The food stamp economic recovery – Food stamps increase by over 600,000 in last month of data. GDP at record levels yet US employment is 4 million below start of recession.
There was a startling figure that came across my desk from the United States Department of Agriculture regarding food stamp usage in the SNAP program. Food stamp usage has grown dramatically in the last decade even during the debt inspired boom times. Yet the devil is always in the details as we reported with the […]
Dollar stores in million dollar neighborhoods. 99 Cents Store looking at Beverly Hills location in rise of the low-wage and high-wage economy. 1 out of 4 working Americans in low-wage work.
Whenever a jobs report comes out I always ask what kind of jobs are being added. There is a wide gap between skilled and unskilled labor building in this economy. Those without the skills for select fields are being left behind to pickup jobs in the growing low-wage service sector. It used to be the […]
The math on US income – if you call something the middle make sure you are using math. The surprising details on median household income and per capita wages.
People have a hard time wrapping their minds around household and personal income.   It is an easy enough concept to understand but some throw around terminology that confuses the facts. For example $250,000 is not middle class income if we define it from a strictly mathematical model. The median household income in the US is […]
The swan song of stagflation – Gas prices up over 100 percent from 2005 and incomes are stagnant. Ignoring a $16 trillion debt headline and repackaging food to hide stagnant incomes.
If you look around your daily life you realize that your purchasing power is losing value. For a few decades now the middle class in the United States has demonstrably shrunken like clever food packaging. Over the last forty years we have lost 10 percent of our middle class. Most have fallen into the lower […]