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.”

The Latest Minimum Wage Info, and the U.S. Race to the Bottom.

A little wonky, but a good look at how the U.S. is racing to the bottom with low wages and dwindling benefits. 

Center for Economic Policy Research, (who’s numbers go much deeper than the CBO’s), has released three short issue briefs on the minimum wage, all demonstrating in various ways that the current level is too low. In the first, CEPR Senior Economist John Schmitt makes his point rather directly with the title: "The Minimum Wage Is Too Damn Low." It shows that the minimum wage is now far below its historical level by all of the most commonly used benchmarks – inflation, average wages, and productivity.

In the second paper, John and his co-author, CEPR Research Intern Marie-Eve Augier, look at "Affording Health Care and Education on the Minimum Wage." They find that the current minimum wage looks even worse when compared with two kinds of purchases strongly associated with a middle-class standard of living or the ability to move up to the middle class: a college degree and health insurance. In 1979, a minimum-wage worker had to work 254 hours in a year to pay the cost of tuition at a public four-year college, but 923 hours in 2010. Similarly, in 1979, a minimum-wage worker had to work 329 hours to in order to pay for a family health insurance policy, but 2,079 hours in 2011.

Finally, the third paper, "Low-wage Workers Are Older and Better Educated than Ever" co-authored by John and CEPR Research Assistant Janelle Jones, makes the point that today's low-wage workers are older and better educated than in the past, and that, all else equal, older and better-educated workers earn more than younger and less-educated workers. Had the minimum wage risen in step with low-wage workers' age and educational attainment, it would be at least 9 to 14 percent higher than is suggested by simply adjusting the federal minimum's historical peak level to keep pace with inflation.

Working Poor on food stamps the Real Problem in Wisconsin. Will Walker’s Open for Business be the solution?

It’s not just the lack of job creation by the Republican administration we have to worry about, but the decades long wage stagnation hitting families.

Wausau Daily Herold: The dramatic growth of food stamp use in Marathon and Lincoln counties is one metric of how much poverty has increased in north central Wisconsin as a direct result of the recession.

In a related story, I just ran across an article where big business is again complaining about a 7.5 percent increase in health care insurance for their employees, and how they’re going to make those employees pay more out of pocket to lessen the blow. But that only reduces take home pay, which in turn cuts the discretionary income that is used by consumers to create demand and improve the economy. Back to our food stamp problem:

A Wausau Daily Herald report recently found that a monthly average of 14,784 people in Marathon County received food stamps in the first half of this year. In 2007, that number was 7,936. In Lincoln County, the monthly average four years ago was 1,587. In 2011, it was 3,700.

And a long-term trend in the use of food assistance is that more people who receive it come from households with income from work -- the working poor. As lower- and middle-class wages have been squeezed in the past 20 years or longer, it is more common for people who work, even in full-time jobs, to nevertheless wind up at or below the poverty line. The fact that the number of people receiving assistance has skyrocketed means people are losing ground, and that can't be explained away. 

Walker's simplistic "Open for Business" slogan does little to deal with shrinking wages and rising food stamp use and Badgercare enrollment.