Learning to swim only prolongs the drowning

That's what sailors reportedly used to say. I was reminded of that old saw when I read this.

The Census Bureau's annual look at income and health coverage (based on surveys conducted in March) is out today. The rise in the poverty rate and in the percentage of Americans without health insurance got the headlines. But here's a fact that for some reason the Census Bureau didn't emphasize: The median household income in 2008 was $50,303. The median household income in 1999, expressed in 2008 dollars, was $52,748.

You've got to figure 2009 will see another decline in income, in which case Americans will end the decade significantly less well off than when they started it. We're not just treading water. We're going backwards.

In other words, a great many Americans are slowly, painfully, drowning.