The doom and gloom distractions? Gone. The fog has cleared. Republicans can no longer hide from the obvious expanding wage gap, a direct result of supply side economics. Lead by Paul Ryan, the GOP has simply resurfaced the crumbling road to prosperity with a new sell job.
Declining wages are killing us, and Republicans have been standing in the way of reversing that. The nation is waking up to the fact that the bottom 90% need a raise. This is now the major topic of discussion, finally, and we should be embarrassed to have let it get this bad:
A new report from the Center for American Progress finds that Australia and Canada "have experience continuing middle-class growth," while for the U.S. it has halted. Indeed, when I used the World Top Incomes Database to compare the income growth of the "bottom" 90 percent, I got this:
So, a bunch of squiggles followed by a great divergence around 2001, when the United States falls off a ledge, Canada takes a massive step up, and Australia takes one of those proverbial marsupial hops. Chronically, the bash brothers of globalization and technology have clobbered middle-class jobs, hacking away at manufacturing employment and hollowing out routine-based work that paid okay wages. (At the same time, low-skill immigration in the late 1980s and 1990s reduced the average income of the poorest American families.) More acutely, the Great Recession delivered the mother of all housing crunches, which has been terrible news for the lower and middle classes. Five years into the recovery, construction and manufacturing employment is still in a six-million-job hole (24 million in 2000; 18 million today).
The road out is not hopeless, and the CAP paper on how the U.S. can learn from the rest of the world offers fine solutions across education, infrastructure, and working with cities to develop talent clusters. But this sort of ambitious policy landscaping is purely fanciful with today's Congress. In this government, all big ideas are rain dances.
The fog has cleared. Oh man do you ever not get it. US retail sales down sharply...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-14/retail-sales-in-u-s-slumped-in-broad-based-december-retreat.html
And as far as consumer confidence goes, welcome back to 2005....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-28/consumer-confidence-soars-highest-2007-surge-hopium
And here's your big jobless "strong yearlong economic recovery"...
http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/us-participation-rate.png
And with the shale oil sector laying off thousands...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-20/first-schlumberger-fires-9000-now-baker-hughes-unleashes-7000-more-layoffs
you want a raise for what? Complaining about Republicans? Yeah let's make the price of employment higher so everyone who isn't too big to fail goes out of business.
Just answer this question... how much of a raise is too much? $25/hour $50/hour? $100/hour?
Not everybody's labor is equal so why would the government know what is best for everybody?
And what would the price of beef or gas or corn or wheat be in such a rainbow liberal utopia?
I don't know why I bother. You will never get it. But it will be fun watching you lose it. I just feel bad for anyone who still follows this blog and still thinks the government is going to solve your problems. Oh if we can only just get Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in 2016. Haha. Liberals are delusional.
And if you're going to index income to 1980, why don't you index inflation to 1980 like the government does and say there is only 2% inflation. Do you even know what inflation is? Obviously not.
ReplyDeleteFirst, "How much of raise is too much..." is one of the dumbest most thoughtless talking points of the year. I won't even waste my time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for making my point; the low minimum wage problem, resulting in "retail sales down sharply."
No one said the government knows best. We're a service economy now. Service jobs pay less. Times changed, now we have to make our new economy work by raising the only available jobs left. But Republicans know what's best, not government.
Basing an economy of cheap oil is resulting in the loss of jobs. That's what you wanted isn't it, cheap oil and energy independence. Now you have it and the consequences. I had nothing to do with that as a Democrat.
Businesses fail everyday, that's the free market. Get a friggin life and leave me alone.
I'll try to leave you alone now. I really do have better things to do. The problem is with the money itself. A debt based system that can be created out of thin air. I hope you figure that out.
ReplyDeleteHere you'll enjoy this especially when it gets to 1:45...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzb-mzukrbQ
"It's a BIG club. And you ain't in it. You and I aren't in the BIG CLUB." -George Carlin
Okay, we both have things to do....but I actually don't mind getting your input no matter how outlandish it might be. I was in an especially angry moment when I wrote that last comment. You at least try to back up your positions.
ReplyDeleteIt's up to you, but I take back my request. Thanks.