From him that hath not

A tiny followup to Eric’s post. Maybe the people at the Sveriges Riksbank, the group that funds the Nobel Prize in Economics, can ask their prizewinners about this: In the two years after the recession ended, US median household income is down 6 per cent (in constant dollars). That’s over half the overall 10 per cent decline since 2000. Rather than returning to previous levels, writes Felix Salmon at Reuters, “median household income is now $49,909, down $3,609 — or 6.7% — in the two years since the recession ended. It was as high as $55,309 in December 2007, when the recession began” (the figures come from a report by Sentier Research). One answer, of course, is that unemployment has not declined. But that just pushes the question back one step…