An extra $13k a year

"If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have... $13,000 more in their pockets a year.

What we need to do . . . other than moving back toward a balance that would begin getting that $13,000 a year into middle-class pockets . . . is to put Americans to work modernizing our infrastructure with projects that will serve us well for 20 and 50 and 100 years. Projects that can be financed cheaply now, when the cost of borrowing is low and contractors are eager for work."

From Nick Hanauer in Bloomberg Businessweek; h/t Andrew Tobias.

What kind of journalism is most valuable? - and econ myths busted, in MoJo

Edited Oct 15.
Some blogposts (h/t Nieman Labs) & a story I've run across recently (h/t MuckReads), the latter illustrating the former.

For discussing the deficit, 2 simple charts

From James Fallows in the Atlantic: