----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 1:58 PM Subject: Gummint programs and stats (was RE: Presidents RE: Corruption ...)
> > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > > Behalf Of John Garcia > > [snip] > > > As for the Great Society, I call your attention to the Head Start > > Program, > > which is one of the most successful government programs in American > > history, and its outlays are minuscule in proportion to its returns. > > Speaking of such matters... Yesterday, at the Silicon Valley Joint Venture > breakfast where they announced their 2002 index (a set of statistics > measuring various characteristics of Santa Clara County), one of the > speakers mentioned that companies who are in the business of building > prisons have found that the most reliable long-term predictor of the need > for prisons is third-grade reading test scores. That rather strongly > suggests that early intervention in reading, at least, is vitally important > to society. This correlation I think is fairly accurate. I know that a friend of mine who had a prison ministry told me that most of the people in prison could not read. (He is a fundamentalist conservative BTW, so I cannot imagine a liberal bias in this observation.) > The most depressing stats, by the way, were on the same page. One showed > that at the 20th income percentile, inflation-adjusted income has risen 1 > percent since 1993, while the cost of living rose 20 percent. I was > irritated that the headline for this chart reads "Standard of Living for > Low-Income Households is Not Rising." Not rising? That's like saying that > Enron is failing to make a profit. > The inflation adjusted income is one that divides the new income by the inflation adjustor. Lets look at the unadjusted numbers and adjusted numbers for the '90s. Nick, I don't know where they got their numbers. From 1993 to 2000, the lower 20% has seen its best increase in decades. Let me give you the numbers from http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html adjusted unadjusted increase increase 2000 16.9% 37.5% 1999 17.8% 34.1% 1998 11.6% 24.4% 1997 8.9% 19.7% 1996 7.8% 16.0% 1995 7.5% 12.7% 1994 2.5% 4.7% 1993 0.0% 0.0% The increase for the bottom 20% was about 17% from 1993 to 2000. That is opposed to the Reagan-Bush era. The best improvement over the recession year of 1982 was 1989, where the bottom 20% improved their inflation adjusted income 10.1%. During the same time, the top 5% inproved their income by 20.2%, after inflation adjustments. After 4 years of Bush, and the 1992 recession, one finds that in 1993, the bottom 20% lost almost all of their gains: the gain from 1982 to 1993 was only 1.4%. But, the top 5% gained 27.9%. For comparison purposes, the middle 20%, gained 12.4% from '82 to '89, 6% from '82 to '93, and 15.2% from '93 to '00. And, the top 5% gained 22.4% from '93 to '00. Finally, measuring from the trough of '82 to the trough of '93, one sees that the gains during that period are very focused. Half of the gains in houshold income were realized by the top 5%. The bottom 60% realized only 9% of the gains Just over a quarter (27%) of the 93-00 gains were realized by the top 5%. A quarter of the gains were realized by the bottom 60%. Its interesting that well heeled Republicans are the ones who keep on talking about the unprecidented boom of the Reagan-Bush era. That was only true for the wealthy. The 90s boom is the first "rising tide raises all boats" boom since the '60s. So, in short, the 90s were the first time in a long time that things have improved for the poor. I don't know where that forum got their numbers. Maybe they are California numbers? Dan M.
