Beacon Journal | 02/24/2006 | Family incomes slide

Beacon Journal | 02/24/2006 | Family incomes slide

Average family incomes, after adjusting for inflation, fell to $70,700 in 2004, a drop of 2.3 percent when compared with 2001. That was the weakest showing since a decline of 11.3 percent from 1989 to 1992, a period that also covered a recession.

The average incomes had soared by 17.3 percent in the 1998-2001 period and 12.3 percent from 1995 to 1998 as the country enjoyed the longest economic expansion in history.

Ya know, in business, when this kind of thing happens, you try to duplicate exactly what you did during the good times and stop doing what you do in the bad times.

Government doesn’t do that. I think it’s because the power and the ego overtake the desire to be rich. And actually, the government officials won’t get any richer if they make the rest of the country richer.

So, they just do what they do with no basic common sense because it would hurt to admit that another government official had a better idea.

This is why business now actually runs our country… government officials are constantly wrong and keep messing things up.