If You Work For A Living....

by DemFromCT

...read this article.

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years...

[W]ages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

I have no problem with profitibility, but this explains quite well why Americans have a different view of the economy than the subset of Americans known as Republicans. between gas price and staganat wages, these bread-and butter issues favor Democrats this year.

In fact, it's hard to find an issue that doesn't.

Comments

[general panzer]

well, i used to work for a living, but then i got laid off over a year ago ( after 13.5 years at the company ) and now i do not work for a living - nor generate any tax dollars for the bushithead warmongers - so, i guess it's a tradeoff.

[Mimikatz]

There are several reasons why productivity and other gains have gone primarily to top manangement (and secondarily to shareholders) and not workers. One is the lack of unions in the service economy. Ezra Klein has a good post at TAPPED on the "Wal-Martization" of the economy. Wal-Mart undercuts everybody and drives competitors and suppliers to cut costs and/or off-shore.

Another reason is simply that it takes money to make money, and the top 1% not only is in a position to profit in the current economy, but to get policies they like, such as the anti-labor policies of the NLRB, favorable tax policies and various subsidies and breaks that rig the system.

In post-WWII America there was much more of a sense of responsibility and community in the counry, particualrly among corporate America. That's all gone now, and it is every man for himself.

That's why the Dems' best selling point is that they not only manage the economy better by almost any measure, but thier polciies support rather than erode the middle class.

[workingclassannie]

I woke up in the first Great American Downsizing in the early 90's. I came to the conclusion that no matter how well educated you are (ms in computer science), no matter how professional your career (programmer), if your life depends upon earning a salary and you are beholden to someone else for your job, you are not middle class, you are working class.

If the last 15 years haven't kicked the middle class's butt, I don't know what will.

As a christian (Zogby had to amend their demographic questions to distinguish between people like me and the fundamentalists), I recently finished reading Dominic Crossan's Birth of Christianity. He describes Jesus as a champion of the peasant society (divided between the poor - those who have property- and the destitute - those who are being marginalized by the wealthy. Of course, the peasantry was increasingly being marginalized and Crossan describes the political, economic, and social dynamics that constantly pushed ordinary people to the edge.

All the time I was reading the book, I felt haunted by what has been happening here. Perhaps we're not as desperate as the ancient Judeans and Gallileans, but I sense that it's coming if we don't change things, and if people who are holding onto their illusions don't wake up.

[DemFromCT]

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