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Dwindling salaries omitted in speech

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In 1941, Billie Holiday sang:

"Them that's got may get, Them that's not may lose.

So the Bible says, And it still is news."

Last week, President Bush made another speech praising our nation's economic recovery. It was filled with encouraging statistics, all of which were supported by appropriate departments.

The stock market is up, unemployment is down, housing, though softening a bit, remains strong. President Bush and many of his advisors seem genuinely puzzled that the administration is not getting enough credit for all this good news. They blame many factors, including, of course, "the media," for not getting the word out.

As a consumer of news, I believe they are wrong. The newspapers are filled with reports of the rebound of the "tech sector" and continuing "bull market." TV is even more enthusiastic. The cable news networks carry the stock market numbers constantly on the right-hand corner of their screens and the all-financial news channels, such as CNBC, are little more than cheerleaders for the market and its mantra of downsizing and globalization.

So why are so many people still uneasy about the economy? Why are they not cheering the boom?

Because, for the vast majority of the American people, there is no boom. In fact, their personal economic landscape looks more like a bust than a boom.

You see, there is a statistic President Bush neglected to include in his speech.

His own Labor Department released the number last week. Here is the grim reality for those who work for a living in President Bush's economy.

Their salaries are going down, not up. 2005 was the third year in a row real wages fell. How much? If you are an hourly employee, your weekly earning went down by 0.5 percent. If you are on a salary, your real wages went down by 0.4 percent.

In the meantime, the same Labor Department report tells us that inflation went up 3.4 percent in 2005, the highest rate in five years.

The combination of the two statistics proves again that the average American has been going backwards economically for most of the last five years.

A close look at the numbers show that wealth was, indeed, created at a faster rate in our country in 2005, but it was going to those who were already wealthy. That famous 1 percent of Americans we heard so much about during the political campaign of 2004 still controls the majority of the wealth in the nation. That is not a cry of "class warfare," as the wealthy and their claque of political apologists claim.

It is a statistic.

Nor is that the end of the bad news for the middle class.

Buried in that inflation number is a wild card. For most goods and services, the rate was actually only 2.2 percent. What boosts it by more than half is the cost of energy.

That is the very sector of the economy that hits lower and middle income Americans the hardest. They have to drive their cars to work. They have to heat their homes for their families. Gasoline. Electricity. Natural gas. Fuel oil.

Expressed as a percentage of income, energy costs slam the middle class American 10, 20, 30 times as hard as their upper income fellow citizens. Often, more than that.

Long gone are the days, back in the mists of the 1970s and earlier, when the gap between the highest earners and the average earners in our society narrowed. That trend, which began in the 1930s and lasted for 40 years, has reversed itself, nearing a differential so wide we haven't seen its like since the early days of the 20th century.

It is unlikely to change. No one, Democrat or Republican, is talking about it in the political arena. And 80 percent of us seem content to lose ground or stagnate in our pursuit of the American dream.

And pray to hit the lottery.

"Rich relations give crusts of bread and such.

You can help yourself, but don't take too much."

Perhaps Billie Holiday had a firmer grip on real economics than any of us.

Nick Clooney writes for The Post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Write to him in care of The Post at 125 E. Court St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. E-mails sent to Nick at postliving@cincypost.com will be forwarded to him via regular mail.