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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (50768)	8/30/2006 9:17:40 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

"Americans without health insurance jumped by 1.3 million ..." Americans with health insurance jumped by 1.4 million. "For the second straight year, full-time male employees saw their earnings decline in 2005, while their female counterparts took a similar hit for the third straight year. The median earnings for men fell 1.8 percent .... Women saw a 1.3 percent decline ..." But 1.4 million more men and 1 million more women were fortunate enough to have earnings from full-time jobs in 2005 than in 2004, increases of 2.35% and 2.30%, respectively. "the share of total income received by the highest 20 percent of households has increased, while the shares received by those in the lowest 60 percent have declined." The income share of the top quintile rose to 50.4% from 50.1% in 2001 while the bottom two quintiles lost 0.1% each and the third and fourth quintiles were unchanged (discrepancy due to rounding). And only the 0.1% change for the lowest quintile is statistically significant (i.e. non-zero) at conventional confidence levels. Meanwhile, the Gini index has been bouncing up and down between .46 and .47 since 2000 after rising steadily throughout the Clinton years from .43 in 1992 (it was .42 in the mid-1980s). In short, income equality took a big hit in the 1990s and has been essentially unchanged since Bush took office. Oh, and the mean incomes of households in each quintile all rose in 2005, so any gains for the top quintile came at the expense of no one.

To: tejek who wrote (50768)	8/30/2006 9:30:53 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 90947

"I wonder how many of the top 1% lost their health insurance during the past five years? If poor people are doing so well, why are they giving up their health insurance, o brilliant one?" Don't know about five years, but in 2005 the number of uninsured below $25k in household income actually dropped by over a half million while uninsured with HH incomes over $75k rose by over 800k. Not sure why that is - perhaps they decided it was too expensive.