Traffic. Lots of it, especially in Boston, NYC, and San Fran. Air travel also will reach historic levels, with predictions of a record 30.6 million passengers flying on U.S. airlines.

According to the American Automobile Association:

Consumers have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season: higher wages, more disposable income and rising levels of household wealth. This is translating into more travelers kicking off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving getaway, building on a positive year for the travel industry.

The Average American Stuck in the Mud?

Politicians and the media are hot on income inequality and accusing the top 1% of Americans grabbing most income gains, writes James Freeman in the WSJ.

How about the top 1 percent grabbing most income gains, while average Americans are stuck in the mud?

Nonsense. In the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson shares good news.

Well, it’s not so. That’s the message — perhaps unintended — from the Congressional Budget Office, which reports periodically on the distribution and growth of the nation’s income. It recently found that most Americans had experienced clear-cut income gains since the early 1980s.

This conclusion is exceptionally important, because the CBO study is arguably the most comprehensive tabulation of Americans’ incomes.

According to Mr. Samuelson, while the famous one-percenters have indeed seen a surge income, the poorest fifth of Americans “enjoyed a roughly 80 percent post-tax income increase since 1979. As Mr. Freeman, reports, “The richest quintile — those just below the top 1 percent — had a similar gain of nearly 80 percent. The middle three quintiles achieved less, about a 50 percent rise in post-tax incomes.”

And of course people move up and down the income scale over time, thanks to the freedom that so many will travel so far and for so long to celebrate this week.