused a flap where he pronounced that some people are too stupid to get ahead. But unless people are getting more stupid over time, it is likely bad government policies that are preventing people from getting ahead. Government policies including the Fed monetary expansion have seemingly made matters worse for the average American family. Particularly since 2007. The GINI coefficent is a measure of income distribution in country. And it has been skyrocketing since 2007 when Democrats took control of Congress and 2009 when they achieved a majority in both the House and Senate...

Government policies including the Fed monetary expansion have seemingly made matters worse for the average American family. Particularly since 2007. The GINI coefficent is a measure of income distribution in country. And it has been skyrocketing since 2007 when Democrats took control of Congress and 2009 when they achieved a majority in both the House and Senate AND the Presidency. But for all the talk of income redistribution and “leveling the playing field,” things have only gotten worse for the average American household. Here is the GINI coefficent for the USA since 2005. Note the decline from 2006 to 2007,...

Government policies including the Fed monetary expansion have seeming made matters worse for the average American family. Particularly since 2007. The GINI coefficent is a measure of income distribution in country. And it has been skyrocketing since 2007 when Democrats took control of Congress and 2009 when they achieved a majority in both the House and Senate AND the Presidency. But for all the talk of income redistribution and “leveling the playing field,” things have only gotten worse for the average American household. Here is the GINI coefficent for the USA since 2005. Note the decline from 2006 to 2007,...

Imagine you are young and unattached -- unattached from everything: family, friends, country. A Martian takes you up in his spaceship and offers to set you down in one of two countries where you will have to make your way in life. All he tells you is that the average income in Country A is $49,000 and that of Country B is $40,900. You would probably pick A, right? It's 20% richer. Now, what if your Martian host offered a bit more information? He gives you the distribution of incomes in those same two countries. In fact, he shows you...

Why is income inequality rising for U.S. families and households, but not for individual Americans? Having now shown that there has been absolutely no significant change in the level of inequality among U.S. individual income earners from 1994 through 2010, we thought we'd take a step back and look at the data for U.S. families and for households to examine those trends over time. The chart below shows what we find for each grouping of Americans according to their Gini Coefficient, where a value of 0 indicates perfect equality (everyone has the same income) and a value of 1 indicates...

The gap between America's rich and poor is reportedly at an extreme high, much higher than many developing countries like Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, and even Yemen. According to the Central Investigative Agency's (CIA) World Fact Book, which ranks countries in terms of how 'equally' wealth is distributed, the U.S. is the 42nd most unequal country in the world, the Daily Mail reports. It has been ranked way behind the European Union and the United Kingdom in terms of equality of pay. In fact, the situation is so extreme that it has even been placed behind countries such as Cameroon,...