Friday, October 26, 2007

How Does John Edwards Explain This?

From cafehayek:
In 1970, according to the American Housing Survey (from HUD and the Department of Commerce, then called the Annual Housing Survey, Table A-1, p. 32), 36% of the 67 million households in America had air conditioning, 11% had central air. This is the earliest data available from this survey.

In 2005, the most recent data from the same survey, (Table 2-4, p. 66) 82% of the 15 million households with income below the poverty line had air conditioning, 52% had central air.
Democrats always talk about how the middle class has “eroded” over the last 25 years. They instead clamor for a return to the "good old days" of the 1970s European social model when…no one had air conditioning. Along with the media's backing, they argue the poor have been left behind over the last quarter century. I would draw the opposite conclusion: that the poor have never had it so good.

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