YET BUSHROVE RAN ON IRAQ?:

A brisk rise in American wages: Pay rose faster than the cost of living for the first time in years (Mark Trumbull, 11/20/06, The Christian Science Monitor)

The pay increase amounts to 4 percent on average over the past 12 months, and it comes at a very helpful time for millions of households. [...]

Equally significant, tamer energy prices mean that the "real" wage gains, after inflation, are above 3 percent for the past 12 months. That, too, hasn't happened since the 1990s, even though the economy has been expanding over the past five years.