Wake Up, America! Wake Up! PLEASE!!
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These words were spoken by a highly respected GOP'r, Steve Schmidt, during an interview on MSNBC! His words should be compulsory reading for every voter in the U.S.!
It is DEFINATELY a definitive description of Donald Trump and where he has bought the U.S. to where it is today and within the global community! "AND ALL BY A GOP'r AND NOT BY SOME FAR LEFT WINGER OUT TO GET "DEAR DONALD!"
www.cnn.com
It is DEFINATELY a definitive description of Donald Trump and where he has bought the U.S. to where it is today and within the global community! "AND ALL BY A GOP'r AND NOT BY SOME FAR LEFT WINGER OUT TO GET "DEAR DONALD!"
This is the most succinct -- and brutal -- Republican rejection of Donald Trump that you will ever read
For all of the words that have been written and spoken about -- and by -- Donald Trump, it's often difficult to put a finger on what makes his presidency so incredibly abnormal.
www.cnn.com
Yeah, hard to argue when your own team starts to break ranks on you. People are fed up with the man and I do mean FED THE FUCK UP! But I'm not counting Trump out; he'll have no problem throwing himself a "hail mary" during the days of the election. Hopefully THIS TIME he gets caught at it and buys himself some FED time with Rudy.
COULDN'T AGREE MORE!!!
Welcome to:
"The UNITED STATES OF BANANNA REPUBLICS"!
"The UNITED STATES OF BANANNA REPUBLICS"!
Appeals court orders judge to dismiss Michael Flynn case
A divided federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, likely concluding a long-running court fight that had taken on greater meaning in political debates about the Russia investigation into the 2016 Trump...
www.cnn.com
Unbelievable!!
Political setup of Flynn comes back to haunt Obama
Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime. That is the famous — or infamous — quote attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Joe Stalin’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD, in the Soviet Union. B…
www.bostonherald.com
Only a "quote from a Joseph Stalin type" (aka DJT/Trumpster) would have the audacity and ineptitude to even evoke such a phrase!Political setup of Flynn comes back to haunt Obama
Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime. That is the famous — or infamous — quote attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Joe Stalin’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD, in the Soviet Union. B…
Senate confirms Trump's 200th judicial nominee
President Donald Trump's 200th judicial nominee was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday, marking a significant milestone in a presidency that has tilted the federal judiciary in a conservative direction for decades to come.
amp.cnn.com
Angelyn
Female
I'm gonna wade in here for a sec with this article
www.nytimes.com
Face, meet palm.
This is absolutely terrible. The solution to bad policing is good policing. Not no policing. Now these woke folks don't even want to call the police when guns are being pulled on them.
Right now Biden has a strong lead in the polls.
He's an ok guy, could be a good president.
I'm just hoping Biden can hold off the extreme left. The way things are going, we're going to go from extreme right to extreme left, and most of us will not be better off.
A Minneapolis Neighborhood Vowed to Check Its Privilege. It’s Already Being Tested. (Published 2020)
Blocks from where George Floyd drew his last breaths, residents have vowed to avoid the police to protect people of color. The commitment is hard to keep.
Face, meet palm.
This is absolutely terrible. The solution to bad policing is good policing. Not no policing. Now these woke folks don't even want to call the police when guns are being pulled on them.
Right now Biden has a strong lead in the polls.
He's an ok guy, could be a good president.
I'm just hoping Biden can hold off the extreme left. The way things are going, we're going to go from extreme right to extreme left, and most of us will not be better off.
I dunno, life expectancy, average income, gini index, education attainment are all better in social democracies like the netherlands or sweden than they are here.
The US is pretty bad as far as industrialized countries go
The US is pretty bad as far as industrialized countries go
If the economy is growing. Why aren’t people feeling it?” Boushey says. “The answer is: Because they literally aren’t feeling it.
And it seems to be getting worse. Despite an increase in wages most recently (2.9% as of August of 2018), income inequality has increased, leading even more to feel they aren't keeping up. While the stock market has benefited those with savings and 401(k)s, most don’t feel it.
Point 2: Workers Are Struggling
The second piece of evidence I want to point out is the level of financial stress we see among workers. Look at some of these statistics:
40% of Americans had trouble paying for food, medical care, housing, or utilities in the last year.
- Nearly half of Americans have no retirement savings, creating increases in stress-related illnesses and heart disease
- 63% of Americans do not have $500 of cash on hand to handle emergencies or other significant expenses
- 70% of college grads have $15,000 or more of loans outstanding in their first year of work
- 4 in 10 Americans now have a “sides hustle” to make more money to help make ends meet[9]
- Employers like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Ubers, and Outback Steakhouse are now building programs to pay people every day, so
- they can better manage their cash.
In my industry, the domain of Human Resources, the demand for “real-time payroll” is so high that companies like ADP and SAP are rewriting their payroll software. This is one of the most massive re-engineering projects in HR software I have seen in 20 years.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and although wages are rising, almost everyone I talk with tells me they feel like they are falling behind. Housing prices in many cities are skyrocketing, the cost of transportation continues to rise, and the Deloitte Global Millennial survey shows that 45% of Millennials now believe they will never achieve the financial status of their parents. Unbelievably, almost 40% of them are doing side-hustles to make more money.
Point 3: Companies Are Sitting On Cash But Not Raising Wages
HR and business leaders are well aware of these financial issues, yet are afraid to raise wages.
Apple, for example, recently announced that its quarterly revenue grew to $61 billion (making it a $250 billion company) and that it generated $13.8 billion in profit (almost 23% profit). This means that for every dollar you spend on an Apple product or service, 23 cents goes to the bank.
What is Apple doing with this money? They’re returning it to the shareholders. The company announced it will distribute $210 billion to shareholders through stock buy-backs and will increase its dividend as well. If you own Apple stock, you see a good return, but if you’re an Apple employee, you may or may not see a thing. (P.S. Apple pays only a 14.5% tax rate.)
Apple, by the way, has about 80,000 employees, so if the average employee makes $100,000 per year (which is high), Apple could give them all a 5% raise, and it would only cost the company $400 million per year, which is less than 0.2% of the cash the company is using for stock buybacks.
In other words, Apple management believes it is better for the company to return cash to the shareholders (which enriches its stock price) than it is to invest in the salaries of its employees.
I’m not saying Apple is underpaying its people. Apple employees are well paid (software engineers make well over $100,000) and sales and service representatives are fairly paid. The point is to consider how management is thinking: at a time when the company is flooded with profit, management chose to invest in its share price. Companies do not see employees as an investment.
(A recent article in Business Insider shows that companies repurchased $4.4 trillion since the 2008 recession, $191 billion in this last quarter alone). This is money just being returned to the shareholders – why isn’t it being invested in employees?
Why are companies afraid to raise wages? Economists often point to the “Sticky Wages” effect.
As economists teach in school, management hates to raise wages because once you raise them, it’s hard to take them back down. And in the inevitable time of a recession or slowdown, you’re stuck with a high cost of labor.
Managers are acting this way now. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out how bonuses and benefits are going up, but wages are relatively flat. Companies are willing to pay as much as $25,000 bonus to diesel electricians and train crew members, but they don’t want to raise base pay. (Even Amazon’s announcement to raise wages to $15 per hour was coupled with a reduction in stock rewards.)
Point 4. The Sticky Wage Theory Has Flaws
Economists talk about this issue, and the “sticky wage” theory is firmly embedded in peoples’ minds. In this theoretical construct, wages are slow to rise because they’re even slower to fall. So managers hold onto cash and delay salary increases because they know how hard it will be to cut them later.
But my research shows this philosophy has flaws, especially in a skills-driven economy like we have today.
Suppose a company like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Goldman, or another “trillion dollar cap” digital disruptor decides to pay people more. They bid up the price of labor and pay people high wages to attract the very best.
(Amazon, for example, gives all its employees stock options, which are often worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in only a few years.)
These high performing companies just ignore the sticky wage theory and act like winning sports teams, bidding high prices for the super performers. Do they create wage inflation and make inequality worse? Not necessarily.
When a company raises the wages of all its workers, including the frontline service workers, something entirely different happens. Employees feel more committed; their financial lives become less stressful; they are proud to be part of the company; their attitude and service to customers and client get better. In fact, the company’s employment brand becomes more positive, so every position now attracts more committed, passionate, ambitious people – and ultimately the company performs better.
Zeynep Ton, in the heavily researched book The Good Jobs Strategy, clearly points this out as she compared wages between Costco, Mercadona, Tesco, and Wal-Mart. Her research showed that higher wages in retail result in a more profitable operation. The reason? Well paid employees are better trained, they are more engaged, and they spend more time helping customers buy the right products. In one of the studies, they found that a $1.00 increase in hourly wages resulted in a 40% increase in total profits, a hugely positive return on investment.
What about the problem of a business downturn? The sticky wage theory would say that you have less flexibility to reduce cost.
Well, in fact, the opposite is true. If managers are underpaying people now, the option of “reducing pay” is limited, so when the business turns down managers have to lay people off. While layoffs are common, they almost always result in a negative outcome. Not only does the company’s employment brand suffer, but the “survivor syndrome” of those who remain dramatically reduces their loyalty and engagement.
Extensive studies done by Wayne Casio at the University of Denver and academics at MIT and Wharton prove that companies that lay people off then later underperform for years. I distinctly remember how Circuit City tried to “layoff its way to profitability” and eventually went out of business. American Express and other great brand have seen this problem when they lay people off, so it’s not just an indication of a company with a poor product or out of sync offering. Layoffs are permanently damaging.
On the other hand, if you pay people well from the start and they feel a genuine commitment to the company, they will do anything to help manage a downturn. Southwest Airlines did not lay people off during the 2008 recession, and they continue to thrive. Steve Jobs famously reinvested in innovation during the 2000 recession and gave birth to the iPad.
When people are well paid you have enormous flexibility to ask people to take a temporary pay cut, and they will stick around and work even harder. (Intel, a company that has been through many business cycles, is famous for investing during recessions because it’s a time to attract some of the brightest and most sought-after people.)
Point 5: This Is A Management Issue, Not an Economic Issue
The bottom line is this: lagging wages in the U.S. is not an economic issue, it’s really about management. The spirit is there, but the actions are not.
Just as Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce believes “inclusive capitalism” is his mission, and Jeff Bezos is funding a $2 billion fund to help homelessness, and many other CEOs are trying to take on social causes, they are reluctant to act with their paychecks. And this old way of thinking is holding the economy back.
Let me make another important point. In business school we are taught that labor is an expense to be managed. CFOs look at the cost of payroll (which is often 40 or 50% of revenue) as one of the biggest discretionary expenses on the income statement.
But in reality people aren't an expense, they are an investment. people are an appreciating asset: the more we invest in them, the more we see productivity, customer service, innovation, and growth. And in today's labor market, raising wages lets employers attract the most ambitious people, something every company is striving for now.
We have to rethink our accounting practices too: consider labor an investment like machinery. But one that goes up in value, not down.
Also, Pay Practices Are Out Of Date
One of the problems is that pay practices are out of date.
Recently a large study of pay practices and found that only 7% of companies believe their pay system is aligned with their corporate goals and 30% told us it was misaligned.
Why? The way we pay people is based on legacy models. We only review wages annually; we are afraid to overpay high performers; we are afraid to explain to people why they are paid what they are.
When we asked employees and HR people to rate their pay practices, we found a net promoter score of -15, the lowest of any HR practice we have studied.
Why is it so hard to fix pay practices? Not only are CFOs holding companies back, but the HR department is partly in the way. Companies are concerned about pay equality, salary bands, carefully staying within benchmarks, and not providing a holistic view of pay. People want to be paid more frequently, they want a wider range of benefits, and they want programs that meet their particular needs, not just lists of programs they never plan to use.
The pressure to fix pay is building. Research from TIAA Institute found that 40% of U.S. adults rate C, D, or F in financial literacy; 1/3 of Americans pay their minimum credit card balance and the average credit card debt is $5,839, and the median retirement balance is only $3,000 (50% of American households have no saving). In other words, there’s plenty of pain out there, and if employers fill these gaps they gain tremendous engagement from their people.
If you want to put a simple ROI on better pay, consider the impact of poor financial wellbeing. The same TIAA research I cited earlier shows that 64% of millennials feel financially stressed (15% of their salaries goes toward student loans), 32% say it impacts their daily work, and 33 peer-reviewed studies proved that financial stress leads to heart attacks.
A Call To Business Leaders and Management
HR managers, employees, and young professionals and despite the job numbers they are not happy with their pay and they are scrambling around to keep up. The problem isn’t the mystical “economy,” it’s simply the way CEOs and managers think.
Imagine if the top companies who purchased back stock int least ten years (Apple, $102 billion; Microsoft: $878 billion; Cisco: $228 billion; Oracle: $67 billion; JPM Chase, $63 billion; Wells Fargo, $56 billion; Intel: $55 billion; Home Depot: $51 billion) took a tiny percent of this money and raised the wages of their lower-wage customer-facing employees. Would the company feel it? I believe not – and their performance as a business would rise.
We need a new paradigm of management, one where CEOs and CFOs must understand that every employee provides an outsized value to the company. And if we consider them as an asset and not an expense, we find that the return on higher pay is greater than we thought.
If you don't want to raise wages, I'd ask another simple question. Given the highly competitive nature of the job market, what will you do? Well-being programs and other benefits are growing, but they aren't enough.
Let's not just blame the "economy" for income inequality and slowly rising wages. In today's service-driven economy, people are the product. Invest more in people, and profits will follow.
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7 facts that show the American Dream is dead
A recent poll showed that more than half of all people in this country don’t believe that the American dream is real. Fifty-nine percent of those polled in June agreed that “the American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.” More and more Americans believe there is “not much opportunity” to get ahead.
The public has reached this conclusion for a very simple reason: It’s true. The key elements of the American dream—a living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for one’s children to get ahead in life—are now unreachable for all but the wealthiest among us. And it’s getting worse. As inequality increases, the fundamental elements of the American dream are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the majority.
1. Most people can’t get ahead financially.
If the American dream means a reasonable rate of income growth for working people, most people can’t expect to achieve it.
As Ben Casselman observes at fivethirtyeight.com, the middle class hasn’t seen its wage rise in 15 years. In fact, the percentage of middle-class households in this nation is actually falling. Median household income has fallen since the financial crisis of 2008, while income for the wealthiest of Americans has actually risen.
Thomas Edsall wrote in the New York Times that “Not only has the wealth of the very rich doubled since 2000, but corporate revenues are at record levels.” Edsall also observed that, “In 2013, according to Goldman Sachs, corporate profits rose five times faster than wages.”
2. The stay-at-home parent is a thing of the past.
There was a time when middle-class families could lead a comfortable lifestyle on one person’s earnings. One parent could work while the other stayed home with the *******.
Those days are gone. As Elizabeth Warren and co-author Amelia Warren Tyagi documented in their 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap, the increasing number of two-earner families was matched by rising costs in a number of areas such as education, home costs and transportation.
These cost increases, combined with wage stagnation, mean that families are struggling to make ends meet—and that neither parent has the luxury of staying home any longer. In fact, parenthood has become a financial risk. Warren and Tyagi write that “Having a baby is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse.” This book was written over a decade ago; things are even worse today.
3. The rich are more debt-free. Others have no choice.
Most Americans are falling behind anyway, as their salary fails to keep up with their expenses. No wonder debt is on the rise. As Joshua Freedman and Sherle R. Schwenninger observe in a paper for the New America Foundation, “American households… have become dependent on debt to maintain their standard of living in the face of stagnant wages.”
This “debt-dependent economy,” as Freedman and Schwenninger call it, has negative implications for the nation as a whole. But individual families are suffering too.
Rani Molla of the Wall Street Journal notes that “Over the past 20 years the average increase in spending on some items has exceeded the growth of incomes. The gap is especially poignant for those under 25 years old.”
There are increasingly two classes of Americans: Those who are taking on additional debt, and the rich.
4. Student debt is crushing a generation of non-wealthy Americans.
Education for every American who wants to get ahead? Forget about it. Nowadays you have to be rich to get a college education; that is, unless you want to begin your career with a mountain of debt. Once you get out of college, you’ll quickly discover that the gap between spending and income is greatest for people under 25 years of age.
Education, as Forbes columnist Steve Odland put it in 2012, is “the great equalizer… the facilitator of the American dream.” But at that point college costs had risen 500 percent since 1985, while the overall consumer price index rose by 115 percent. As of 2013, tuition at a private university was projected to cost nearly $130,000 on average over four years, and that’s not counting food, lodging, books, or other expenses.
Public colleges and universities have long been viewed as the get-ahead option for all Americans, including the poorest among us. Not anymore. The University of California was once considered a national model for free, high-quality public education, but today tuition at UC Berkeley is $12,972 per year. (It was tuition-free until Ronald Reagan became governor.) Room and board is $14,414. The total cost of on-campus attendance at Berkeley, including books and other items, is estimated to be $32,168.
The California story has been repeated across the country, as state cutbacks in the wake of the financial crisis caused the cost of public higher education to soar by 15 percent in a two-year period. With a median national household income of $51,000, even public colleges are quickly becoming unaffordable
Sure, there are still some scholarships and grants available. But even as college costs rise, the availability of those programs is falling, leaving middle-class and lower-income students further in debt as out-of-pocket costs rise.
5. Vacations aren’t for the likes of you anymore.
Think you’d like to have a nice vacation? Think again. According to a 2012 American Express survey, Americans who were planning vacations expected to spend an average of $1,180 per person. That’s $4,720 for a family of four. But then, why worry about paying for that vacation? If you’re unemployed, you can’t afford it. And even if you have a job, there’s a good chance you won’t get the time off anyway.
As the Center for Economic and Policy Research found in 2013, the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not require employers to offer paid vacations to their workers. The number of paid holidays and vacation days received by the average worker in this country (16) would not meet the statutory minimum requirements in 19 other developed countries, according to the CEPR. Thirty-one percent of workers in smaller businesses had no paid vacation days at all.
The CEPR also found that 14 percent of employees at larger corporations also received no paid vacation days. Overall, roughly one in four working Americans gets no vacation time at all.
Rep. Alan Grayson, who has introduced the Paid Vacation Act, correctly notes that the average working American now spends 176 hours more per year on the job than was the case in 1976.
Between the pressure to work more hours and the cost of vacation, even people who do get vacation time—at least on paper—are hard-pressed to take any time off. That’s why 175 million vacation days go unclaimed each year.
6. Even with health insurance, medical care is increasingly unaffordable for most people.
Medical care when you need it? That’s for the wealthy.
The Affordable Care Act was designed to increase the number of Americans who are covered by health insurance. But health coverage in this country is the worst of any highly developed nation—and that’s for people who have health insurance.
Every year the Milliman actuarial firm analyzes the average costs of medical care, including the household’s share of insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, for a family of four with the kind of insurance that is considered higher quality coverage in this country: a PPO plan which allows them to use a wider range of healthcare providers.
Even as overall wealth in this country has shifted upward, away from middle-class families, the cost of medical care is increasingly being borne by the families themselves. As the Milliman study shows, the employer-funded portion of healthcare costs has risen 52 percent since 2007, the first year of the recession. But household costs have risen by a staggering 73 percent, or 8 percent per year, and now average $9,144. In the same time period, Census Bureau figures show that median household income has fallen 8 percent.
That means that household healthcare costs are skyrocketing even as income falls dramatically.
The recent claims of “lowered healthcare costs” are misleading. While the rate of increase is slowing down, healthcare costs are continuing to increase. And the actual cost to working Americans is increasing even faster, as corporations continue to maximize their record profits by shifting healthcare costs onto consumers. This shift is expected to accelerate as the result of a misguided provision in the Affordable Care Act which will tax higher-cost plans.
According to an OECD survey, the number of Americans who report going without needed healthcare in the past year because of cost was higher than in 10 comparable countries. This was true for both lower-income and higher-income Americans, suggesting that insured Americans are also feeling the pinch when it comes to getting medical treatment.
As inequality worsens, wages continue to stagnate, and more healthcare costs are placed on the backs of working families, more and more Americans will find medical care unaffordable.
7. Americans can no longer look forward to a secure retirement.
Want to retire when you get older, as earlier generations did, and enjoy a secure life after a lifetime of hard work? You’ll get to… if you’re rich.
There was a time when most middle-class Americans could work until they were 65 and then look forward to a financially secure retirement. Corporate pensions guaranteed a minimum income for the remainder of their life. Those pensions, coupled with Social Security income and a lifetime’s savings, assured that these ordinary Americans could spend their senior years in modest comfort.
No longer. As we have already seen, rising expenses means most Americans are buried in debt rather than able to accumulate modest savings. That’s the main reason why 20 percent of Americans who are nearing retirement age haven’t saved for their post-working years.
Meanwhile, corporations are gutting these pension plans in favor of far less general programs. The financial crisis of 2008, driven by the greed of Wall Street one percenters, robbed most American household of their primary assets. And right-wing “centrists” of both parties, not satisfied with the rising retirement age which has already cut the program’s benefits, continue to press for even deeper cuts to the program.
One group, Natixis Global Asset Management, ranks the United States 19th among developed countries when it comes to retirement security. The principal reasons the US ranks so poorly are 1) the weakness of our pension programs; and 2) the stinginess of our healthcare system, which even with Medicare for the elderly, is far weaker than that of nations such as Austria.
Economists used to speak of retirement security as a three-legged stool. Pensions were one leg of the stool, savings were another and Social Security was the third. Today two legs of the stool have been shattered, and anti-Social Security advocates are sawing away at the third.
Conclusion
Vacations; an education; staying home to raise your *******; a life without crushing debt; seeing the doctor when you don’t feel well; a chance to retire: one by one, these mainstays of middle-class life are disappearing for most Americans. Until we demand political leadership that will do something about it, they’re not coming back.
Can the American dream be restored? Yes, but it will take concerted effort to address two underlying problems. First, we must end the domination of our electoral process by wealthy and powerful elites.
At the same time, we must begin to address the problem of growing economic inequality. Without a national movement to call for change, change simply isn’t going to happen.
A recent poll showed that more than half of all people in this country don’t believe that the American dream is real. Fifty-nine percent of those polled in June agreed that “the American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.” More and more Americans believe there is “not much opportunity” to get ahead.
The public has reached this conclusion for a very simple reason: It’s true. The key elements of the American dream—a living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for one’s children to get ahead in life—are now unreachable for all but the wealthiest among us. And it’s getting worse. As inequality increases, the fundamental elements of the American dream are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the majority.
1. Most people can’t get ahead financially.
If the American dream means a reasonable rate of income growth for working people, most people can’t expect to achieve it.
As Ben Casselman observes at fivethirtyeight.com, the middle class hasn’t seen its wage rise in 15 years. In fact, the percentage of middle-class households in this nation is actually falling. Median household income has fallen since the financial crisis of 2008, while income for the wealthiest of Americans has actually risen.
Thomas Edsall wrote in the New York Times that “Not only has the wealth of the very rich doubled since 2000, but corporate revenues are at record levels.” Edsall also observed that, “In 2013, according to Goldman Sachs, corporate profits rose five times faster than wages.”
2. The stay-at-home parent is a thing of the past.
There was a time when middle-class families could lead a comfortable lifestyle on one person’s earnings. One parent could work while the other stayed home with the *******.
Those days are gone. As Elizabeth Warren and co-author Amelia Warren Tyagi documented in their 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap, the increasing number of two-earner families was matched by rising costs in a number of areas such as education, home costs and transportation.
These cost increases, combined with wage stagnation, mean that families are struggling to make ends meet—and that neither parent has the luxury of staying home any longer. In fact, parenthood has become a financial risk. Warren and Tyagi write that “Having a baby is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse.” This book was written over a decade ago; things are even worse today.
3. The rich are more debt-free. Others have no choice.
Most Americans are falling behind anyway, as their salary fails to keep up with their expenses. No wonder debt is on the rise. As Joshua Freedman and Sherle R. Schwenninger observe in a paper for the New America Foundation, “American households… have become dependent on debt to maintain their standard of living in the face of stagnant wages.”
This “debt-dependent economy,” as Freedman and Schwenninger call it, has negative implications for the nation as a whole. But individual families are suffering too.
Rani Molla of the Wall Street Journal notes that “Over the past 20 years the average increase in spending on some items has exceeded the growth of incomes. The gap is especially poignant for those under 25 years old.”
There are increasingly two classes of Americans: Those who are taking on additional debt, and the rich.
4. Student debt is crushing a generation of non-wealthy Americans.
Education for every American who wants to get ahead? Forget about it. Nowadays you have to be rich to get a college education; that is, unless you want to begin your career with a mountain of debt. Once you get out of college, you’ll quickly discover that the gap between spending and income is greatest for people under 25 years of age.
Education, as Forbes columnist Steve Odland put it in 2012, is “the great equalizer… the facilitator of the American dream.” But at that point college costs had risen 500 percent since 1985, while the overall consumer price index rose by 115 percent. As of 2013, tuition at a private university was projected to cost nearly $130,000 on average over four years, and that’s not counting food, lodging, books, or other expenses.
Public colleges and universities have long been viewed as the get-ahead option for all Americans, including the poorest among us. Not anymore. The University of California was once considered a national model for free, high-quality public education, but today tuition at UC Berkeley is $12,972 per year. (It was tuition-free until Ronald Reagan became governor.) Room and board is $14,414. The total cost of on-campus attendance at Berkeley, including books and other items, is estimated to be $32,168.
The California story has been repeated across the country, as state cutbacks in the wake of the financial crisis caused the cost of public higher education to soar by 15 percent in a two-year period. With a median national household income of $51,000, even public colleges are quickly becoming unaffordable
Sure, there are still some scholarships and grants available. But even as college costs rise, the availability of those programs is falling, leaving middle-class and lower-income students further in debt as out-of-pocket costs rise.
5. Vacations aren’t for the likes of you anymore.
Think you’d like to have a nice vacation? Think again. According to a 2012 American Express survey, Americans who were planning vacations expected to spend an average of $1,180 per person. That’s $4,720 for a family of four. But then, why worry about paying for that vacation? If you’re unemployed, you can’t afford it. And even if you have a job, there’s a good chance you won’t get the time off anyway.
As the Center for Economic and Policy Research found in 2013, the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not require employers to offer paid vacations to their workers. The number of paid holidays and vacation days received by the average worker in this country (16) would not meet the statutory minimum requirements in 19 other developed countries, according to the CEPR. Thirty-one percent of workers in smaller businesses had no paid vacation days at all.
The CEPR also found that 14 percent of employees at larger corporations also received no paid vacation days. Overall, roughly one in four working Americans gets no vacation time at all.
Rep. Alan Grayson, who has introduced the Paid Vacation Act, correctly notes that the average working American now spends 176 hours more per year on the job than was the case in 1976.
Between the pressure to work more hours and the cost of vacation, even people who do get vacation time—at least on paper—are hard-pressed to take any time off. That’s why 175 million vacation days go unclaimed each year.
6. Even with health insurance, medical care is increasingly unaffordable for most people.
Medical care when you need it? That’s for the wealthy.
The Affordable Care Act was designed to increase the number of Americans who are covered by health insurance. But health coverage in this country is the worst of any highly developed nation—and that’s for people who have health insurance.
Every year the Milliman actuarial firm analyzes the average costs of medical care, including the household’s share of insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, for a family of four with the kind of insurance that is considered higher quality coverage in this country: a PPO plan which allows them to use a wider range of healthcare providers.
Even as overall wealth in this country has shifted upward, away from middle-class families, the cost of medical care is increasingly being borne by the families themselves. As the Milliman study shows, the employer-funded portion of healthcare costs has risen 52 percent since 2007, the first year of the recession. But household costs have risen by a staggering 73 percent, or 8 percent per year, and now average $9,144. In the same time period, Census Bureau figures show that median household income has fallen 8 percent.
That means that household healthcare costs are skyrocketing even as income falls dramatically.
The recent claims of “lowered healthcare costs” are misleading. While the rate of increase is slowing down, healthcare costs are continuing to increase. And the actual cost to working Americans is increasing even faster, as corporations continue to maximize their record profits by shifting healthcare costs onto consumers. This shift is expected to accelerate as the result of a misguided provision in the Affordable Care Act which will tax higher-cost plans.
According to an OECD survey, the number of Americans who report going without needed healthcare in the past year because of cost was higher than in 10 comparable countries. This was true for both lower-income and higher-income Americans, suggesting that insured Americans are also feeling the pinch when it comes to getting medical treatment.
As inequality worsens, wages continue to stagnate, and more healthcare costs are placed on the backs of working families, more and more Americans will find medical care unaffordable.
7. Americans can no longer look forward to a secure retirement.
Want to retire when you get older, as earlier generations did, and enjoy a secure life after a lifetime of hard work? You’ll get to… if you’re rich.
There was a time when most middle-class Americans could work until they were 65 and then look forward to a financially secure retirement. Corporate pensions guaranteed a minimum income for the remainder of their life. Those pensions, coupled with Social Security income and a lifetime’s savings, assured that these ordinary Americans could spend their senior years in modest comfort.
No longer. As we have already seen, rising expenses means most Americans are buried in debt rather than able to accumulate modest savings. That’s the main reason why 20 percent of Americans who are nearing retirement age haven’t saved for their post-working years.
Meanwhile, corporations are gutting these pension plans in favor of far less general programs. The financial crisis of 2008, driven by the greed of Wall Street one percenters, robbed most American household of their primary assets. And right-wing “centrists” of both parties, not satisfied with the rising retirement age which has already cut the program’s benefits, continue to press for even deeper cuts to the program.
One group, Natixis Global Asset Management, ranks the United States 19th among developed countries when it comes to retirement security. The principal reasons the US ranks so poorly are 1) the weakness of our pension programs; and 2) the stinginess of our healthcare system, which even with Medicare for the elderly, is far weaker than that of nations such as Austria.
Economists used to speak of retirement security as a three-legged stool. Pensions were one leg of the stool, savings were another and Social Security was the third. Today two legs of the stool have been shattered, and anti-Social Security advocates are sawing away at the third.
Conclusion
Vacations; an education; staying home to raise your *******; a life without crushing debt; seeing the doctor when you don’t feel well; a chance to retire: one by one, these mainstays of middle-class life are disappearing for most Americans. Until we demand political leadership that will do something about it, they’re not coming back.
Can the American dream be restored? Yes, but it will take concerted effort to address two underlying problems. First, we must end the domination of our electoral process by wealthy and powerful elites.
At the same time, we must begin to address the problem of growing economic inequality. Without a national movement to call for change, change simply isn’t going to happen.
Unfiltered: ‘Raising wages [doesn’t] ******* jobs. It's just a thing rich people say to poor people.’
When Nick Hanauer was just 7, his ******* made sure he and his brother knew every aspect of the family business. Afterschool and summer vacation activities included doing small jobs at the family’s Seattle-based pillow and down comforter company, Pacific Coast Feather. “I’m pretty deeply acquainted with what that kind of work is and what it’s like,” says Hanauer, “but I’ve [also] worked sort of doing all kinds of jobs in a variety of companies.”
Today, Hanauer is a self-made billionaire. He made his money as a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist and has also created a broad array of companies ranging from e-commerce software to biotechnology. Hanauer’s business acumen has allowed him to become one of the wealthiest Americans — the so-called 1 percent — but it has also made him an unlikely champion of the poor and a passionate advocate for the advancement of economic equality in the U.S.
“If you’re a middle-class person and feel like the country has left you behind, that is an objective truth. That didn’t happen by accident.”
Hanauer is aware that some form of economic inequality is an essential part of a healthy economy. “That’s not in dispute,” he says. The question, however, is how much of it should exist. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of Americans shared only about 8 percent of the national income. By 2007, however, that number had grown to almost 23 percent, while the income share of the bottom 50 percent had fallen from about 20 percent to about 12 percent in 2015.
“It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that if that trend continues, we will no longer have really a capitalist economy or a democracy,” notes Hanauer. He believes there are multiple factors contributing to the probleme: trickle-down tax policies, dwindling overtime pay and decreasing wages. “There is no excuse for any company in America to pay their workers so little that they need food stamps, and Medicaid and rent assistance,” explains Hanauer. “This is bulls***.”
“That’s not capitalism. That’s socialism for the rich.”
According to Hanauer, all businesses share the same “econo-erotic fantasy”: “My customers will all be rich and be paid a lot by their employers. My workers, sadly, will not be paid a lot, so my margins are very high. I’ll exist in this world where my workers need food stamps, sadly, but my customers are wealthy enough to both buy my stuff and pay the taxes that will fund the food stamps.” Hanauer appreciates the appeal of the fantasy, but there is one problem: “If everybody gets that deal, then you have no economy anymore.” However, Hanauer believes this crisis is a direct result of “policies enacted by governments from both the right and left.”
When President Trump signed the GOP tax bill on December 20, 2017, he touted it as the coming of “jobs, jobs, jobs.” And while Republicans have said that the bill will benefit the middle class and spark job growth by giving corporations permanent tax cuts, Hanauer says that those claims are far from the truth. “Rich people no more create jobs than farmers create tomatoes. The economy generates jobs, not rich people,” he explains. “The more money consumers have, the more jobs that are created, because people buy things and people like me are required to hire people in order to meet that demand.”
In order for those consumers to get the money needed to buy the products, they would have to have that money in the first place — which is why Hanauer believes every state should institute a $15 minimum wage, which he successfully lobbied for in the state of Washington. “The idea that raising wages kills jobs lies in the face of all common sense. If people don’t have any money, who will buy the stuff?” And even though Hanauer was one of the first investors in Amazon, he holds Jeff Bezos to the same standard he would to any CEO who runs a successful business empire. “Until we collectively raise standards so that we require Jeff Bezos to pay his workers enough to get by without food stamps, it’s not his obligation to do that unilaterally,” he says. “Certainly, that’s not what Walmart is doing, or Walgreens, or any of his competitors … and I think that’s a problem.”
The availability of overtime is another area Hanauer believes should be a key labor protection for the middle class: In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over the week’s allotted 40 hours. By 2013, however, only 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime pay — which means employees can be made to work over 40 hours a week without getting paid their time and a half.
Hanauer says this causes more jobs to be taken out of the economy and a softening of the labor market, making it harder for workers to negotiate higher wages. He explains, “If you do that 30, 40, or 50 million times across the economy, you have turned three jobs at 40 hours a week into two jobs at 60 hours a week, millions of times. That’s a way to … take 20 million jobs out of the economy.”
Ultimately, Hanauer believes people should call their elected representatives and demand policies that create wage-and-overtime increases and reject cutting taxes for wealthy corporations, “[Don’t] get conned by this trickle-down nonsense that raising wages kills jobs — It doesn’t. It’s just a thing rich people say to poor people to keep rich people rich and poor people poor.”
“It’s a lie. Don’t believe it.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unfilter...ng-rich-people-say-poor-people-184825813.html
When Nick Hanauer was just 7, his ******* made sure he and his brother knew every aspect of the family business. Afterschool and summer vacation activities included doing small jobs at the family’s Seattle-based pillow and down comforter company, Pacific Coast Feather. “I’m pretty deeply acquainted with what that kind of work is and what it’s like,” says Hanauer, “but I’ve [also] worked sort of doing all kinds of jobs in a variety of companies.”
Today, Hanauer is a self-made billionaire. He made his money as a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist and has also created a broad array of companies ranging from e-commerce software to biotechnology. Hanauer’s business acumen has allowed him to become one of the wealthiest Americans — the so-called 1 percent — but it has also made him an unlikely champion of the poor and a passionate advocate for the advancement of economic equality in the U.S.
“If you’re a middle-class person and feel like the country has left you behind, that is an objective truth. That didn’t happen by accident.”
Hanauer is aware that some form of economic inequality is an essential part of a healthy economy. “That’s not in dispute,” he says. The question, however, is how much of it should exist. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of Americans shared only about 8 percent of the national income. By 2007, however, that number had grown to almost 23 percent, while the income share of the bottom 50 percent had fallen from about 20 percent to about 12 percent in 2015.
“It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that if that trend continues, we will no longer have really a capitalist economy or a democracy,” notes Hanauer. He believes there are multiple factors contributing to the probleme: trickle-down tax policies, dwindling overtime pay and decreasing wages. “There is no excuse for any company in America to pay their workers so little that they need food stamps, and Medicaid and rent assistance,” explains Hanauer. “This is bulls***.”
“That’s not capitalism. That’s socialism for the rich.”
According to Hanauer, all businesses share the same “econo-erotic fantasy”: “My customers will all be rich and be paid a lot by their employers. My workers, sadly, will not be paid a lot, so my margins are very high. I’ll exist in this world where my workers need food stamps, sadly, but my customers are wealthy enough to both buy my stuff and pay the taxes that will fund the food stamps.” Hanauer appreciates the appeal of the fantasy, but there is one problem: “If everybody gets that deal, then you have no economy anymore.” However, Hanauer believes this crisis is a direct result of “policies enacted by governments from both the right and left.”
When President Trump signed the GOP tax bill on December 20, 2017, he touted it as the coming of “jobs, jobs, jobs.” And while Republicans have said that the bill will benefit the middle class and spark job growth by giving corporations permanent tax cuts, Hanauer says that those claims are far from the truth. “Rich people no more create jobs than farmers create tomatoes. The economy generates jobs, not rich people,” he explains. “The more money consumers have, the more jobs that are created, because people buy things and people like me are required to hire people in order to meet that demand.”
In order for those consumers to get the money needed to buy the products, they would have to have that money in the first place — which is why Hanauer believes every state should institute a $15 minimum wage, which he successfully lobbied for in the state of Washington. “The idea that raising wages kills jobs lies in the face of all common sense. If people don’t have any money, who will buy the stuff?” And even though Hanauer was one of the first investors in Amazon, he holds Jeff Bezos to the same standard he would to any CEO who runs a successful business empire. “Until we collectively raise standards so that we require Jeff Bezos to pay his workers enough to get by without food stamps, it’s not his obligation to do that unilaterally,” he says. “Certainly, that’s not what Walmart is doing, or Walgreens, or any of his competitors … and I think that’s a problem.”
The availability of overtime is another area Hanauer believes should be a key labor protection for the middle class: In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over the week’s allotted 40 hours. By 2013, however, only 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime pay — which means employees can be made to work over 40 hours a week without getting paid their time and a half.
Hanauer says this causes more jobs to be taken out of the economy and a softening of the labor market, making it harder for workers to negotiate higher wages. He explains, “If you do that 30, 40, or 50 million times across the economy, you have turned three jobs at 40 hours a week into two jobs at 60 hours a week, millions of times. That’s a way to … take 20 million jobs out of the economy.”
Ultimately, Hanauer believes people should call their elected representatives and demand policies that create wage-and-overtime increases and reject cutting taxes for wealthy corporations, “[Don’t] get conned by this trickle-down nonsense that raising wages kills jobs — It doesn’t. It’s just a thing rich people say to poor people to keep rich people rich and poor people poor.”
“It’s a lie. Don’t believe it.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unfilter...ng-rich-people-say-poor-people-184825813.html
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Good posts!
One note for people that don't know the software jobs market in the US:
Senior to mid-level at Apple is more like 300-500k / yr
Also important to know that for the FAANG-like companies, 1/3 to 1/2 (or more, depending on how lucky you were timing your grants) of your comp is actually coming from stock. So cranking up the share price through a buy-back is effectively giving employees a raise (also owners and shareholders, ofc)
One note for people that don't know the software jobs market in the US:
Senior to mid-level at Apple is more like 300-500k / yr
Also important to know that for the FAANG-like companies, 1/3 to 1/2 (or more, depending on how lucky you were timing your grants) of your comp is actually coming from stock. So cranking up the share price through a buy-back is effectively giving employees a raise (also owners and shareholders, ofc)
Gov. Murphy Calls on Paterson Councilmen Charged in Voting Fraud Scheme to Step Down
www.nbcnewyork.com
For some reason their party is not referenced ten times. So they must be democrats.
Gov. Murphy Calls on Paterson Councilmen Charged in Voting Fraud Scheme to Step Down
The governor said that Alex Mendez and Michael Jackson refusing to step down “undermines the public’s sacred trust in democracy”; both council members have said they will plead not guilty
www.nbcnewyork.com
For some reason their party is not referenced ten times. So they must be democrats.
Gov. Murphy Calls on Paterson Councilmen Charged in Voting Fraud Scheme to Step Down
Gov. Murphy Calls on Paterson Councilmen Charged in Voting Fraud Scheme to Step Down
The governor said that Alex Mendez and Michael Jackson refusing to step down “undermines the public’s sacred trust in democracy”; both council members have said they will plead not guilty
For some reason their party is not referenced ten times. So they must be democrats.
Your comments are typical Trumpian, divert from the facts and create "your own set of alternative facts!", which by way, is in its self, a lie! I guess idiots are still plentiful, eh?
Southern states report record coronavirus surges
The U.S. has also seen a record number of cases nationwide, according to the latest figures released.
www.politico.com
Freedom ain't free. Sorry Grandma, you gotta die so that Karen can get her nails done without wearing a mask.
- Status
