The plight of America’s unemployed is terrible. Yet for the 91 percent of those in the U.S. labor force who do have a job, the numbers also tell a dark story. Take-home pay, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.3 percent in August, the third decrease in five months, the Commerce Dept. just reported. The declines followed news from the Census Bureau that median household income in 2010 fell to $49,445, the lowest in more than a decade, while the poverty rate jumped to 15.1 percent, a 17-year high. Salary and benefit growth “has been going nowhere,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics (MCO) in West Chester, Pa. “One of the key reasons the recovery has stalled is that real incomes have fallen.”
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/18709/the-long-slow-slide-into-poverty/
The Long, Slow Slide Into Poverty
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I’ll skeptical of household measurements of anything. I’m even more skeptical of Mark Zandi.
And well you ought to be as he, like many others, speaks of the reasons that the recovery has stalled….
“Recovery,” indeed.
Before you get too snarky, Frank, you might want to take a look at Russ Robert’s post on median income at Cafe Hayek
http://cafehayek.com/2011/09/my-challenge-to-tyler.html
And the only remedy is strong unions and a large import duty on all consumer goods and sub-assemblies.
Dumb as a brick.
But consistent.
I think I’ve had more intelligent conversations with bricks.
That’s because you were the only one talking. The brick contributed zero intelligence, but billwald has the ability to suck the intelligence out of a discussion.
Here we go again, jobs are not ends but means to ends. If super robots did all of the work in the world then the world would be vastly wealthier despite having no income. So the fact that this particular woman makes $17 or $20 dollars per hour or if she has a raise does not determine her wealth. The big determinant of wealth is stuff she can buy with the $17 per hour and how much of her $17 per hour goes to the various levels of government.
Look at the example of the woman in the article. She lists these as problems for her budget:Food (Subsidized and price supported) and fuel (Coming from foreigners who want the same wealth which is more dollars), and communications services that are heavily regulated and taxed.
And you can kiss goodbye to a lot of full-time jobs now that employers have to offer health insurance. America: the land of the part-time job.
If it weren’t for that loophole the situation would be even worse!
Our owners are causing the SLOW slide into poverty because a fast slide would stir the pot before it it to late to remedy. Think of the “Henry Ford” story you all love so well. Why did Ford want to sell cheap cars? Because he didn’t like horses? No, because he made a profit on every sale.
Was Ford like Scrooge McDuck? Accumulating coins to fill a swimming pool? No, he wanted power and empire. Answer me this: if Ford owned all valuable property in the world, all the real estate, all the infrastructure, all the natural resources, and all the food crops . . . would he care if his employees made cars which they could then purchase for themselves?
You all are correct about our fiat money having no intrinsic value but you don’t think it through. You don’t understand human nature. Why do the ultra rich work so hard to accumulate something with no intrinsic value?
Because they ONLY own 95% of everything and money still buys political (thus military) power.
Because fiat money is a government countersigned IOU for goods and services. When the ultra rich own 99% of everything worth owing (in the Libertarian sense of “worth” and “own”) they will neither want nor need money for there will be nothing left for them to buy. Every lesser human will “owe their soul to the company store.” Every human will then be totally “free” in the Libertarian/neocon sense. As the song goes, “Freedom’s just another word for ‘nothing left to lose’.”
Kris Kristofferson you say, well now that explains everything!
La da la la la, la da la la la da la
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