And Now For Something Completely Tedious

I know very little about either football or economics. Nonetheless, I root for USC every September, because I dropped a crapton of cash on tuition there, and because they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of burly 20-year-olds who can slip between looming tackles like a wet watermelon seed.

In economics, I am a fan of the theory that inadequate consumer income brought on the Great Depression. I first touched upon it here -- particularly the way in which the lower and middle classes overextended themselves on credit in order to maintain the fiction that their standard of living was keeping pace with the top 5%. (Because, of course, it totally wasn't keeping pace with the top 5%. Largely because said top 5% were redirecting all their free capital into further stock market speculation, rather than increased wages or the like.)

Like a belated Christmas present, the New York Times has introduced me to a recent study which found that from 1980 to 2005, the national economy more than doubled. (The dears, they even adjusted for inflation! I love it when people adjust for inflation. If there were a single economic skill I long for, it is the ability to adjust for inflation. Is there anything more annoying that movie studios that trumpet their film as the "biggest grossing picture of all time" without adjusting their gross for inflation? No, there is not. But I digress.)

In that same window of time, the average income for the bottom 90% of America has dropped like a stone. In 1973, the bottom 90% made an average of $33,001 (adjusted for inflation, natch.) Today, the average income is nearly $4000 less.

Less? Yes, less. In 34 years, the average American has since his or her income drop $4000.

But of course, nobody says to themselves, "Adjusted for inflation, I make almost $4000 less per year than my parents, so I'd better be a little thriftier with my dollar." People see that their parents could buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs, and assume (wrongly?) that they should be able to buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs.

And that's how you wedge our economy so far up the ass of the subprime crisis that our dollar bills are starting to smell like flopsweat. Yes, some people knowingly took on mortgages they couldn't afford. Yes, some people openly defrauded the system. But many, many, many people just thought they were following in their parents' footsteps, and their parents before them.

(Note to Oslo: Feel free to send my Nobel Prize for Economics to our place in Santa Monica. Better use Fed Ex; our building has really small mail slots.)