And you thought you were just getting poorer:
Posted on Jul 10, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas—I don’t get it. What’s the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the minimum wage hike, quietly killing it.
Anyone who doesn’t think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers—this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts.
According to the current issue of Mother Jones:
-- One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income.
-- Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has risen steadily. Now, 13%—37 million Americans—are officially poor.
-- Bush’s tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are saved $42,700.
-- In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) compared those who point out such statistics as the one above to Adolph Hitler (surely he meant Stalin?).
-- Bush has diverted $750 million to “healthy marriages” by shifting funds from social services, mostly child care.
-- Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities by 50%.
A series of related stats—starting with the news that two out of three new jobs are in the suburbs—shows how the poor are further disadvantaged in the job hunt by lack of public or private transportation.
Meanwhile, for those who have been following the collapse of the pension system, please note a series in The Wall Street Journal by Ellen Schultz taking a hard look at executive pension obligations:
-- “Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension obligations in the United States, an average of 8 percent (of large companies). Sometimes a company’s obligation for a single executive’s pension approaches $100 million.”
-- “These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don’t distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial filings.”
-- “As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions of regular retirees—which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years—can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives.”
-- “Executive pensions, even when they won’t be paid until years from now, drag down the earnings today. And they do so in a way that’s disproportionate to their size, because they aren’t funded with dedicated assets.”
It seems to me that we’ve seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism—it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting that any form of regulation is bad. But for whom?
It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair—“justice for all” seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged the “lottery of life” in this country in ways we don’t even know about yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules are worse. The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won’t see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years, but it starting to affect us already.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website, Creators.com - Creators Syndicate.Truthdig - Reports - Molly Ivins: The Politics of Greed Isn,t this exactly what you preach Vi?

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Lets all work harder so the execs can get a raise!
Paul Krugman writes:

Losing Our Country - New York Times: In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security. But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country.... Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages. Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.
But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.... [F]or now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes... sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power. Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless.... It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.
These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts 'increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system.' The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery....
Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice 'class warfare.' To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the 'politics of envy.'
But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.... [W]e can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Mother Jones, Paul Krugman and The New York Times? Hardly fair and balancd.

Oh, and the term "working families" ... what exactly does that mean? Every family I know, regardless of income, is a working family.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

And you talk fair and balanced whoooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeee, such gall!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Again ... The term "working families" ... what exactly does that mean?

And you still have not pointed out the article in the Constitution that gives power to the federal government to PROVIDE for the general welfare.

Vi

__________________
Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Whoooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeee your such an ...........................

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Poke holes in your assertions and nothing comes out except hot air. Unbelievable.

Vi

__________________
Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Thats all you deserve is hot air, in fact I believe you thrive on it, Barstow buddy, Barstow!!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Screw Barstow! Just define the term "working families."

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...................... Working families: Families that have to work just to survive because the plutocratic structure does not allow the wages paid to be sufficient to pull themselves up as used to be in this society. When Housing and comoddities are priced out of reach for the average worker, they either go without or suscribe to an enormous debt load that precludes them from saving for any upwards mobility. The amount of debt now looming over the average "working Family" is crushing the life out of this society. Working familys: when in a family structure it takes more than one income to sustain the necessities of living! How much clearer can I be! I realize a doctor may be included as a working family in the general sense, but I'm talking about the typical hard working family that doesn't make enough to get ahead no matter how hard they try because the system is tilted against them. Now after explaining this you still don't get it, don't ask me again. I feel that I've just wasted ten minutes of my life answering your stupid question. you knew damn well what I meant and only meant to enrage me. you are slick, like tricky dick, answer a question with a question, well I'm tired of playing your game! I guess if it makes you feel superior..................

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.