Joshua Holland has an excellent article explaining the disconnect between the numbers that BuschCo is flaunting, showing a vibrant and healthy economy, and the gloomy prospects that most ordinary Americans face. The neocons try to spin the story that we are being misled to pessimism by the “liberal media”; Holland’s article puts the brakes on that spin and documents lots of real reasons for gloom.Consider these numbers from the Economic Policy Institute — a left-leaning think-tank (this essay leans heavily on EPI’s excellent research):
- Salaries are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. That, while productivity — the growth of the economic pie — is up by almost 15 percent. Meaning we’re working harder, producing more, for the same money as five years ago.
- Since the recession ended in 2001, 50 percent more of the growth in corporate income was sucked up as profits than after past recessions. That’s left less for those of us who work for a living.
- As a result, median household income has now fallen for five years in a row. It was 4 percent, or $2,000, lower in 2004 than it was in 1999.
That last figure means that Joe and Jane Average American — the household smack in the middle of the booming go-go American economy — have gotten a pay cut for five years in a row. Small wonder they’re sporting long faces.
When we were first married, 45 years ago, we felt rich. I was a first year public school teacher, and Joan was a Welfare Department case worker, and we were rich. We were able to afford a decent apartment and a car, and we had lots of free time to spend hanging out with friends and discussing events. Today, the only people we know with any free time at all are dropouts, a few lucky retirees whose pensions have not yet been stolen from them, and people living on trust fund money. Every working stiff we know is working harder than we did then, doing less involving work, working longer hours, and going deeper into debt to pay for the essentials of middle class life—health care, home, and education for the kids. None of them, even the ones earning comfortable six-figure incomes, feel as rich as we felt back then.
It’s a classic shell game. We see the pea; we watch the shell come down to cover it; we keep our eye on what we’re sure is the shell with the pea. And at the end, we’re wrong, and they have our money. Crooks and con artists: that’s all they are.
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