In Case You Were Wondering

Why this "recovery" feels more like the sixth, pitiless year of your own, personal Great Depression...

It's because it is.

From The New York Times:

...

No recovery in incomes for most groups

The most basic measure of financial well-being is how much money people make and how much that money can buy. Many measures, such as per capita personal income, have risen in recent years, even after adjusting for inflation.

But this survey gives us a richer view of how incomes of people in different groups were affected. It is rather depressing.

Incomes rose nicely in the 2010 to 2013 time frame for the top 10 percent of earners (who had a median income of $230,000 last year). They rose slightly, by 0.7 percent, for the 80th to 90th percentile of earners (median of $122,000). But real incomes fell for every other group of earners.

Separate people by age or education, and the same basic pattern applies. Those with a college degree have done fine, but anything less than that and incomes have fallen. Both young adult households (those headed by someone under 35) and those households headed by someone over 75 have seen steep income declines in that same period.

This is the simplest yet most important fact to understand about the current economic recovery: It has not resulted in higher incomes for anyone other than those who were already doing well. And very large groups of Americans have experienced falling incomes.

...

And that rustling you hear out there in the tall grass?

That's the sound of the people whose policies nuked the economy and who have spent the last six years relentlessly committing every act of sabotage within their power in order to cripple the recovery and demolish the legacy of one man preparing to sweep back into control over the entire Legislative branch so they can finish the job.

But why dwell on such unpleasantness when there are so many different ways to discuss which pantsuit Hillary Clinton will probably be wearing when she debates Mitt Romney in Chuck Todd's 2016 Political Fantasy League? (h/t Alert Reader "Steve")