Where is the economic resurgence for middle class workers

Seasonal and temporary workers are typically counted as employed if they have been paid for work in the past month — even if they are out of work just a few weeks later. That can make the unemployment rate, currently a nearly healthy 5.6 percent, look a bit rosy. An alternative measure of unemployment, which includes people who work part-time but want full-time work, and those who recently stopped searching for jobs, is at 11.2 percent. That is down from a peak of 17.1 percent in late 2009, but is still far above the 8.8 percent reading just before the Great Recession.


From 2009 to 2012, inflation-adjusted income for the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households surged 31 percent, according to economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. For everyone else, income inched up just 0.4 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/hard-hit-worker-wonders-where-economic-resurgence-155926104.html

So Mr. Obama thinks things are much better but reality says it isn't. Where does Mr. Obama get his facts from, thin air?

 

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You should be asking where are you getting your information from, not that it isn't obvious. President Obama is getting his information from the same credible sources all presidents, academics and business professionals get their economic data. Perhaps you should consider getting your information from that source one day, not that you would know how to interpret it or use it.

You and your fellow Republican have a knack for ignoring inconvenient facts. The fact is, when Obama took over as POTUS the economy was shrinking at an annualized 10% rate. The nation was shedding nearly a million jobs a month and more with each passing month. The economy is now growing at an annualized rate of 5%. Between 200k and 300k jobs, mostly private sector, are being created each and every month. All this, while Republicans in congress were doing everything within their power to bring down this government and Obama with it. They engineered a government shut down and two very real threats of a debt default, not to mention opposing every economic stimulus package Obama offered.

Yeah, wealth inequality remains a problem. It has been a problem since Reagan when he began using fiscal policy to take from the middle class and give to the wealthiest among us. You may have heard of it, it's called trickle down.

 

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And Mr. Obama is using voodoo economics. Anything can be done with numbers.

 

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And where is your evidence to support that conclusion Cosmic?

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Did Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or Mark Levin tell you? Obama is advised by the world's best economic minds. And what of you Cosmic, what is the basis for your economic prognostications?

 

They are both going in the right direction, at least. (And compared to 2011, that number is closer to 1%.)

 

and of course you don't see any problem with those numbers. you probably think those mean everything is just hunky dory.

 

"Hunky dory?" No. Do I think a slow increase in income for everyone is a good thing? Definitely.

 

In the short term, yes; however, such a wide disparity in incomes is not stable in the longer term. It is why, Oxford predicts that in less than a year 1% of earth's population will have more wealth than the 99% does. I think that is a higher concentration of wealth than in France when wealthy heads rolled, but that was due more to the absolute, not relative, conditions of the poor.

Today's problem with your POV, is that not all are enjoying any increase in the salaries and even getting a job is hard for them. Approximately 1 in 6 Americans gets by only with significant transfer of wealth from middle class and wealthy tax payers. The more probable revolt, I think, will start with them, especially if the Republicans need to counter Obama's "middleclass economic" by cutting "welfare" costs burden on the middle class.. Then it will evolve into blood shed, with hungry, well armed mobs looting grocery stores, etc. (US has several hand guns per adult male.)

Dominic Barton, managing director of McKinsey & Co spoke alongside billionaire Aliko Dangote, president and CEO of Nigeria-based conglomerate Dangote Group on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2014.

 

do you know what the concept of purchasing power is?.1% increase in income when compared with inflation is maybe 1.5 or 2% reduction in purchasing power at minimum.

you just don't get how dangerous this issue is. you really lack the ability to understand how this supression of income in the lower classes could topple our economy.

 

The .1% increase is in real income. (And per the article it's actually .4%.) Thus it INCREASES purchasing power.

And you lack the ability to understand math. It's sorta important.

From the article:
"From 2009 to 2012, inflation-adjusted income for the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households surged 31 percent, according to economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. For everyone else, income inched up just 0.4 percent."

 

So the middle class will rise up against the poor, who are draining them dry? Perhaps - but unlikely IMO.

 

You are overlooking, among other factors such as differential inflation, the implications of the measurement via percentages. They compound.

A 1% yearly increase in the income of the poor, 5% in the middle, 10% in the rich, and you can kiss the middle class goodbye in a generation. The rich will own the place.

Or from the other perspective: to match the income gains of the past 20 years among the rich - to regain their former comparative economic status and comparative purchasing power - the poor would have to see 20% yearly gains in their income for the next 13 consecutive years, more or less, with the rich at 0% the whole time.

 

The poor aren't draining the middle class dry. its the wealthy who are. of course mentioning this fact is in your mind "class warfare"

 

Agreed. 1% compounded over 20 years is 22%. A 22% increase in real earnings is a good thing.

Class envy occurs when a gain is seen as a loss simply because some other class gains more.

Yes. Not as ideal, since all classes aren't making more money, but as long as we aren't losing income, on average people still come out ahead.

 

rather than childish attack my understanding of math which is based more on your class war fare ideology than anything factual do you truly lack the ability to get how a roughly 6% yearly increase for the wealthy and a less than a tenth of a percent for everyone else will collapse the economy. instead of defending those pillaging the economy defend those who are the backbone of it. and not really billvon. though that .4 might just barely be above inflation that rate of inflation includes everything. most staples that a person requires have been increasing at a higher rate. which nets a loss in purchasing powering. I still don't understand how someone who is more than likely in the middleclass and is being harmed by these policies is defending your own stagnent income. i mean seriously your like someone being mugged and being like its ok there not taking much.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014...ars-of-income-inequality-in-america-in-graphs

look at that graph. most people's incomes at best grew 3% over the last 40 years. that's not 3% per a year thats 33% total. to get to a 22% total increase we need to get to the 80th percentile. or do you really believe 40 years of growing income inequality and stagnent incomes for the vast majority of people is not a structural issue. you can only get that sustained for so long be having structured to be that way. and in those cases you have to look at those making the gains.

 

I am. Increasing income across the board is critical, and I have always maintained that.

The difference between you and I is that I see an improvement of .4% a year as a good thing. You see it as a bad thing because someone else is getting 6%. That's simple jealousy. It almost sounds like you'd rather no one improve their income, because you would enjoy seeing rich people not make any more money more than you want to see the poor increase their income.

Again, you don't understand. That's adjusted income which includes inflation. In other words, they are really improving at 1.2% a year, but inflation "takes" .8% of that, so the balance is .4% of "real" improvement.

 

your right i do see the.4% as a bad thing because its not fucking sustainable. its not a bad thing because someone else is making more its a bad thing in and of its own thing. that the rich are improving at a vastly increased rate while that income is stagnant is a serious issue own that your saying its not an issue. you've shown a complete ignorance of how economics works. what going to happen is what always happens when the the upper classes tend to get all the gains. the prices for staples ends up getting priced out reach. I'll give you hint the french revolution. you may think it is ok for the wealthy to suppress everyones wages and take home the lion share and to peddle ideological bullshit as class envy but this has serious economic consequences. if the poor and middle class don't start actually getting meaningful increase in there wages and i'm sorry .4% isn't meaningful the economy will break.

i understand just fine so quit being so condesending lord bill and try listening instead of pontificating. when they do real income its adjusted to an average which includes luxury goods. most staples like food and healthcare and putting a roof over ones head have been increasing at a higher rate than that average. so just because their ahead of the average doesn't mean their keeping up with what their actually buying. so please instead of try to "educate" me when you don't have a clue what your talking about quit repeating right wing pro corporate talking points and actually look at economic history.

 

Why not? It's been sustainable for decades.

If that were true I would agree it's a problem. But the middle class is in fact improving.

No. Again, you're not getting the idea of real income. If the price of staples go up and your actual income stays the same, your real income goes down. The opposite is happening.

They're not. What wealthy person is "suppressing everyone's wages?" I know a few quite wealthy people who have made other people richer by giving them jobs, and thus I know you're wrong from direct observation. (And the number they have hired have far, far outweighed the number who have lost jobs through firings or layoffs.)

I'd suggest that hatred, anger and jealousy are poor guidelines by which to decide economic policy. (Although they may make you feel better.)

OK. So what is your index of inflation for the past 20 years or so?

 

Class impoverishment occurs when the extra gain to the rich compounds for long enough that they own most of the wealth of a society. The loss involved is the ability of anyone else to own land, a house, or the means and infrastructure of a productive business - the rich can outbid everyone else together for all the finite resources of the community, and live from then on by renting their resources to those who wish to make use of them.

The rich end up owning the whole place, see, and no longer need to engage in productive business to ensure high incomes. It's not a theoretical matter - it's the normal evolutionary end of the economies of civilized societies, the inevitable result of the compound interest paid to capital not taxed away and redistributed to labor.

Preventing this is not a matter of envy, but self defense - or patriotism, some kind of fondness for, like, "freedom" and "democracy" and stuff . It also, as a side benefit, increases the economic productivity of a society - massive inequality of wealth depresses total productivity significantly, as the more efficient use of resources by the many and capable is supplanted by the whims of the aristocratic few.

No, they don't. The poor end up landless, underemployed, and completely dependent on successfully ingratiating themselves to the rich who own almost all the wealth of the society. The middle class vanishes - the fortunate and extraordinarily capable become rich and own, the rest lose ownership and join the poor.

What's coming, at current trends, is a much lower equilibrium state than a more equitable wealth distribution would support. What was sustainable before, in the US, was a much higher and growing equilibrium as is supportable by more equitable wealth distribution.

No, it isn't. It is less able to afford shelter and medical care, for example, than ten years ago. It is working longer hours, getting less education, and enjoying much less leisure time, than twenty years ago. Its median wage is continuing to drop, and at current trends soon it will not be able to buy a median house even with two incomes. It has lost much equity in its housing, and that is or was its major source of collateral for starting a business or financing its children's education or handling emergency burdens - now it will work for others only, shortchange education, and suffer bankruptcy if hit with medical bills or other disastrous events.

 

Good thing that doesn't exist then...