Section 1: Summary of the article (first paragraph): Tell me what the article is about and what major points the author is making, and his/her conclusions in a paragraph (5-6 sentences long at the most).

Section 2: Your thoughts on the article (at the most two paragraphs long): Critically evaluate author's findings. For example, tell me why you agree or disagree with the author or his/her points, by supporting your own points by giving examples, or by providing convincing evidence/examples supporting your points. You could also highlight the shortcomings of the article. (e.g., Do you share or do not share any of the economists' point of view outlined in the article? Why? Why not?).

America's Inequality Problem: Real Income Gains Are Brief and Hard to Find The Gadsden Green Housing Complex in Charleston, S.C. The income of the typical American household increased 5.2 percent in 2015, the first real increase since 2007, the United States Census Bureau said Tuesdax Credit... Travis Dove for The New York Times By Eduardo Porter Sept. 13, 2016 Working families finally got a raise. Early on Tuesday, the Census Bu provided some long-awaited good news for the beleaguered working class: The income of the typical American household perched on the middle rung of the income ladder increased a hearty 5.2 percent in 2015, the first real increase since 2007, the year before the economy sank into recession. Households all the way down the income scale made more money last year. The average incomes of the poorest fifth of the population increased 6.6 percent after three consecutive years of decline. And the official poverty rate declined to 13.5 percent from 14.8 percent in 2014, the sharpest decline since the late 1960s. The numbers are heartening, confirming that the sluggish yet consistent recovery of the American economy has finally begun to lift all boats. They fit the story coming from the job market, which is about as tight as it has been in a very long time. They follow rises in the minimum wage across many states and municipalities. This shows the importance of robust labor markets, said Jared Bernstein, a former top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. If working-age Americans are going to get ahead, it is through a paycheck. And yet this positive news while clearly undermining Donald J. Trump's unbridled pessimism about the American economy does not justify unbridled celebration, either. "The next question is why did it take such a long time for things to look good?" said Arlac Sherman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning policy analysis group. As Sheldon H. Danziger of the Russell Sage Foundation put it, it's great news that men's earnings from work increased 1.5 percent. But they are still lower than in the 1970s. The answer does not just involve sluggish growth. It is also about its distribution. Gains may be finally trickling down to those at the bottom of the ladder. But the numbers still offer a lopsided picture, with a gargantuan share of income rising to the top. While the bottom fifth of households increased their share of the nation's income, by the census's definition, to 3.4 percent from 3.3 percent, the richest 5 percent kept 21.8 percent of the pie, the same as in 2014. "There's an inequality problem, Mr. Sherman added. Against the backdrop of the last few decades, the income gains revealed on Tuesday underscore how difficult the American economy has made it for average workers to get ahead. In nearly every successive economic cycle, progress came slower and harder than in the previous one. The data, which measured how Americans were doing six years into the economic recovery, show that incomes in the middle, measured in 2015 dollars, were still 1.6 percent below the previous peak of $57,423 a household, which was attained in 2007, just before the economy sank into what has come to be known as the Great Recession. Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox. How does that look compared to the nation's recent history? After the economy slipped into recession in 1969, it took only three years for incomes in the middle to rebound and surpass their previous peak. After the downturn of 1973, it took five; after back-to-back recessions in 1981 and 1982, it took seven. And, except for the long expansion that ran from 1991 through 2000, it has been getting worse. The economic growth from late 2001 to about the end of 2007 never even managed to deliver incomes above the previous peak for the typical household, reached near the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The expansion underway today may not get there, either. Today, median household incomes are still 2.4 percent below the absolute peak they hit in 1999 - when Facebook had yet to come into existence, the big news in the music business was Napster, and the good times in Silicon Valley were about to come crashing down with the collapse of the dot-com bubble. At the bottom of the ladder, households at the 10th percentile those poorer than 90 percent of the population - are still a bit poorer than they were in 1989. Americans have managed to develop an internet economy, invent social media and build driverless cars since then, but not to improve the lot of those at the bottom. What's more, changes starting in 2013 in the way the census asks people about their incomes can distort comparisons with previous years. After adjusting the data for these changes, according to Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute, the income of American households in the middle of the distribution last year was still 4.6 percent below its level in 2007 and 5.4 percent below where it was in 1999. Men's earnings from work increased 1.5 percent, according to the United States Census Bureau, but their incomes are still lower than in the 1970s.Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty Images Of course, the Census Bureau's numbers on income and poverty don't add up to a perfect representation of families' means. For one thing, they include only money income excluding in-kind government benefits like housing vouchers or food stamps. They don't include the impact of taxes, ignoring the earned-income tax credit, which provides substantial help to families with low earnings. The official poverty line, moreover, is assessed using a basket of necessities defined in the 1960s which has little to do with people's lives today. Over the last few years the census has also published an alternative Supplemental Poverty Measure - which keeps a better tab on Americans' income and expenditures. Using that count, poverty dipped to 14.3 percent, the lowest level since the census began compiling it in 2009. Analysts like Scott Winship of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute have argued for some time that long-term income numbers, like those published by the Congressional Budget Office, suggest that Americans in the middle of the income distribution and below have not done badly over recent decades. He concludes that the best strategy to promote the welfare of working Americans is to focus on improving overall economic growth. The fixation with inequality and income distribution, he says, will produce bad policy. The current census data does suggest that growth can ultimately bring prosperity to average Americans. Still, it also points to the persistence of wide inequality as being at the center of the story. Across the entire bottom 60 percent of the distribution, households are taking home a smaller slice of the pie than they did in the 1960s and 1970s. The 3-4 percent of income that households in the bottom fifth took home last year was less than the 5.8 percent they had in 1974. With their share shrinking with almost every economic cycle, it is hardly a surprise that it takes longer for them to experience any income gains at all. Growth, alone, is not adding to their prosperity as it once did. By contrast, households in the top 5 percent have profited nicely from America's expansions. In 2015, they took in $350,870, on average. That is 4.9 percent more than in 1999 and 37.5 percent more than in 1989. Historical precedent suggests the latest economic expansion is getting long in the tooth. Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and a top economic adviser in President Obama's first term, says there are better than even odds today that the United States will tip into a recession within three years. In July, Deutsche Bank said the probability of a recession within the next 12 months had jumped to 60 percent, the highest since August 2008. JPMorgan thinks the odds are 37 percent. For all but Americans at the very top, that means that the punch bowl may well be taken away again before the party really gets going. That is not how a well-functioning economy should work. America's Inequality Problem: Real Income Gains Are Brief and Hard to Find The Gadsden Green Housing Complex in Charleston, S.C. The income of the typical American household increased 5.2 percent in 2015, the first real increase since 2007, the United States Census Bureau said Tuesdax Credit... Travis Dove for The New York Times By Eduardo Porter Sept. 13, 2016 Working families finally got a raise. Early on Tuesday, the Census Bu provided some long-awaited good news for the beleaguered working class: The income of the typical American household perched on the middle rung of the income ladder increased a hearty 5.2 percent in 2015, the first real increase since 2007, the year before the economy sank into recession. Households all the way down the income scale made more money last year. The average incomes of the poorest fifth of the population increased 6.6 percent after three consecutive years of decline. And the official poverty rate declined to 13.5 percent from 14.8 percent in 2014, the sharpest decline since the late 1960s. The numbers are heartening, confirming that the sluggish yet consistent recovery of the American economy has finally begun to lift all boats. They fit the story coming from the job market, which is about as tight as it has been in a very long time. They follow rises in the minimum wage across many states and municipalities. This shows the importance of robust labor markets, said Jared Bernstein, a former top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. If working-age Americans are going to get ahead, it is through a paycheck. And yet this positive news while clearly undermining Donald J. Trump's unbridled pessimism about the American economy does not justify unbridled celebration, either. "The next question is why did it take such a long time for things to look good?" said Arlac Sherman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning policy analysis group. As Sheldon H. Danziger of the Russell Sage Foundation put it, it's great news that men's earnings from work increased 1.5 percent. But they are still lower than in the 1970s. The answer does not just involve sluggish growth. It is also about its distribution. Gains may be finally trickling down to those at the bottom of the ladder. But the numbers still offer a lopsided picture, with a gargantuan share of income rising to the top. While the bottom fifth of households increased their share of the nation's income, by the census's definition, to 3.4 percent from 3.3 percent, the richest 5 percent kept 21.8 percent of the pie, the same as in 2014. "There's an inequality problem, Mr. Sherman added. Against the backdrop of the last few decades, the income gains revealed on Tuesday underscore how difficult the American economy has made it for average workers to get ahead. In nearly every successive economic cycle, progress came slower and harder than in the previous one. The data, which measured how Americans were doing six years into the economic recovery, show that incomes in the middle, measured in 2015 dollars, were still 1.6 percent below the previous peak of $57,423 a household, which was attained in 2007, just before the economy sank into what has come to be known as the Great Recession. Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox. How does that look compared to the nation's recent history? After the economy slipped into recession in 1969, it took only three years for incomes in the middle to rebound and surpass their previous peak. After the downturn of 1973, it took five; after back-to-back recessions in 1981 and 1982, it took seven. And, except for the long expansion that ran from 1991 through 2000, it has been getting worse. The economic growth from late 2001 to about the end of 2007 never even managed to deliver incomes above the previous peak for the typical household, reached near the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The expansion underway today may not get there, either. Today, median household incomes are still 2.4 percent below the absolute peak they hit in 1999 - when Facebook had yet to come into existence, the big news in the music business was Napster, and the good times in Silicon Valley were about to come crashing down with the collapse of the dot-com bubble. At the bottom of the ladder, households at the 10th percentile those poorer than 90 percent of the population - are still a bit poorer than they were in 1989. Americans have managed to develop an internet economy, invent social media and build driverless cars since then, but not to improve the lot of those at the bottom. What's more, changes starting in 2013 in the way the census asks people about their incomes can distort comparisons with previous years. After adjusting the data for these changes, according to Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute, the income of American households in the middle of the distribution last year was still 4.6 percent below its level in 2007 and 5.4 percent below where it was in 1999. Men's earnings from work increased 1.5 percent, according to the United States Census Bureau, but their incomes are still lower than in the 1970s.Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty Images Of course, the Census Bureau's numbers on income and poverty don't add up to a perfect representation of families' means. For one thing, they include only money income excluding in-kind government benefits like housing vouchers or food stamps. They don't include the impact of taxes, ignoring the earned-income tax credit, which provides substantial help to families with low earnings. The official poverty line, moreover, is assessed using a basket of necessities defined in the 1960s which has little to do with people's lives today. Over the last few years the census has also published an alternative Supplemental Poverty Measure - which keeps a better tab on Americans' income and expenditures. Using that count, poverty dipped to 14.3 percent, the lowest level since the census began compiling it in 2009. Analysts like Scott Winship of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute have argued for some time that long-term income numbers, like those published by the Congressional Budget Office, suggest that Americans in the middle of the income distribution and below have not done badly over recent decades. He concludes that the best strategy to promote the welfare of working Americans is to focus on improving overall economic growth. The fixation with inequality and income distribution, he says, will produce bad policy. The current census data does suggest that growth can ultimately bring prosperity to average Americans. Still, it also points to the persistence of wide inequality as being at the center of the story. Across the entire bottom 60 percent of the distribution, households are taking home a smaller slice of the pie than they did in the 1960s and 1970s. The 3-4 percent of income that households in the bottom fifth took home last year was less than the 5.8 percent they had in 1974. With their share shrinking with almost every economic cycle, it is hardly a surprise that it takes longer for them to experience any income gains at all. Growth, alone, is not adding to their prosperity as it once did. By contrast, households in the top 5 percent have profited nicely from America's expansions. In 2015, they took in $350,870, on average. That is 4.9 percent more than in 1999 and 37.5 percent more than in 1989. Historical precedent suggests the latest economic expansion is getting long in the tooth. Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and a top economic adviser in President Obama's first term, says there are better than even odds today that the United States will tip into a recession within three years. In July, Deutsche Bank said the probability of a recession within the next 12 months had jumped to 60 percent, the highest since August 2008. JPMorgan thinks the odds are 37 percent. For all but Americans at the very top, that means that the punch bowl may well be taken away again before the party really gets going. That is not how a well-functioning economy should work