Hillary Touts Bill Clinton's Wage Growth

Yesterday, I briefly caught a Hillary Clinton stump speech in Indiana, in which she stated  that the last time there was wage growth in this country, was when her husband was President (1993 to 2001).  Then, she said it all stopped when a Republican replaced him.  And, yes, if you look at the following chart, she would be correct.

Click on Image To Enlarge

Neither George Bush nor Barack Obama have been able to get the real median household income back to the 1999 peak that occurred during Bill Clinton's presidency.  However, what is also true, is that wage growth under Clinton was all due to the largest increase in income inequality, with the top 1% of incomes generally patterning the peaks and valleys of the chart above (as noted in the following chart).

Click on Chart to Enlarge

At the same time, the bottom 90% (the bottom line on that graph) improved very little under her husband's years in office.

The truth is. that Bill Clinton was in office  during a time when more millionaires were created than ever before.  It was the core years of the dot-com and the Internet revolution.  What is also true is that, as seen above, the top 1% recouped their losses quickly after the Great Recession.  On the other hand, it shows that despite these gains, median incomes continued to fall through 2012.  Thereby implying that 99% had substantially greater losses in income through 2012.   Of course, that doesn't speak well for the current Democrat in office, now does it? 

One last note.  Growth in wages stopped a year before Bush got into office because the dot-com bubble burst; sending the stock market reeling.  Contrary to Hillary's assertion, George Bush had nothing to do with that, or 9/11, which also caused incomes to fall until they bottomed out in 2004. Then they continued to rise again until the Great Recession hit.


References:

Real Median Household Incomes: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N

This chart shows why Hillary Clinton wants to ‘topple’ the 1 percent: http://fusion.net/story/123719/hillary-clinton-income-inequality-topple-1-percent/

 Dot-com Bubble: https://www.google.com/search?q=dot+com+bubble&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8