Now that a handful of companies own and control all of the news media (now NPR)... anything that can have a 'negative' impact on what they want voters/public to see is removed. Impossible?Not a single news organization reported this data below when it was released October 15, searches of Google and the Nexis databases show. Nor did any blog, so the citizen journalists and professional economists did no better than the newsroom pros in reporting this basic information about our economy.
Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.
Measured in 2009 dollars, total wages fell to just above $5.9 trillion, down $215 billion from the previous year...These figures show, far more powerfully than the official unemployment measure known as U3, how both widespread and deep the loss of jobs was in 2009. While the official unemployment rate is just under 10 percent, deeper analysis of the data by economist John Williams at http://www.shadowstats.com shows a real under- and unemployment rate of more than 22 percent.
Only 150.9 million Americans reported any wage income in 2009.
Add in today's decreased number of jobs, and all these data add up to policies that can be described with one word: failed
Add in today's decreased number of jobs, and all these data add up to policies that can be described with one word: failed
What does this all mean?
It is the latest, and in this case quite dramatic, evidence that our economic policies in Washington are undermining the nation as a whole.We have created a tax system that changes continually as politicians manipulate it to extract campaign donations. We have enabled ''free trade'' that is nothing of the sort, but rather tax-subsidized mechanisms that encourage American manufacturers to close their domestic factories, fire workers, and then use cheap labor in China for products they send right back to the United States. This has created enormous downward pressure on wages, and not just for factory workers.Combined with government policies that have reduced the share of private-sector workers in unions by more than two-thirds — while our competitors in Canada, Europe, and Japan continue to have highly unionized workforces — the net effect has been disastrous for the vast majority of American workers. And of course, less money earned from labor translates into less money to finance the United States of America.
This systematic destruction of the working class and middle class has come during an era notable for celebrating the super-rich just for being super-rich.
During the years from 1950 to 1980, the share of total income going to those at the top declined, and the real incomes of the vast majority grew much more quickly than did nearly all incomes at the very top.
In those years, America had the money, and vision, to invest in the future through education, research, and infrastructure.
Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher, instead of just 1 percent more.
In those years, America had the money, and vision, to invest in the future through education, research, and infrastructure.
Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher, instead of just 1 percent more.
That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week — less debt, more savings, and more consumption. Please read more from Tax.com
It gets worse... Economists have written several papers and a bookgross public debt in excess of 90 percent of GDP severely hinders economic growth--(the "tipping point") For the United States the ratio of gross government debt to GDP at the end of fiscal year 2010 was 92 percent. reporting that
In July the CBO published its latest report on the long-term deficit. One of the many interesting things it tells us is that the rise in public debt will have a significant negative effect on our standard of living.
Now as Bad as During the Great Depression?
The Wall Street Journal noted in July 2009:
The average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948.
The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.
The Christian Science Monitor wrote an article in June entitled, "Length of unemployment reaches Great Depression levels".
Unemployment is expected to exceed 10% by many economists, and Obama "has warned that the unemployment rate will explode to at least 10% in 2009".
10 percent of 154 million is 15 million people out of work - more than during the Great Depression.