Corporations making more than they ever have, and workers making less than ever.

Guess things aren't as bad as they seem for corporations, or what we've heard from the Republicans. What doesn't seem to be a concern? Lower and lower wages:

Think Progress: A constant conservative charge against President Obama is that he is inherently anti-business. In the third quarter of this year, “corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago.”

Corporations are currently making more as a percentage of the economy than they ever have since such records were kept. But at the same time, wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low, as this chart shows. (The red line is corporate profits; the blue line is private sector wages.):

Corporations made a record $824 billion in profits last year as well, while the stock market has had one of its best performances since 1900 while Obama has been in office.

Meanwhile, workers are getting the short end of the stick. As CNN Money explained, “a separate government reading shows that total wages have now fallen to a record low of 43.5% of GDP. Until 1975, wages almost always accounted for at least half of GDP, and had been as high as 49% as recently as early 2001.”

Consumer Confidence 5 year High...

Didn't see this talked about today...

Bloomberg News: U.S. Stocks Rise as Data Overshadow Fiscal Cliff Concern U.S. stocks rose, trimming the biggest weekly drop since June in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as data showing consumer confidence climbed to a five- year high offset concern about fiscal cliff negotiations.

Conservative Talk Radio in Wisconsin Paints Dire Economic Picture Resembling nothing in the Real World.

Having been in radio for over 27 years, I can tell you quite honestly conservative talk radio’s massive monopoly nationwide, is a major factor behind the greatly misinformed conservative voter. Conservative talk shows are easy to find, and via syndication, absolutely blankets the country. Liberal talk formats are growing, but nothing close to the coverage in rural areas.

In a recent article by Craig Gilbert, he ponders the changing perspective on the economy by liberals and conservatives. It seems economic perceptions are reversing. But Gilbert never mentioned this reason why; conservative radio propaganda.

Jsonline: It seems like only yesterday that Democrats thought Wisconsin’s economy was tanking and Republicans were declaring a new dawn of prosperity. That was during last spring’s recall fight, when a GOP governor was on the ballot. Today, the economy hasn’t changed much, but the politics has. Now it’s a Democratic president on the ballot, and the parties have done a role reversal: Democrats think we’re on the road to recovery and Republicans think the sky is falling.

Why is the partisan perception gap so much bigger today than it was four months ago? Here’s a theory: back in May, voters in each party were conflicted. Republican voters were hearing their governor talk up the economy and their presidential candidates talk down the economy. The gap started when Obama took office and is now bigger than at any time in his presidency, with four times as many Republicans as Democrats reporting bad news.

The reason Republicans voters think the economy is tanking is because of what they hear on talk radio. The graphs in Gilbert's article easily explains who's listening to conservative talk, and who isn't:

Even though the major news outlets have been reporting on the slowly improving economy, talk radio has been describing it as “on the brink,” “the end of America as we know it,” and “we’re worse off now than four years ago.” It’s not true, but that’s the shrill sound on the right.

Paul Ryan perpetuated the fiction of "media bias," without offering one example, on Fox News Sunday:

Ryan also accused the media of having a liberal disposition: “I think it kind of goes without saying that there's definitely a media bias. We've - look, I'm a conservative person, I'm used to media bias. We expected media bias going into this,” said Ryan.

Asked to cite a specific example of media bias, Ryan demurred, instead asserting that most people who work in the media have liberal political affiliations and, therefore, would want a president who is a Democrat to win. “I'm not going to go into a tit-for-tat or litigate this thing,” said Ryan. “But as a conservative, I've long believed and long felt that there is inherent media bias. And I think anybody with objectivity would believe that that's the case.”

The soft squishy coverage from the major news networks is nothing when you compared it to conservative talk radio’s 90 percent dominance nationwide. Even then, the networks lean conservative simply by never question the factually conflicted rhetoric of our Republican  politicians.

Republican Attacks on Obama are a repeat of their attacks on Clinton. The Whole Story

Economic columnist and wonk Ezra Klein got a chance to get the following piece out of his system, and we're all better for it. It's a great history lesson from the 90's through today.

We should have learned out lesson from recent history, but I guess not. Great worthwhile look at how the Republicans have stalled progress with fear mongering and warnings that America was on the edge of economic disaster. Funny thing, they were proven completely wrong.

Does this look like Obama is spending too much...compared to all Republican Presidents.

Borrow and Spend Now, While Interest Rates are Way Down. Yet Republicans are Won't.

It's the "Opposite World" of Republican economics; they say borrowing is bad...so it must be good!!!

Republicans say build the Keystone Pipeline? Here comes environment damage and longer dependence on oil. (Actually, we really shouldn't, but that another story).

Back to the borrowing "problem" we actually don't have, along with "spending." The economic reason for both spending and borrowing has been talked about before, but here's another attempt to break through the Republican wall of talking points. If we go along with Republicans, infrastructure spending in the country will greatly increase, straining federal, state and local budgets.

Ezra Klein email: The conventional wisdom is that the United States is borrowing too much. But don't tell that to the markets. It's cheaper for the U.S. to finance its debt today than it was when we last had surpluses. For three-year, five-year, and 10-year treasuries, the rate has turned negative. That is to say, the market is so afraid of losing money in the dangerous, uncertain world out there, that they'll pay us to keep their money safe for them ... it's an incredible opportunity for us.

It means that any investment with any positive rate of return is an investment worth making.

Infrastructure clearly fits that bill. Not only is the likely return high, but if we don't do it now, we'll need to do it later, when our borrowing costs will be higher.

But the conventional wisdom -- the wisdom that says the only responsible thing to do is cut -- stands in our way. If we were going by the numbers, the path forward would be clear: Borrow now, when we can get money for free, when we have millions of unemployed Americans to put back to work, and when the economy is in desperate need of more demand. But don't stop there. At the same time, pass a large and credible deficit-reduction plan that covers, says, 2014-2023, and cuts federal borrowing as the global economy recovers and interest rates rise. in other words, make investments now, when it's cheap, but begin working on an exit strategy for a few years from now, when borrowing becomes expensive again.

Steve Keen on Upside Down Lunacy of Austere Economics.

Just how wrong are the Republicans on economics? It’s all here…from Steve Keen’s Debtwatch

Thom Hartmann is the most prominent of the very few progressive economic and political commentators in America. Thom interviewed me for his TV show The Big Picture yesterday, on the topic of whether we’re in a Depression now, if so how this one compares to the 1930s, and whether such events are a part of capitalism’s natural cyclicality.

The Myth of "UNCERTAINTY." It's a Republican marketing campaign for more reckless deregulation and tax cuts.

The title says it all...along with the article below by Dr. Jan Eberly, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy:

Treasury: Last week at a Senate hearing Secretary Geithner said, “I'm very sympathetic to the argument you want to be careful to get the rules better and smarter, but I don’t think there's good evidence in support of the proposition that it's regulatory burden or uncertainty that's causing the economy to grow more slowly than any of us would like.”

Economists from across the political spectrum have the same conclusion.  Bruce Bartlett, a senior advisor in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said that “no hard evidence” has been offered … And in a recent Wall Street Journal survey of economists, 65 percent of respondents concluded that a lack of demand, not government policy, was the main impediment to increased hiring.

Nonetheless, two commonly repeated misconceptions are that uncertainty created by proposed regulations is holding back business investment and hiring and that the overall burden of existing regulations is so high that firms have reduced their hiring.

In recent surveys, business owners and economists do not list regulation as the main problem facing their business, nor do they blame regulation for job cuts:

In the September survey of small business owners by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, more than twice as many respondents cited poor sales (29.6 percent) as their largest problem than cite regulation (13.9 percent).

In an August survey of economists by the National Association for Business Economics, 80 percent of respondents described the current regulatory environment as “good” for American businesses and the overall economy.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than three-tenths of 1 percent of mass lay-offs in the second quarter of this year were due to government regulations or intervention. [2]

Yea, Dumb Families need to Learn Financial Lessons, not Wall Street.

How is it possible in liberal Madison, Wisconsin, we have to endure these condescending slaps at struggling families, by our local conservative newspaper's choice of headlines? 

Yea, we're the ones who need to learn financial lessons!!!

A jobs bill can wait till later. No rush, no emergency, no handouts, no time for declining family incomes...

My other title suggestion was: GOP Legislature takes off months during jobs crisis, but acted fast on business handouts. 

Will conservative voters finally get it. They're last on the list, where they belong, and becoming more desperate. You may have heard that social issues are off the table. That is such a crock of….! You’ll see.

What’s basically happening now is back room corporate dealing in the Republican legislature. Jobs, and helping “job creators,” are just buzz words to energize a desperate base of voters with few options and trying to survive. If they meant it, they would do something on the demand side, putting more money in the pockets of consumers to buy things, and create jobs. 

In the presidential race, who's plan helps people, and who's doesn't?

click pic to enlarge

But in the upside down world of Republican politics, demand means helping people. Supply side on the other hand, helps business. Guess where their loyalties lie. 

But why the time off? Special session anyone? Emergency jobs bills anyone? Hellooooo…..

Journal Times: Life must be hard in the Legislature. Or perhaps the lingering summer heat is sapping the energy of people who a few months ago were vigorously voting beneath the Capitol dome … the body which was eager to reform government when the current session began in January, the body which declared that it had to act quickly to save the state budget, has scheduled precious little time to actually vote. The Assembly, for example, was scheduled to meet today for a bit of work and then to adjourn until, um, October.

On the Senate side, there is much whining from Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who said those darn recalls just slowed the Senate down because senators were focusing on campaigns instead of legislation. Pardon us, but only nine senators were the focus of recall drives. That does not prevent everyone else from working.

Unemployment is a more important issue than the state budget. Wisconsin would have a smaller mess, if its economy were in better shape. If jobs were being created and the tax base was healthy and expanding, revenue would be flowing into the state treasury.

REP. Sondy Pope-Roberts added this: 

The GOP message of job creation seems to have fallen by the wayside, focusing instead on keeping their political majority. Unfortunately, while the people of Wisconsin are desperate to get back to work, Governor Walker and his Republican rubberstamp legislators have decided that they only need to show up for one day in September.” 

Wonk Moment. The CBO Makes Case for Revenue Increases, Tax Cut Expirations.

If you like detail, like me, the following makes sense to someone making the case all tax cuts need to expire. What I would like to see is an minimal increase in the payroll tax. The Budget Outlook, according to the CBO:

If the recovery continues as CBO expects, and if tax and spending policies unfold as specified in current law, deficits will drop markedly as a share of GDP over the next few years. Under CBO’s baseline projections, which generally reflect the assumption that current law will not change, deficits fall to 6.2 percent of GDP in 2012 and to 3.2 percent in 2013, and then fluctuate within a range of 1.0 percent to 1.6 percent of GDP from 2014 through 2021. In that scenario, cumulative deficits over the coming decade will total $3.5 trillion, and by 2021, debt held by the public will equal 61 percent of GDP—well above the annual average of 37 percent recorded between 1971 and 2010. (The weaker economy that CBO now anticipates for the remainder of this year and next would imply, all else being equal, a slightly larger federal deficit during that period.)

Beyond the coming decade, the fiscal outlook worsens, as the aging of the population and the rising costs of health care exert significant and increasing pressure on the budget under current law. When CBO issued its most recent long-term projections in June 2011, debt held by the public was projected to reach 84 percent of GDP in 2035 under an extension of current law. In those projections, rising federal spending relative to GDP kept debt high even though federal revenues reached significantly larger percentages of GDP than ever seen before in the United States.


The agency also examined an alternative scenario in which the tax provisions enacted since 2001 that were extended most recently in 2010 were assumed to be extended, the reach of the AMT was assumed to be restrained to stay close to its historical extent, and tax law was assumed to evolve over the long term so that revenues remained near their historical average of 18 percent of GDP. CBO projected in June that, under that alternative scenario, revenues would increase much more slowly than spending, and debt held by the public would balloon to nearly 190 percent of GDP by 2035.

Furthermore, lawmakers might decide that some of the current policies that are scheduled to expire under current law should be continued. In that case, achieving a particular level of debt could require much larger amounts of deficit reduction through other changes in policy. For example, if most of the provisions in the 2010 tax act were extended, if the AMT was indexed for inflation, and if Medicare’s payment rates for physicians’ services were held constant, then reducing debt held by the public in 2021 to the 61 percent of GDP projected under current law would require other changes in policy to reduce deficits over the next 10 years by a total of $6.2 trillion, rather than the $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction that this Committee would have to accomplish to avoid the automatic budget cuts required by the Budget Control Act. What do those numbers imply about the choices that policymakers—and citizens—confront about future policies? Given the aging of the population and the rising costs for health care, attaining a sustainable budget for the federal government will require the United States to deviate from the policies of the past 40 years in at least one of the following ways:

Raise federal revenues significantly above their average share of GDP; Make major changes to the sorts of benefits provided for Americans when they become older; or ... Substantially reduce the role of the rest of the federal government relative to the size of the economy. The nation cannot continue to sustain the spending programs and policies of the past with the tax revenues it has been accustomed to paying. Citizens will either have to pay more for their government, accept less in government services and benefits, or both.

Household Incomes Fell 6.4 Percent since 2007. Poverty Highest in Southern States!

As the Republican Tea Party pushes their ownership society, personal savings investments in Social Security, more "skin" (money) in the game for Medicare and a riskier deregulation stock market, we're supposed to invest in our future with stripped down family incomes.

There's no question Republicans want to shift the cost of retirement and medical care to the individual, balancing the federal budget in the process, but how is that possible or humane when household incomes continue to decline? 

Census: The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2010, median household income declined … the poverty rate increased. Real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median. Since 2007, the year before the most recent recession, real median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the median household income peak that occurred prior to the 2001 recession in 1999.

As Midwest governors tried to duplicate the austere policies of our southern states, those states sank the fastest into poverty. What a roll model:

The South was the only region to show statistically significant increases in both the poverty rate and the number in poverty -- 16.9 percent and 19.1 million in 2010 -- up from 15.7 percent and 17.6 million in 2009. The poverty rate in 2010 was the highest since 1993. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points.

The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 ─ the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 ─ the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49.0 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010. The Northeast and the Midwest had the lowest uninsured rates in 2010.

 Since 2007, the number of men working full time, year-round with earnings decreased by 6.6 million and the number of corresponding women declined by 2.8 million. 

Onion predicted economic collapse by Bush.

Loved this piece then, love it now. Found it cleaning the clip file out, and thought it applied even better today. Bush tours the US disaster area.....

Finally Robert Reich with how we got here, the economic story, and what we can do about jobs.

I hate posting so much print copy, but this is good, better than the stuff Reich has to come up with on the talk circuit. By ROBERT REICH: 

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases … the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly … prone to great booms and busts. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus … Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

Periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence …  when the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

Enabled by the flow of women into the work force … (In the 1960s only 12 percent of married women with young children were working for pay; by the late 1990s, 55 percent were.) When that way of life stopped generating enough income, Americans went deeper into debt.  

We might have enlarged safety nets — by having unemployment insurance cover part-time work, by giving transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, by creating insurance for communities that lost a major employer. And we could have made Medicare available to anyone.

Big companies could have been required to pay severance to American workers they let go and train them for new jobs. The minimum wage could have been pegged at half the median wage, and we could have insisted that the foreign nations we trade with do the same, so that all citizens could share in gains from trade. We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Americans.

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite.

Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced.

Most telling of all, Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses. In so doing, it allowed finance — which until then had been the servant of American industry — to become its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits. By 2007, financial companies accounted for over 40 percent of American corporate profits.

Some say the regressive lurch occurred because Americans lost confidence in government. But this argument has cause and effect backward. The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government — Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some — as against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Inevitably, government services deteriorated and government deficits exploded, confirming the public’s growing cynicism about government’s doing anything right.

Some say we couldn’t have reversed … Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans’ average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers’ pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income — about the same as in 1970. How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

THE real reason for America’s Great Regression was political. As Marriner S. Eccles, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in the 1920s, when people “with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game.” Yet the rich are now being bitten by their own success. Those at the top would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a large share of one that’s almost dead in the water.

The economy cannot possibly get out of its current doldrums without a strategy to revive the purchasing power of America’s vast middle class. Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. Moreover, an economy is not a zero-sum game. Even the executive class has an enlightened self-interest in reversing the trend; just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide is now threatening to beach many of the yachts.

As the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression, what we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.”

Obama White House Whispers, “Deficit 20 Percent Lower!!”

In another example of Democratic wimpiness, Obama whiffed on the Republican campaign topic of deficits. They can’t be serious?

“The federal budget deficit will run 20 percent lower than expected this year.”

That’s big. According to the OMB, the expected shortfall of $1.645 trillion is now just $1.316 trillion. And that’s despite the continuation of the Bush tax cuts and roll out of the Affordable Care Act.

What I don’t get is the logic of making cuts when the economy is at an all-time low point. You would think a reasonable time to get your house in order, and curb spending, is when the economy is back to normal. 

Why aren't Consumers Creating Demand...Creating Jobs?

$129 billion a year lost to nation, household incomes will fall more than $7,000, if infrastructure is not improved. So goes the Tea Party Movement.

While tea party draconians demand ridiculous spending cuts, while enjoying glowing media reporting, the nation’s real solutions require job creating investments (spending) for future prosperity. Jonathan Alter mentioned the following report lost in the inane debt ceiling debate:

WP: The nation’s long-term transportation needs; decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure.

Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that infrastructure deficiencies add $97  billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in travel delays that cost $32 billion.

“If investments in surface transportation infrastructure are not made soon, these costs are expected to grow exponentially,” the ASCE said. “Within 10 years, U.S. businesses would pay an added $430 billion in transportation costs, household incomes would fall by more than $7,000, and U.S. exports will fall by $28 billion.” It is the latest of several reports to predict dire consequences if the nation does not swiftly address the need to rebuild 60-year-old highway systems and rail lines often far older than that.

In May, a report by the Urban Land Institute warned that the United States is falling behind three emerging economic competitors: Brazil, China and India …  issue addressed last year by 80 experts concluded that as much as $262 billion a year must be spent on U.S. highways, rail networks and air transportation systems.

Unable to agree on long-term aviation funding, Congress proved incapable last week of passing a simple extension of current funding levels, something it has done 20 times since funding for the Federal Aviation Administration losing an estimated $30 million a day in airline ticket tax revenue.
Rep. Nick J. Rahall II said the ASCE report underscored the folly of efforts to “do more with less.”
“Slashing investments by one-third, as Republicans have proposed to do, will make the economic impact on America’s middle class even worse than the grim predictions by the economists in this report.”

The ASCE report predicted that without infrastructure investment, 870,000 jobs would be lost and economic growth would be stifled to the tune of $3.1 trillion by 2020. To avert that, the report says, will require an investment of about $1.7  trillion by 2020.

Ultimately, Americans would get paid less, the ASCE report says. The economy would lose jobs, and the paychecks of those who are able to find work would be cut by nearly 30 percent. The cost of a crumbling transportation system was described by Steven Landau of Boston’s Economic Development Research Group, which did the research for the ASCE. “Business will have to divert increasing portions of earned income to pay for transportation delays and vehicle repairs, draining money that would otherwise be invested in innovation and expansion,” Landau said.

People cutting back on spending at Dollar Stores!

You know you’re in trouble when you see this headline:

Dollar Stores Find Splurges Drying Up

With all the talk about bringing everybody down to the wage levels found in the troubled private sector, you’d think someone would have asked; how are we ever going to get some economic action going now?

What the dollar stores are telling us, may be even scarier than the fear mongering right wing on the debt ceiling:

WSJ: Sales and profit growth have started to slump at the deep-discount retailers called dollar stores, after a robust performance during the recession, a sign that even fairly cheap toys and other small indulgences now are a stretch for some consumers.

All three retailers cited their price-sensitive customers, pummeled by high unemployment, stagnant wages and soaring gasoline prices, are buying more food and other basics like cleaning products, which have relatively low profit margins, and fewer higher-margin discretionary products, such as apparel and home decorative items. Shoppers have become less likely to splurge, for example, even on a $5 die-cast Transformer toy or 2-for-1 children's bathing suits at $7.

Adrianne Shapira, a retail analyst at Goldman Sachs (said) "…their shoppers have a bunker mentality. With all this mounting inflation crowding out discretionary purchases, it's painful."

Dollar Tree does a brisk business in products like party goods and seasonal decorations, all for just $1. Half its new customers have family incomes of more than $70,000. "I think of Dollar Tree as a Target trade-down," said Ms. Shapira.

Guess what? Shedding government workers pushing up jobless numbers. Who would have thunk?

Reuters: Government employment has been steadily declining, falling for twelve of the last 13 months.

It’s so easy to tank the economy, isn’t it? With the Republicans in charge of the purse strings, the return to certainty in the markets due to extending the Bush tax cuts and not one jobs bill created, the GOP push to not raise the debt ceiling will be the last straw in their grand plan. Where are the jobs? Who cares, we’re debating the debt ceiling now. Hey, try to keep up.

Of course, Republicans have nothing to lose, knowing there’s a good chance Obama’s going to give in to their demands. Obama’s surrender will only embolden and add credibility to the failed idea of trickledown economics.

Americans agree with austerity first, at least according to the latest Marist Poll, and will be happy to see their kid’s spending money on them when the safety nets won’t pay anymore. Of course that’s after the Baby Boomers go broke losing their life savings on the next Wall Street colapse.

Those times when we were happy to just get by, feed ourselves, taking vacations with the family and live well beyond our means being good consumers, is why were in all this trouble in the first place. Who ever said you were entitled to a long term job, edible food or even the basic human right of health care. Always remember, business uncertainty is bad, consumer uncertainty is good...I guess.

Making government smaller by basically removing the quality of life that made us the greatest nation in the world, will usher in a whole new age of risk capitalism.

State government employment is down to early 1999 levels, or in terms of employees per 1,000 population, the lowest since 1976, according to a June 13 report from RBC Capital Markets. In May, the state and local government workforce dropped by 30,000, with 17,500 lost jobs coming from the education sector, the report said.

The U.S. economy generated just 43,000 jobs in the last two months, perhaps taking the world's largest economy skating closer to recession territory. Manufacturing added a paltry 6,000 jobs and manufacturing hours worked declined noticeably … Average hours worked declined and earnings were essentially stagnant.  Over 6 million Americans, or a record 45 percent of the jobless population, have been without a job for six months or longer. Temporary hiring fell by a sharp 12,000, suggesting a reluctance by employers to take on new workers even on a short-term basis. 

Unprofitable Police Departments Gone, Shorter School Weeks, Killer E. Coli Testing Defunded...We're Broke!

Besides the items I mentioned in the title, Rachel Maddow also takes a detailed look at all the resulting job losses, from all those "job creating" companies, who are enjoying their tax cuts.

Again, can we believe anything the Republicans are telling us when it comes to economics?