Because bankers failed to collect key banking data before 1959, there is no way to put into True Dollars™, the state of affairs before the first quarter of 1959. Otherwise, it might be quite shocking to see exactly to where today compares.
Per capital DPI has fallen -47.02% from the Q1 2008 peak of $7678.40 each American age 16 or over.
And the graph of personal income in True Dollars™ mirrors GDP without surprise. No one should expect the U.S. economy to grow when credit priced in True Dollars has fallen.
Americans are living through the consequences of the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the greatest credit bubble in the history of mankind.
And though personal unspent profit ("saving") rate is more than double what it measured at Q2 2005, Americans hardly save as they did between 1959 and 1975.
It's hard to get capital growth and thus growth in wages when savings are weak and working-age immigration continues to swell the ranks of the working-age population.
The U.S. Congress has upped their tax collection in spite of falling personal income and falling per capita personal income.
This chart shocks the eyes and mind. States' legislators have grown their respective state governments for years. Perhaps more than Congress, the growth of state governments explains why living in America moves toward totalitarianism every year.
Without doubt, salaries and pensions for state government workers have grown unreasonably generous over many years.
Americans might have lived it right in the 1950s.
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