The data also show the success of federal safety-net programs. If not for tax credits for low-income workers, an additional 8.2 million people would have been classified as poor last year. Similarly, food stamps and low-income housing aid lifted 3.6 million and 3.1 million people, respectively, out of poverty last year.

For all the improvement, however, broad prosperity remains elusive. For income gains to meaningfully raise living standards, they would have had to exceed the peak from before the recession, not merely met it. One in eight Americans, 40.6 million people, are still poor. Some 28.1 million are still without health coverage.

And yet, Republican policy makers seem determined to undo the progress that has been made. The Trump administration has opposed Obama-era rules to update the nation’s overtime-pay protections for salaried workers, arguably the single most important policy option to raise middle-class pay. President Trump and the House Budget Committee have both issued budget proposals for 2018 that call for deep spending cuts to safety-net programs. This week, the Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina plan to introduce yet another draconian bill to end Obamacare.

Those giant steps backward would all shift income up the economic ladder. They would also create fiscal room for big tax cuts for the rich, a grail of Republican policy, despite the poor job and wage growth after the tax cuts of the George W. Bush era.