Thursday, December 25, 2014

Globe Xmas Gift: A Real Downey

What do you mean you didn't do any $hopping?

"Amid gain, middle class wages get no lift" by Jim Tankersley, Washington Post  December 25, 2014

DOWNEY, Calif. — The town is still waiting for its next great economic boon. They have waited more than a decade. They have tried all the tricks to bring good-paying jobs back.

Tax $ub$idies not enough?

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Yes, the stock market is soaring, the unemployment rate is finally retreating after the Great Recession, and the economy added 321,000 jobs last month. But all that growth has done nothing to boost pay for the typical American worker. Average wages have not risen during the last year, after adjusting for inflation. Real household median income is still lower than it was when the recession ended.

Make no mistake: The US middle class is in trouble. 

I haven't. I've been saying it for years.

That trouble started decades ago, well before the 2008 financial crisis, and it is rooted in shifts far more complicated than the simple tax-and-spend debates that dominate economic policymaking in Washington.

It used to be that when the US economy grew, workers saw their incomes increase, too. But in the past 25 years, the economy has grown 83 percent, after adjusting for inflation — and the typical family’s income has not budged.

In that time, corporate profits doubled as a share of the economy. Workers today produce nearly twice as many goods and services per hour on the job as they did in 1989, but as a group, they get less of the nation’s economic pie.

Time to eat the rich.

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In this new reality, a smaller share of Americans enjoy the fruits of an expanding economy. This is not a fluke of the past few years — it is woven into the structure of the economy.

Did I not tell you that is for what the $y$tem is intended?

And even though Republicans and Democrats promise to help the middle class reclaim the prosperity it grew accustomed to after World War II, their prescriptions are not working.

I spent the whole campaign complaining about that $hit-$how fooley, and they proved me right!

The great mystery: What happened? Why did the economy stop boosting ordinary Americans in the way it once did?

Not really.

The answer is complicated, and it is the reason why tax cuts, stimulus spending, and rock-bottom interest rates have not jolted the middle class back to its postwar prosperity....

No, it really is not. Only to the obfu$cating propaganda pre$$ it is.

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NEXT DAY UPDATES:

Desperate times, desperate measures for gift procrastinators

Two New England colleges lead income inequality initiative 

Yeah, it needs more $tudy.