Incomes have been falling pretty steadily since the early 80s. Bush II may have accellerated the slide, and Obama may have failed to stop it, but it only reflects a long term trend. And a dropping of income is not the only problem which began around that time. There is also a tendency for it to redistribute itself to the higher income levels. It is a distribution of wealth problem as much as it is a lack of it. The two are correlated, but the relationship is not necessarily causal.

I suspect what is at the root of it is structural, and there really isn't much we can do to stop it. What we should be doing is to mitigate the social damage it is causing, and controlling the rate of the decline. At the root, this is not primarily an ideologically correctable problem.

America was striving towards a Gaussian distribution of wealth, with relatively large middle class, and shrinking populations at the high and low end. That historical trend was initiated by Capitalist economic ideas in the 17th and 18th century, and seems to have been spreading world-wide. It is now showing signs of slowing or reversing in this country. However, on a global stage, America's loss is now the world's gain. Real middle classes are arising all over the planet, and that is a good thing.

There may not be much we can do to stop this, but there is much we can do to keep small elitist groups from manipulating it for their own private benenfit and profit.

But we need to get it through our heads, the office jobs and the white collar salaries are NOT coming back. Suburbia, station wagons and cheap oil are gone forever. The last half of the 20th century is in our past, like free land on the Frontier.

It's not the end of the world, just a new one. And if you average it out over all 7 billion of us, it's probably a better one.