Epistemic Ingemination

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NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

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Thu, 29 Jul 2004

Political Humor

heh...

Posted at 13:17 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink] [Reload all] [E-mail]

Incomes fall -- a lot

Sorry about the lack of posts. Scrambling on about five fronts this week.

The Times reports on an analysis of the last couple of tax years from the IRS. No real surprise to me, having lived through it, incomes have fallen. But I am pretty surprised that it is almost by 10%. This side of the Great Depression, it is unprecedented.

The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.
The total adjusted gross income on tax returns fell 5.1 percent, to just over $6 trillion in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, from $6.35 trillion in 2000. Because of population growth, average incomes declined even more, by 5.7 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, the income of all Americans fell 9.2 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the new I.R.S. data.

You know, as many things as there are for an old guy of my political bent to grouse about, this one strikes me as the issue for conservatives to worry about. This is kitchen table stuff, and the Bush Pioneers aren't the ones sitting there trying to balance the family checkbook and make the minimum on their credit cards.

One thing is for sure: it isn't going to be fixed by election day, and people tend to vote their pocketbooks first.

Posted at 12:53 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink] [Reload all] [E-mail]