The Art of Masking Declining Wages

[flashl]

Numbers Tricks Mask Declining Wages and Rising Inequality

U.S. employment numbers have been doctored into meaninglessness, as have all indices of economic growth or decline. Not only is the public incapable of making sense of the nation's cooked books, but Americans have no idea what "class" they belong to. Almost everyone that is not on public assistance insists they are "middle class" - but where is the true middle? It's actually a lot further down the income ladder than most folks think, perilously close to what is defined as poverty. The rich long ago discovered that keeping everybody else deluded and disoriented about the real structures of wealth and income allows them to do whatever they choose. If nearly everybody's in the "middle," then nobody is anywhere.

New federal data show that income inequality in the United States is higher than it's been since World War Two, possibly higher than just before the stock market crash and Great Depression of 1929. Americans like to complain about the economy, but they don't like to hear or read economic news - and that's understandable. The United States and its media are ruled by huge corporations, that have for many generations deformed American English to make the language incapable of making any sense of economics. That way, subjects like vast economic inequalities cannot not be intelligently discussed among the general public - and the rich can keep on getting richer without the rest of us knowing how, or why.

Read More ...

[Double T]

1. Organizations like the Trilateral Commission and networks like cnbc........

exist to push propaganda and maintain the wealth of the obscenely richest of the rich. Great post, thank you.

[B Calm]

2. CEO and You.. Compare your wages to your CEO's website

You will love this website..

http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceou/index.cfm

[flashl]

5. Paul Krugman captured inequalties in ...

The Great Wealth Transfer

It's the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of the nation's bounty held in fewer and fewer hands. And Bush's tax cuts are only making the problem worse.

The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago

CEO pay has soared -- from less than thirty times the average wage to almost 300 times the typical worker's pay.

Since Bush has taken office the pay for CEOs, has soared -- from 185 times that of average workers in 2003 to 279 times in 2005

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hourly wage of the average American non-supervisory worker is actually lower, than it was in 1970

[dmr]

21. hourly wage of the average American non-supervisory worker is actually lower, than it was in 1970

It's just so hard to understand how our representatives in Congress can let the American worker down like this. My son is now in the work force making $7.25/hour, and has yet to work a full 40-hour week!

In 1976, my starting wage was $6.23/hour. The lack of difference is incredible. In 1976, my house payment was $219.00, and a friend of mine was paying $187.00 in rent, heat included (gas). I certainly was not living high on the hog in 1976, but I was able to handle my expenses, and still take a little vacation or two. The cost of living was easier than it is today. If my son wasn't living at home, at his wages, he would be homeless and starving.

The disparity is glaring. The members of Congress are our advocates. We elect them to represent our interests with our votes. Big business gets the major breaks at our expense, even if they don't vote. I get so angry thinking about campaign finances, lobbyists, off-shore corporate accounts, so on and so forth ...

I was thinking just yesterday that it's too bad we can't form our own lobbying group to bug and scare the hell out of these professional politicians, who it seems, at least to me, become "public servants" to get in on the gravy-train.

The handiwork in Congress over the years has had a profound effect on Americans as a whole.

[CrispyQ]

3. That was a very eye-opening piece.

snip...

"The real "middle" among American wage earners, after deductions for child support and, if you're lucky, payments into a 401(k), is $30,881 a year. That's the median wage - not the misleading average wage - meaning, half of employees make more than $30,881, and half make less. Not very impressive, is it?"


What gets me is how many median wage Americans voted Republican for a $300 tax cut. How much did Cheney get that first year -- soemthing like 90k? And the puppet 45k? Don't quote me on those figures, but I think I'm close.

[flashl]

4. The statement about the poor voting Republican reminds me of this book

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.

The reason I say there’s something “the matter” with all this is that, in becoming more and more conservative, Kansas is voting against its own economic interests. Large parts of the state are in deep economic crisis—in many cases a crisis either brought on or worsened by the free-market policies of the Republican party—and yet the state’s voters insist on re-electing the very people who are screwing them, running up colossal majorities for George Bush, lowering taxes and privatizing and deregulating, even when these things are manifestly unhealthy for the state.

[Yael]

11. Without looking at the link, let me guess

They dangle the carrots of abortion and gay marriage (which they will never do anything about as they are the 2 largest carrots they have) and the sheeple line up to pull the (R) for "family values".

Am I close?

[Selatius]

14. God, guns, and gays. That's how they rope those voters into voting for them.

It's the perfect tool for sowing division among the working masses. Dividing the working masses makes it easier to subjugate the working masses.

[RC]

10. That was not really a tax cut. It was a tax refund advance.

We paid for it the following April 15. If if this "tax cut" was more than your refund, you paid back the difference. There were a lot of hurting people at tax time that year.

[VP505]

6. That is

a real eye opener, unfortunately the people that need to know about that won't find it where they are likely to look, TV news and Newspapers.

[flashl]

8. Sometimes ...

interesting pieces, like Congress raising debt ceiling, enters into MSM but no one seems to notice.

[spooky3]

7. k&r

[KoKo]

9. K&R....

[Elspeth]

12. And another

This is the core of what is happening.

[Selatius]

13. Want to cut your worker's wages and make it appear you gave him a raise? I'll show you.

If you calculate inflation nowadays with both food and energy put back into the equation, you're looking at something like 10% inflation a year, which is pretty high historically in the US. Now, if you removed those two, you get a number close to 3% a year, give or take a point. Simply give the workers a 3% raise a year based on the cooked figure.

You just gave them a 7% pay cut, but they're under the impression they got a raise. You can use the freed up revenue to give yourself a pay increase. Greed 101.

[flashl]

15. Interesting read

John Williams'
Shadow Government Statistics
Analysis Behind and Beyond Government Economic Reporting

In the early 1990s, press reports began surfacing as to how the CPI really was significantly overstating inflation. If only the CPI inflation rate could be reduced, it was argued, then entitlements, such as social security, would not increase as much each year, and that would help to bring the budget deficit under control. Behind this movement were financial luminaries Michael Boskin, then chief economist to the first Bush Administration, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Although the ensuing political furor killed consideration of Congressionally mandated changes in the CPI, the BLS quietly stepped forward and began changing the system, anyway

The CPI basket is empty.

[Selatius]

16. Unfortunately, the BLS was never reversed under Clinton.

A lot of people here like Bill Clinton, but I think he did a disservice to American workers with that change, as well as NAFTA and the Telecom Act of 1996 that allowed more deregulation.

[flashl]

17. Agree. And, there were a few other social changes that comes to mind.

[Selatius]

20. Oh yeah, AFDC was abolished, replaced with TANF

It was an FDR-era program, too. Now, they are working, but they're still poor, which is why the term "working poor" was coined by the end of the 1990s.

[xchrom]

18. recommending -- because this a great way to view history since the

reagan years.

this isn't happening by accident.

[TahitiNut]

19. Gini Ratios of Income Inequality for U.S. Families ... 1947 through 2005

I've been beating this drum for a looong time.