Wage Growth the Lowest in 5 Decades, Wages Sharpest Drop Since 1990! Thank You Republicons.

Remember when Democrats used to warn of a "wage race to the bottom?" Even though Blue Dog Democrats, who bought into the free market pricipals of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand helped Republicans down that path, it was the GOP who chanpioned the race to the bottom as a demonstration true unregulated capitalism. While Republicans now blame liberal spending and big government policies, the last 14 years have given us the following, from the Wisconsin State Journal:

The spending power of families is being squeezed, government data showed Friday … Workers saw their inflation-adjusted weekly wages fall 1.6 percent last year, the sharpest drop since 1990 … Many are struggling with surging costs for health care and college tuition, both of which have been galloping far above the overall inflation rate.

The 1.6 percent drop in average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers was the worst yearly performance since a 2.5 percent fall in 1990.

The roaring Bush recovery years, weren't!

Inflation-adjusted pay has sunk in five of the past seven years, underscoring the pressures households felt even before the recession. Over the past 10 years, for example, inflation-adjusted wages grew only about 13 percent, the slowest pace in five decades, according to calculations made by Scott Hoyt of Moody's Economy.com.

Even as wages, on average, have stagnated, Wall Street is one industry that's still handing out lavish pay raises. At JPMorgan Chase, for example, the average compensation per employee rose to $121,124 in 2009 from $101,110 a year earlier, the bank said Friday. The average compensation in the investment banking division was about $380,000.

In the words of: Franklin D. Roosevelt's “The Economic Bill of Rights” speech, Excerpt from 11 January 1944 message to Congress on the State of the Union:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. …

Maddow takes a look at Obama's successful efforts to stop the Republican economic cancer.