Vanity Fair gives Joe Stiglitz 4,000
words in its December issue, and he delivers what Andrew Leonard describes
as "a stinging, biting, razor-sharp dissection of everything George W.
Bush has done wrong as the keeper of the American economy". A few datapoints
jumped out at me:
- A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that
is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago.
- 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in
poverty when Bush became president.
- Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005.
- Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more
than 60 percent.
This is not the whole story, to be sure. But it is depressing, all the same.