Living standards improve, despite tough economy – USATODAY.com.

USA Today has finally abandoned even the pretension of journalistic credibility with this “article” in today’s paper.
I glanced at the headline while in Starbux earlier, and, eager to find out about my increasing fortunes, looked it up online.

What planet are these people on? Where to begin?

“The average annual income was $24,079 per person in 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Last year, it was $40,454 per person.”

Ummm yeah, but I assume these averages take in everybody’s income, then divide it out by population. So it’s a big fat lie to say the average person makes $40,454! Income in the U.S. has been flowing to the top brackets since 1980, so the rich are much richer but the middle and working classes have been stagnant.

“Not only has income grown, what’s less obvious is how much better a lifestyle can be bought for the same amount of money whether it’s $25,000 or $100,000.”

They go on to say how much less computer memory costs in 2011 vs. 1980 (reminder: personal computers weren’t generally available until 1984 or so, before that it was industry mainframes mainly) and to say that we own more cars and take more flights.

Let’s talk to those commuters in places like L.A. and Dallas who spend hours more in traffic jams than would have been thinkable in 1980. Let’s talk to anyone who has to go to an airport and get felt up by a TSA goon, then sit in a cramped, tiny seat and get basically dehydrated and starved before we wax jubilant about the improved standards of air travel.

And let’s talk about this better lifestyle, whether it’s on 25K or 100K. Cause I don’t think so! Has this writer looked at rents, home prices, food prices, health insurance costs, tuition, insurance, the price of gasoline? It’s much, much more expensive to live any kind of life in the U.S. now vs. 1980.

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“With basic items inexpensive, consumers have turned the flow of money to their quality of life: housing, health care and recreation. Americans spent $5,438 per person on health care last year, up from $1,796 in 1980, after adjusting for inflation.

The spending has paid off.

A 50-year-old can expect to live three years longer than a person of that age in 1980. The chance of surviving cancer is way up, pollution is way down. Crime has fallen by two-thirds.”

Yay, we’re making China rich so we can inflate the pockets of Health Insurance executives! Meanwhile, the obesity rate in the U.S. has skyrocketed, along with diabetes. If we are living those 3 years longer, those are the years where the vast majority of our health care costs will come due. People who have been forced to pay their health costs aren’t any healthier for the outlay, in fact, the population is much worse off. The odds of surviving certain cancers, such as lung cancer, have hardly changed at all.

And pollution is way down? Where? Where’s the facts? Your examples, please? What  planet are you on? Air and water pollution is now much worse in the United States, to a large extent because of all the new cars since 1980!

One of the comments on this article said “Joseph Goebbels would be proud.” I have to agree. Rarely have I read a front page story that was such a total case of bullshit.

I grew up in a conventional middle-class family of a father who worked (professor at a mid-size private university), a mother who was a homemaker, and my seven siblings. My parents owned their house, had a car (sometimes two, depending on the driving habits of the teenagers), sent us all to private (Catholic) schools, provided health care, clothing, 3 meals a day. We had television, took an annual vacation to northern Wisconsin (or sometimes Florida) and bought new clothes for school every year. They did all this on one income. I thought then this was a great standard of living, and I still do.

What do you think? If you were around in 1980, what was it like for you? Do you think standards of living are better now?