Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute writes—10 years after the start of the Great Recession, black and Asian households have yet to recover lost income:
Today’s Census Bureau report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in 2017 shows that while all race and ethnic groups shared in the growth in median household incomes during the previous two years, that trend abruptly ended for African American households in 2017. Real median incomes were basically flat among African Americans (from $40,339 to $40,258) and down among Asians (from $83,182 to $81,331), but up 3.7 percent (from $48,700 to $50,486) among Hispanics, and 2.6 percent (from $66,440 to $68,145) among non-Hispanic whites. The decline in Asian household incomes was not statistically significant.
As a result of stalled income growth among African Americans, recent progress in closing the black-white income gap over the last couple years has been reversed. The median black household earned just 59 cents for every dollar of income the white median household earned (down from 61 cents), while the median Hispanic household earned just 74 cents (up from 73 cents).
Meanwhile, households headed by persons who are foreign-born saw little change in median incomes between 2016 and 2017 (from $56,754 to $57,273), compared to an increase of 1.5 percent (from $61,066 to $61,987) among households with a native-born household head.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Bill would allow lightbulb manufacture within Michigan, but not to create jobs:
The campaign to keep old-school, inefficient, incandescent lightbulbs is near and dear to the hearts of House Republicans, including Michele Bachmann. But despite that, the bulbs are to be phased out.
How crazed do Republicans get on this subject? Michigan state Rep. Tom McMillin has introduced a bill that would let Michigan firms manufacture incandescent bulbs. The bill's (PDF) logic is that:
An incandescent lightbulb that is manufactured in this state without the inclusion of parts, other than generic or insignificant parts, imported from outside of this state and that remains within this state has not entered into interstate commerce and is not subject to congressional authority to regulate interstate commerce.
That's the logic of how the bill is legally valid, anyway. On other fronts, logic remains scarce. Since transporting Michigan-manufactured bulbs to other states would be interstate commerce, what McMillin is proposing here is an incandescent lightbulb industry for Michigan only. If Ohio wanted incandescent bulbs, they'd have to pass a law and manufacture their own.