Hillary Clinton Settles Her Accounts

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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74 Responses

  1. George Turner says:

    Small point: Hillary didn’t have pneumonia or she wouldn’t have been giving face time to a child just a few hours later, after having exposed her grand kids, or if she did have it she should be condemned for endangering the life of a minor. Elderly people with pneumonia can expect to spend several days in the hospital. It’s not like a fainting spell, and it does not involve blue sunglasses. She knew what she had and it is not contagious.Report

  2. Marchmaine says:

    I think you might have been able to write your entire review around:

    When I was on chapter 30 or so, I looked at the progress bar and saw that I was less than a third of the way through the book. I couldn’t believe it. Not because it had been bad – up to that point, a solid B+ – but because I wasn’t sure how much there was to say.

    Its a tough thing to have to write your own political obituary; I’m not 100% sure it is a necessary thing; or, another way to put it, why do you think she wrote it and did she hit her mark?Report

  3. Damon says:

    Hopefully, she’s not going to run again. Just like the Bush crowd, another Clinton seems to pop up and run for office. We gotta move on from dynastic elections.

    Based upon the OP review and what i’ve read other places, she’s not taking much responsibility, which is typical, but frankly, I really don’t care that much anymore. Everyone knows she lost to “A political device inserted into our politics specifically to protect conservatives from change” after all. It’s the system that’s at fault, not her.Report

    • giovanni da procida in reply to Damon says:

      This seems a little unfair:

      Just like the Bush crowd, another Clinton seems to pop up and run for office. We gotta move on from dynastic elections.

      The Bush family has had four generations of electoral success: Senator Prescott Bush, President H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush / Governor Jeb Bush, and George P. Bush who holds statewide office in Texas. That’s a political dynasty.

      The Clinton “dynasty” consists of a married couple that have both held political office. Love them or hate them (I don’t particularly like them, although I have voted for both of them), it is hard to argue that they are not both accomplished people. In our current era of assortative mating, it seems likely that high achieving and driven people will end up married. But that doesn’t make any given pair of them a dynasty; would you consider Senators Bob and Liddy Dole to constitute a “Dole dynasty”?

      If Chelsea Clinton runs for office, we can talk about a Clinton dynasty.Report

  4. pillsy says:

    Obviously a fair amount of the blame-shifting is going to be self-serving, but a lot of other people, especially in the media, Greenwald-adjacent left, and Trump-skeptical right, have self-servingly deflected a lot of blame onto her, so it can prove a useful corrective even so. It’s sort of like the idea behind an adversarial justice system, I suppose, but carried out via dishy ghostwritten books, Chris Cillizza columns, and interminable flamewars on Twitter.

    As to some of the specific claims, everything I’ve seen where she tries to blame Bernie for her defeat is just dumb. Nothing he did was outside the normal bounds of running a primary campaign against your party’s eventual nominee, and his supporters generally did a better job staying on sides than hers did following her defeat by Obama in the ’08 primary. It’s weird the extent to which PUMAs have vanished down the memory hole on all sides.

    On the other hand, the idea that there were some sort of real, justifiable reasons behind the intense focus on her emails gets less tenable by the day.Report

    • Aaron David in reply to pillsy says:

      I think she is going to be the whipping post for a long time. For nothing else but loosing to Trump. And for her, that is gonna suck. but I don’t see a way around that. But that is kinda the problem with being a public figure, you will always be remembered for your last success/failure.Report

      • pillsy in reply to Aaron David says:

        Oh I’m sure. So many people have this deep-seated idea that no serious candidate could possibly have lost to Trump, despite a good deal of evidence to the contrary.

        Still, I appreciate having another perspective at odds with the conventional wisdom, even though I don’t appreciate it so much that I’d subject myself to her book to discover it for myself. I propose a virtual toast to @trumwill for taking this one for the team.Report

    • Alan Scott in reply to pillsy says:

      pillsy: As to some of the specific claims, everything I’ve seen where she tries to blame Bernie for her defeat is just dumb. Nothing he did was outside the normal bounds of running a primary campaign against your party’s eventual nominee, and his supporters generally did a better job staying on sides than hers did following her defeat by Obama in the ’08 primary. It’s weird the extent to which PUMAs have vanished down the memory hole on all sides.

      I pretty strongly disagree. I’m not saying I think this was the primary campaign with the most inter-party attacks or bad blood. But I don’t remember ever seeing anything in previous campaigns that match the way that Bernie and surrogates attacked the legitimacy of the primary process and the Democratic Party itself.Report

      • pillsy in reply to Alan Scott says:

        There was a lot of procedural complaints from the Clinton campaign itself about the 2008 primary, which (again) seem to have been more or less completely forgotten. Victory salves a lot of wounds.

        What is unusual is all of the wounds getting opened up again after the convention, but that I blame much more on the media, the Greenwald-adjacent left, and the Russians.Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to pillsy says:

          Point of order: Greenwald-adjacent left?

          My liberal-speak vocab spreadsheet needs updating. Thanks.Report

          • pillsy in reply to Marchmaine says:

            I.e., folks like Glenn Greenwald, who had a huge bug up their butt about Hillary being a neoliberal hawk so Trump wasn’t that bad by comparison, and oh yeah these stolen emails containing John Podesta’s risotto recipe prove it.

            I mostly call them that because I detest Glenn Greenwald, and as far as I know nobody else uses the term. But please propagate it: I’d love to be a liberal-speak vocab innovator!Report

      • Nevermoor in reply to Alan Scott says:

        That guy who predicts elections based on keys has “strong primary challenge” as a negative indicator. Whatever else Bernie was, he was that. And by that guy’s analysis that (or Hillary being charismatic) would have flipped the outcome.Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Nevermoor says:

          He really wasn’t. The outcome was never in doubt after, what, early March? The Democratic primary process doesn’t allow the shut-outs the GOP manages (no winner-take-all states) but while 2008 was a nail-biter, in 2016 Clinton won rather handily.

          Sanders just kept talking like he had a chance, even as the necessary win percentages got ridiculously high.Report

          • North in reply to Morat20 says:

            All true but Bernie didn’t comport himself in any manner too outlandish. Yes he got feisty when he began drinking the Kool-Aid of the people around him and started thinking he actually had a shot (he didn’t) instead of remembering why he ran in the first place. Yes, he made some risible process accusations that provided grist for the right wing Clinton conspiracy mill. That being said once he lost he endorsed and campaigned dutifully for the winner which is all one really can demand of a losing nomination candidate. I don’t think Bernie owes HRC or the Dems anything and, with Bernie flipping independent again once the election was over, the Dems don’t owe Bernie a damn thing either.Report

  5. Aaron David says:

    I called her candidacy, back during the primaries, a zombie candidacy. (And Bush the Lessor also) Much like McCain’s presidential run, she wasn’t the new, new thing. She ran on “borrowed time and another mans memories.” It coulda worked, but it was 8 years behind schedule.

    Should she leave the public eye? Not if she doesn’t want to.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    I am generally of the belief that a lot of HRC hate is and was irrational. One of my theories is that a lot of people around my age and younger absorbed the Clinton hate of the 1990s. Even if they are not politically to the right, they still absorbed it.

    The Democratic Party is moving to the left and this is largely because of voters under 40. A lot of these voters don’t understand that the 1990s was a lot more socially conservative and they still hate the Clintons for DOMA and Welfare Reform. They don’t know the legislative history and numerous vetoes and that Bill got the best deals he could.Report

    • It didn’t make it into the review, but I shiould say Hillary’s defense of her husband’s policies was solid. She provided quite a bit of useful context. She described the lay of the land pretty well, and she also talked about all the things they got in return for their concessions. Granted, I was already sympathetic to her on this, but she did a really good job with it.Report

      • pillsy in reply to Will Truman says:

        One of the other weird memory-hole things is just how much desperation there was about violent crime in the mid-’90s. The US murder rate is still quite high now by developed world standards, but it was twice as high then, and the two most culturally significant major cities (LA and NYC) were among the most dangerous.

        Beyond the fact that violent crime has fallen precipitously over the past 20 years, the fact that Los Angeles and New York City are now pretty and very safe, respectively, plays a huge role in shifting perceptions.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to pillsy says:

          There are still plenty of people who think NYC still looks like it did in the late 70s and 80s based on my observationsReport

          • I left the East Coast early in 1988. Just about ten years later, when I was back in Manhattan to do tech demos for our new board of directors, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much cleaner and safer-feeling midtown was. I hope that it’s still as good, or better.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Michael Cain says:

              There are probably sections of NYC that are high crime but those are usually not sections where non-residents go on a regular basis.

              Times Square has been family and tourist friendly for almost two decades now. The big issue in NYC is not crime and grime but gentrification and affordability but as Lee says below, a lot of people still think of NYC and see graffti covered subway cars and sex workers on the streets.Report

            • LeeEsq in reply to Michael Cain says:

              Its much better if you believe that 1998 was an improvement on 1988. There all sorts of new construction for condos and office space and commercial buildings all over the city. If your the Jeremiah Moss type its worse.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to pillsy says:

          I was at a dance event in early September in Albany and having dinner with a few other people at the event. A middle-aged woman who lived near but outside NYC said that she doesn’t come into the city for dancing because its too dangerous. It really isn’t anymore but memories of her youth lingered like Saul said.Report

          • CJColucci in reply to LeeEsq says:

            About a decade ago, my wife and I (both NYC residents) were vacationing in Maine. We had stopped overnight in Portland — which we found to be a nice, friendly, but still somewhat sophisticated city — to break up the trip and stopped in Rockland to get supplies. When we told the cashier we had just driven up from Portland, her eyes went wide and she said she would be afraid to go there. Two years ago, we were staying in Rockland, and I read an op-ed in the local paper by an ex-cop who explained that he felt the need to carry a gun all the time because of the dangers of Rockland. True, there are some dicey areas — hell, even an out-of-towner can locate the meth labs after a few days — but come on.Report

            • El Muneco in reply to CJColucci says:

              One of the more religious-focused blogs I read does deconstructuons of horrible Christianist fiction – Kirk Cameron and Kevin Sorbo movies, complementarianist propaganda, that type of thing.

              I remember one of them describing c.2005 Spokane, WA in such breathless terms you almost expected to have the protagonist miss a turn and end up in N.W.A.’s origin story. I went there a fair bit around 1990 and even then you had to work to even find someplace skeezy. But the townies still think of it as Babylon.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I can easily imagine elementary school kids get at least some hatred of Hillary Clinton by osmosis but there are women in my twenties that I knew who were enthusiastic Clinton supporters. These are young women born in the second half of the 1980s and were just old enough to pick up Clinton hate by osmosis but apparently did not. There were more women our age or older who were enthusiastic Clinton supporters though.Report

  7. Will Truman says:

    Incidentally, you can read my tweet commentary on the book as I listened by clicking here and reading down. Much of it made it into this review, but a lot of it didn’t.Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    Matt Bruenig has a great essay called “The Boring Story of the 2016 Election“.

    It essentially points out that the numbers point to a story that kind of sucks because it undercuts a whole lot of grand narratives. It wasn’t about Trump getting a surge of White Support that represented Whites beginning to vote as a bloc. (Other groups regressed to the mean after the staggering highs of the Obama elections.) It wasn’t about Conservatives being ticked off with Liberal overreach. It wasn’t about Liberals demanding a more progressive economic message.

    Clinton was just a monumentally unlikable candidate who wasn’t good at this crapola. And she lost to someone that pretty much anybody else would have beaten *BECAUSE* she was a monumentally unlikable candidate who wasn’t good at this crapola.

    See? Boring.Report

    • gregiank in reply to Jaybird says:

      And the various predictive numbers pointed to it always being a close election.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to gregiank says:

        The only real problem were the persistent voices saying things like “she’s got this in the bag” and “Nate Silver is only trolling for clicks” and “Sam Wang is the Official Ordinary Times Numbers Guy”.Report

        • gregiank in reply to Jaybird says:

          Huh….there were numbers dudes who said the general numbers pointed to it being a close election. Not the day to day numbers but the overarching factors. That really isn’t news. I think Silver even said that at one point.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to gregiank says:

            Didn’t Sam Wang, famous for doing better than Nate Silver in 2012!, have it at a light 99% for Hillary only a day or two before the election?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to gregiank says:

            Here’s a thread in which you can check the temperature of the regulars here at Ordinary Times!

            Unfortunately, we ranged from “Hillary won’t do as well as everybody says when she wins in a squeaker” to “Hillary will defeat her enemies, see them driven before her, and hear the lamentations of the men!”

            We had one person, Kimmie, predict a Trump victory.

            One.

            Edit: wait, I completely got that wrong. I was remembering the thread from the night before the election. Back when we made that thread, a handful of commenters thought Trump would win.Report

            • gregiank in reply to Jaybird says:

              Again Jay you aren’t even responding to what i’m talking about. I’m not talking about daily polls. This is about the general fundamentals. That is the stuff people write before the election campaigns get heated up. More about the strength of the economy, incumbency, etc. I get that you want to make sure all us liberal types learn the correct lessons but i put up a quickly found link above. I guess i shouldn’t be surprised that this is drawing a fight but there were actual pollster types who said the election would always be close. I’m not saying Clinton didn’t F up or every other bad thing. Heck i wont’ even mention Russian interference and Comey…oh well i guess i just did….but whatever.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to gregiank says:

                Hey, the main thing that I’m remembering is that, the night before the election, everybody here (except one person) knew that Hillary was going to win and the only questions in anybody’s minds were by how much and whether she’s get 49% and make Trump look completely foolish or whether she’d get 48% and only make Trump look somewhat foolish.

                If there were voices of reason among our commentariat explaining that, seriously, this is close enough that Trump could easily take it, they were too busy that night to comment.

                The next day we had an essay explaining how Dewey’s win over Truman was inevitable and only the awfulness of the media made it appear that Trump might win… but it was auto-scheduled and taken down within minutes of the editors waking up and reading the results of the previous night.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

              Here’s the thread I was remembering.

              The night before the election, we had *ONE* person predict Trump.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                I still think my prediction is logical and right… except for the whole Trump winning the election bit.

                Wouldn’t change a thing.

                {except Iowa, that was dumb of me}Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

                My electoral map from back in July only got Nevada and Michigan wrong.

                I don’t know whether I should feel as proud about that as I am inclined to, though.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                That’s pretty darn good.

                My single bold prediction was Ohio for Trump (thought PA would waver but hold).

                I live in a Trump county (went for him in the primaries when there were other options). The day before the election I started to realize that not only were folks going to vote for him in the not-pretend election, people were going to go out of their way to vote for him.

                That’s when I thought NC/FL might turn… never saw WI/MI.

                I still think we’re churning through a realignment though… I don’t think ’18 or even ’20 will settle much.Report

              • Troublesome Frog in reply to Jaybird says:

                If you can do it again using the same methodology, you should be very proud. That being said, Bill Mitchell was right the whole time and I strongly suspect that his claims won’t have a lot of predictive value going forward.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Jaybird says:

                Make that *two*. Some of my assumptions were way off, but I was considering a larger win for Trump.

                And just a side note here, only the madhatters could see a Trump win.

                It was something like four or five years ago, Kim and I agreed it would be a bad idea to run a Bush or a Clinton.Report

            • North in reply to Jaybird says:

              Owtch for myself, though I note with amusement that I spoke with trepidation about my predictive powers.

              Also interesting: A couple references in that thread to 538 but nothing to Wang.Report

      • Will Truman in reply to gregiank says:

        With two good candidates, we were looking at a close election.

        Then the Republicans nominated a very unpopular candidate.

        And the Democrats nominated a very unpopular candidate.

        And so they evened each other out (more or less) and we got the close election after all.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

      Sometimes the truth is more boring than fiction.Report

      • CJColucci in reply to Stillwater says:

        Hillary won the national popular vote by about what most folks predicted. She lost the election because of under 80,000 votes concentrated in three states. With those kinds of numbers, it’s child’s play to prove that anything you want to fasten on to was why she lost.Report

  9. Kolohe says:

    https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/911984783194050560

    President Trump, Sec. Mattis, and DOD should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now. These are American citizens.

    The day before

    http://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/1322267/us-northern-command-continues-humanitarian-aid-to-puerto-rico-and-the-us-virgin/

    The USS Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group continues beach assessments and ship-to-shore movements, which will allow for key response capabilities to enable route clearance operations and commodity distribution.

    So Clinton didn’t do her homework to see that the Navy is on scene, but does think it’s the President’s job to micromanage individual ship movements.Report

  10. b-psycho says:

    The part where she seethed over people caring about the Goldman Sachs speeches perfectly encapsulates her as a politician.

    “So what? Everybody accepts their money!”

    *That is the problem! They CLEARLY have way too much political access!* Given the dominance of finance even after it basically crashed the world, any sentiment towards it short of scorched earth is laughable imo.Report

  11. Dark Matter says:

    She clearly believed that the impromptu meeting between her husband and Lynch was not the least bit inappropriate.

    That kind of sums it up right there. In her world, this sort of thing is tolerated, even expected. It’s not “bribery” because no numbers were mentioned. Everyone involved was smart enough to read between the lines and knew what was being offered, but it’s well short of convictable so by definition it was OK.

    For anyone who doesn’t remember, Lynch was going to decide whether or not HRC had a political career. A few hours before this choice was made, Bill drops in (i.e. goes from one jet parked on the runway to Lynch’s jet) and talks about his children.

    Reading between the lines, special friends of the Clintons are treated like family. That’s a very fiscally rewarding choice to make, and it was the offer being made… not that it was an “offer” on paper or even in words.

    I’m sorry that Trump is president, but still not sorry that she isn’t.

    :Sigh: Yes. That.Report

    • Koz in reply to Dark Matter says:

      :Sigh: Yes. That.

      Yeah, that.

      Even at this point, with all that’s happened so far, we’re lucky not to have Hillary as President, even as it comes at the expense of Trump.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qPGak0MVLE

      There’s a spiritual sickness in America that must be healed. How many millions of Americans watch Stephen Colbert, night after night. Or Samantha Bee, or John Oliver, or one of the others. The libs have drunk deeply from the well of Donald Trump as the Emmanuel Goldstein of our world.

      Hate is a overused word in political discourse. It’s unfortunately a cheap way to characterize the motivation of adversaries, in situations where the real motives are often complex. In this case, the libs are confronted with their own disempowerment, combined with a person they dislike for aesthetic reasons.

      But instead of adapting in a healthy way, they have chosen to wallow in their bitterness, antagonism, anger, and insularity. I can appreciate how that could happen. But still, there has to be some moment of reflection, of self-awareness, wherein libs can do something else. What they’re doing now, can’t be good, either for themselves, or the country.

      It amazes me, how in a world with some very serious problems, eg, North Korea, debt finance, hurricanes, stagnating wages, etc., etc. that all the libs want to do is vent their spleen against Trump. This is our problem. And there’s a lot of things that you can blame Trump for, but this isn’t one of them. Or for that matter, it’s not the conservatives’ fault either.Report

      • Maribou in reply to Koz says:

        @koz

        So this is both poetic and moving, and I’m going to leave it sit for that reason.

        Theoretically it’s not in bounds – I’ve been trying to get you to quit with the massive generalizations about what libs are doing – but as a cri du coeur I’m going to give it some space. (Fellow libs, that means you need to do the same – don’t turn it into a flame war thread, please.)

        On the other hand, Koz, you may want to reflect on why it is that in a world with some very serious problems, you spend so much time venting your spleen against those you call libs. I’m not calling you out here – no need to respond. I’m saying sit with it and think about it.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Koz says:

        Fact check:

        Libs watched those shows during Obama’s admin.
        North Korea is as pressing an issue as it is precisely because of Trump.
        Liberals care very much about the issues listed; just because Twitter or the blogosphere doesn’t reflect that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

        Replace the comedians with Rush and O’Reilly and kneeling with abortion and how is what you’re describing any different than the last decade or two of conservatism in America?Report

        • Koz in reply to Kazzy says:

          Libs watched those shows during Obama’s admin.

          Colbert was much different. I’m not sure about the other shows because I don’t watch them, but for some of them at least I’m pretty sure weren’t even around during the Obama Administration, at the very least the content was much different.

          Colbert, in particular, comes from the tradition of Jon Stewart, and if you like you can say that he was always a lib, that his disguise of neutrality was never fooling anybody. But even if that were so, the tone is completely different. As it stands, Colbert really doesn’t even have a comedy program any more.

          He’s got one move. It’s all really nasty Juvenalian dehumanization of Trump. He’s not about trying to find the lighter side of a dull subject. It’s about validating and intensifying the hostility to one person, the person who happens to be President. It’s very difficult for me to understand why no libs have ever stopped to figure out that this is very unhealthy for America as a whole, and for you as libs.Report

        • Koz in reply to Kazzy says:

          North Korea is as pressing an issue as it is precisely because of Trump.

          And this is just not true. If we’re going to blame anybody for North Korea, it’s Bill Clinton. There’s plenty of things to blame on Trump, but N Korea isn’t one of them.Report

        • Koz in reply to Kazzy says:

          Liberals care very much about the issues listed; just because Twitter or the blogosphere doesn’t reflect that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

          In some world this could be true I suppose but it’s hard for me to see it. And it’s not just the typical bile from Twitter either. It’s mostly the insularity of narrowing everything toward hostility to Trump. It ought to be very clear that the solution to these things require much more solidarity among Americans than we can currently muster, and that’s the libs’ fault.Report

        • Koz in reply to Kazzy says:

          Replace the comedians with Rush and O’Reilly and kneeling with abortion and how is what you’re describing any different than the last decade or two of conservatism in America?

          Rush and O’Reilly are some variant of current affairs programs (or in O’Reilly’s case, were), and from my experience at least, not nearly as bitter. What I’m talking about is something different. An analog would be if I tuned into a program about bass fishing, NASCAR, or college football, and it’s wall-to-wall bashing Obama (which I can assure you didn’t happen). Like can’t one of you idiots catch a fish or something once in a while?Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Koz says:

        …in a world with some very serious problems… stagnating wages…

        The Stagnating wages claim is an abuse of math, it’s similar to claiming women only make 79 cents. It makes a good talking point while ignoring we’re comparing apples and bananas.

        https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-goneReport

        • Koz in reply to Dark Matter says:

          The Stagnating wages claim is an abuse of math, it’s similar to claiming women only make 79 cents. It makes a good talking point while ignoring we’re comparing apples and bananas.

          I’m not buyin’ this, at all. And in fact the link you give doesn’t really support your argument.

          There’s a lot of money being made, and if you have some niche that has access to it, you probably have enough to sustain a decent standard of living. For example, if you have an equity share of something, part of a trust, or a family member who is affluent, these things will definitely help.

          But, if you want to support yourself through your own hourly labor (and God forbid if you have family members to support), today’s wages are absurdly low. Without any particular econometric data, a $25/hr job is significantly rarer now than it was 30 years ago. In fact I don’t even know a single person who has one, or can even think of one really.

          These are absolutely crucial rungs of the economic ladder that really just aren’t there any more, and the lack of them is inflicting serious damage on our economy, culture, and society.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Koz says:

            I’m not buyin’ this, at all. And in fact the link you give doesn’t really support your argument.

            Average household size declined substantially during the past 30 years, so household income is being spread across fewer people. The mix of household types—married versus single, young versus old—also changed considerably, so the “median household” in 2006 looks quite different from the “median household” in 1976. Finally, the measure of income used by the Census Bureau to compute household income excludes some rapidly growing sources of income.

            …Dividing households into these basic types leads to a surprising result: Each household type has considerably higher median income growth than the overall household median growth of 26 percent. Chart 4 shows that married-couple households—the largest type—had a median income gain of 42 percent, while female householders with no spouse present—the second largest type—had a striking 56 percent gain in household incomes.

            …But even with the increase in inequality, income gains for a broad set of middle-income households of most types were substantial. Incomes of the middle 50 percent of households—between the 25th and 75th percentiles—increased by at least 22 percent and as much as 59 percent for most household types, with gains exceeding 30 percent for most households. Retirement-age male householders had much larger gains, while working-age male householders and male householders with children had much smaller increases…Report

            • Koz in reply to Dark Matter says:

              “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”

              The fact that household size is so much smaller than it used to be is itself substantially a symptom of the fact that wage earners can’t afford families any more.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Koz says:

                The fact that household size is so much smaller than it used to be is itself substantially a symptom of the fact that wage earners can’t afford families any more.

                I don’t follow your reasoning.

                Two households who marry and become one are cheaper to run and have various other advantages.

                Similarly, one household with a married couple who divorce and have to set up two households have now increased their expenses a lot.

                And none of that changes that married households saw their incomes go up a lot, as did single households, etc. What changed was we have more singles and fewer marrieds.

                Oh, and we also have more “income” being gobbled up by benefits+taxes, and we’re over counting inflation, and that’s probably enough for now.Report