UH-OH: Income Inequality Unchanged During George W Bush Tenure
Via Tom at NewsBusters comes this info that I should have shared with you earlier:
That number — .463 — comes from the Census Bureau, as noted at this WebWire release Tuesday (confirmed by reference to Page 7 of the 2007 version of “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States”; the PDF report is the first item listed under August 26 at this link):
Income Inequality
* Income inequality decreased between 2006 and 2007, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by households in the top fifth of the income distribution declined, while the shares for the third and fourth quintiles increased. Meanwhile, the Gini index declined from 0.470 to 0.463, moving closer to 0, which represents perfect income equality (1 represents perfect inequality).As shown at this 2005 BizzyBlog post, the Gini index, also referred as the Gini coefficient, was .462 at the end of the Clinton administration, after rising by .029 during the previous eight years, and .008 during the previous seven.
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UPDATE, August 28, 12:15 p.m.: Commenter Tony B at BizzyBlog made a valid point which makes an update necessary. The Census Bureau says in a footnote at a different page in this year’s report (Page 9) that “Direct comparisons with years earlier than 1993 are not recommended because of substantial methodological changes in the 1994 ASEC.”
Although the Bureau’s recommendation may be debatable (the Forbes author I referred to in my 2005 post either wasn’t worried about this, or didn’t catch it), I have added the last six words you now see in the last sentence before this Update, and have changed what follows in the rest of this post to reflect info that relates only to 1993 and later. (The second-last paragraph formerly read “Income inequality increased by 29 times as much during Clinton’s eight years than it has during Bush’s first seven.”)
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As Bush 43’s administration rounds the turn and heads for home, income inequality has barely budged by a statistically insignificant .001. To the extent that the rich have become richer, the poor, and everyone in between, have on the whole benefited in virtually equal proportion.
Income inequality increased by 8 times as much during Clinton’s final seven years than it has during Bush’s first seven.
Not that they won’t run with the class envy theme anyway, but it should be made known to all that the extent to which Barack Obama and his minions claim that the differences between the haves and have-nots has widened during the administration of George W. Bush is the extent to which they are not telling the truth.
But The One said that people are working harder and taking home less. I have no idea who he is talking about, but okay. Is it a person like Lisa, the owner of RV? She was a nurse, but decided to go into business for herself. She may or may not be working harder, because harder is really a subjective term. She was caring for terminal cancer patients, but since she changed professions, she has written a book, developed multiple blogs, and runs her own business. Which is harder work? You and I can’t answer that, as only Lisa knows the answer. Is Obama talking about the factory worker? Automation has led to a decreased physical workload of the employee. Overtime is down, so the amount of hours worked has decreased.  Who is working harder and taking home less?
The gap between the rich and poor is getting larger? I thought no one was working. It looks like that has been debunked.
