>I should have made clear that I agree with you on this-though Kelly, from
>what she posted may feel otherwise. Still, there is reason to believe that
>census figures routinely underrepresent low-income communities, for the
>reasons which Kelly gives.
For sure. There's no question that poor folks are underrepresented in the official stats. Though it's also a fact that many poor people work off the books, and their incomes may not be as low as officially reported. I was once at a seminar where a rather prominent academic advocate for the poor almost whispered this point and told us not to repeat it outside those walls.
>Where I think I do disagree with you is on your half-full perception of
>how most of us are experiencing the Clinton-era economy. While it's true
>that economic statistics are all we have to measure this, any number of
>the standard measures of improvement, as you know, may be seriously
>misleading.
Yes, the inflation indexes are questionable, as is the Current Population Survey itself. But other income measures tell pretty much the same story - like the average wage data, which comes from a monthly survey of employers and is benchmarked against unemployment insurance data every year. And polls of people's reported well-being also tell a similar story. The late 1990s were the best period for the U.S. working class since the rot set in around 1973.
Doug