Why I defend NAFTA on DU, in four charts

[hfojvt]

49. for one thing, the median is not a "typical" income

yeah, sure, half are above it and half below it, but a rising median income does not mean universal prosperity, nor does a falling median income mean universal suffering.

Consider, again, some small distributions

1,1,2,2,5, 7,7,7,25 - the median is 5
then shift it some
2,3,3,3,4,9,10,11,12 - the median is now 4

the median went down, but 8 of the ten are better off than originally (and just for fun, I made the two means the same, the average of both groups is 5.7)

Of course with the US, you are talking about 100 million or so households (and growing) so most oddities should be smoothed out, but it is also a huge area, with households in California and Nebraska and Delaware, with a large difference in both wages and cost of living. And the bottom line STILL is that a rising median doesn't mean excrement to those people well below the median.

It is kinda funny to me when I consider. I used to rage at the media in the 90s. In the 90s the media kept playing "happy days are here again" and there I was, in a country that was supposedly prosperous, working sh*tty jobs, unable from 1998 until 2001 to find a real job in Iowa. I spent three years working as a fu%&ing temp while the Democratic Governor of Iowa was concerned about some supposed future labor shortage in Iowa. I pretty much had to leave Iowa to find a non-temp job.

And Wisconsin wasn't any better. In Wisconsin I worked in a factory for a little over two years at $5.4 an hour. Then I was laid off (on my 33rd birthday). Then I was denied unemployment. Then I got a part-time janitorial job for $5.5 an hour in May of 1996. Got an auto parts factory job - brutal job it was, for $7.15 an hour. My previous employer gave me a raise to $7.15 because he could not replace me. That was September 1997. Ironically the Tuesday after labor day from 2 AM until 2 AM the next morning, I worked 21.5 hours in that 24 hour period.

Happy labor day to me. Oh, it was an unpaid holiday too. I didn't get a single paid holiday, or paid vacation for the entire decade of the 1990s.

Not that that was due to Nafta, but you asked "have people forgotten the 90s?" I have not forgotten. It was a horrible decade for me. Oddly enough, I have done much better in the Bush economy, even after I got fired in March 2002 (what is it about my birthday month that I keep losing jobs in it?) This time I actually got unemployment, and found a decent paying part-time job with benefits in August of 2002.