Yes and No
The front pages of newspapers on Wednesday were plastered with good-news stories about the economy. “Consumer confidence jumps,” The Washington Post trumpeted. “Americans are in a buying mood,” according to The New York Times. “Home Sales Power Optimism,” was the banner headline in The Wall Street Journal. Is the U.S. economy out of the woods, NBC’s Chris Jansing asked Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday. “That is a great question,” Sanders said, “and the answer is a definitive yes and no.”
“Compared to 2008, no question we're doing much better. Unemployment is down. We have cut the budget deficit in about half. State budgets are doing much better. California was a disaster, now they’re running a surplus. That's the good news.
“But let me give you the not-so-good news. That is, while official unemployment today is at about 7.5 percent, real unemployment, counting those people who have given up looking for work or people working part-time when they want to work full-time, is almost 14 percent. And if you look at young people unemployment or minority unemployment, the numbers are way, way higher than that. More significantly, if you look at the trends impacting the middle class from way, way back, median middle income has gone down $5,000 and most jobs today are not good-paying jobs. They're low-paying jobs.
“And perhaps most frightening is we're seeing more income and wealth inequality in America. So between 2009 and 2011 all of the income in America went to the top 1 percent and in terms of wealth, the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is as wide as it has been since the 1920s.”
