Nine Economic Facts That Will Make Your Blood Boil

Here’s the first fact.

The economic recovery is in short supply, although demand is much higher for the jobs that should come with any recovery. Note that supply is far less than demand. Supply and demand can never reach an equilibrium in this case. That’s because income distribution and redistribution is a function of political power. The one percent has it, the 99 does not. In other words, demand can never equal supply because one small group has purchased the political favors of the nation’s most powerful politicians. I.E. the 1 percent own the political markets, lock, stock and barrel. This includes conservative Senator Orrin Hatch of Wall Street, and liberal Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden.

On behalf of Wall Street billionaires, these two senators (like perhaps 83 of 98 other senators) have two objectives. One is to side with their respective constituents of the 99 percent on all social issues, at least on the soapbox. The second is to financially rape the 99 percent on behalf of the 1 percent via federal legislation, such as free trade treaties. They use the social issues to divide the nation and to divert the attention of the 99 percent away from the legislation these senator’s support that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent. In effect, their jobs are to financially rape the 99 percent and redistribute income to the 1 percent, their masters. And they’ve been doing it for decades.

Research by economist Emmanuel Saez shows that the top 1 percent has enjoyed income growth of over 11 percent since the official end of the recession, back in 2009. The other 99 percent hasn’t fared so well, seeing a 0.4 percent decline in income. That’s because income is being redistributed to the 1 percent from the 99 percent. Thank you senators Hatch and Wyden.

The top 10 percent of earners hauled in 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917 – and that doesn’t even include money earned from investments. The rich have benefited from favorable tax status, the rise in stock prices and the purchase of politicians such as Hatch and Wyden, while the rest of us have been hit with a continuing unemployment crisis that has kept wages down. Saez believes this trend will continue in 2013, but he is wrong. This trend will continue until a political revolution begins. The United States is heading toward banana republic status and will continue on this trajectory for the immediate future.

Click the link below for the other 8 facts that will make your head boil. And remember, these things were caused by Wyden and Hatch and roughly 83 other senators, plus hundreds of congressmen and women, and every president since and possibly including Jimmy Carter.

Nine economic facts that will make your head spin

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the Biggest Income Redistribution Scam: Free Trade Treaties

Free trade is a failed economic policy. Just look at your nation. After thirty years of free trade policies, unemployment is high because tens of millions of jobs have been shipped overseas. The 1 percent have stolen an increasing share of the total national income via free trade treaties, up from 8 percent in 1980 to a little over 30 percent today. That means the 99 percent have less money to burn, ensuring that demand for goods and services is weak, and that fewer jobs are being created than thirty-two years ago, when the Gross Domestic Product and the national population were about 60 percent the size of today. Shared prosperity has not been accomplished because the free trade policy was an income redistribution scam that has been backed by useful idiots of the 1 percent, such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden.

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Wyden wants us to believe that free trade has been good for the nation. No it hasn’t, but it has been good the 1 percent of the population that he represents.

The super rich are getting richer while the rest of us are being financially pushed down. Part of the problem is free trade. The super rich benefit the most from the biggest welfare program of them; free trade. Those treaties open up foreign nations for US corporations to ship jobs there, or to create them there, when otherwise they could not. The difference between the old, higher, US wages and the new, lower wages goes into the pockets of the super rich via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and surging dividends.

Those treaties have allowed corporations to ship our tax base overseas, and redistributed those taxes into the pockets of the rich. That’s why our schools are jammed packed and in disrepair. That’s why our government services cost more, with fees to enter parks, rising car and title registration, etc….

In the UK, some folks have figured out the free trade scam. One can only assume that Wyden has been paid by Wall Street to lie to us. According to the UK, “…staring dumbfounded at the lessons unlearned in Britain, Europe and the US, it strikes me that the entire structure of neoliberal (free trade) thought is a fraud. The demands of the ultra-rich have been dressed up as sophisticated economic theory and applied regardless of the outcome. The complete failure of this world-scale experiment is no impediment to its repetition. This has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with power. Parenthesis are mine, and I bold the letters.

Wall Street has the power, via their ownership of politicians such as Wyden, John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Barack Obama. The president’s people are negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership, the biggest free trade income redistribution scam of all time. Don’t let him destroy the middle class. Stop the madness of this failed economic policy.

Click the link below for the full story from the Guardian of the UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/neoliberal-theory-economic-failure

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Average CEO Pay Compared to Average Worker Pay By Nation

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Social Security Has Kept Millions Out of Poverty

“In debates over the federal budget, Social Security is too often treated in strictly accounting terms or as a bargaining chip. But as this graph shows, the human consequences of Social Security are profound. It demonstrates that declines in elderly poverty in recent decades are directly associated with sharp increases in per capita Social Security expenditures. The program has lifted tens of millions of Americans (mostly the elderly) out of poverty, just as it was intended to do.” Economic Policy Institute

When President Obama put Social Security benefits on the negotiating block to avoid the faked fiscal cliff, he and Congressman John Boehner were agreeing to shove more and more elderly people into poverty while refusing to acknowledge that social security has a $2.5 trillion surplus invested in US treasury bonds that collects $118 billion in interest per year. If there is a problem with social security funding, it’s twenty or more years into the future and is easily fixed. Just eliminate the cap. People pay no social security tax on any income earned above $110,100. Eliminate this cap and you wipe out any problems social security will have for a hundred years or more. Failure to eliminate the cap means old people can be scared witless and manipulated with lies for a long time to come. That’s what Obama and Boehner (pronounced Boner) want.

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Here’s the Reason the Economy is Weak

The St. Louis branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank reported this morning that labor’s share of total US income is at its lowest level since records have been kept. That’s sixty years of records. That means the demand for goods and services is only as strong as labors income and ability to generate credit. In other words, demand is weak, which is why jobs growth is weak. Getting credit to purchase food and pay energy bills is not in anybody’s interest. The economy is weak and isn’t creating jobs because labor continues to experience defeat to the 1 percent in the legislative markets, where the income of 99 percent is redistributed to the 1 percent.

The worst part is that Barack Obama, president of Wall Street, continues to lead the legislative charge of the 1 percent as they roll over the limited number of champions of the 99 percent in the senate and Wall Street’s US House of Representatives. Wall Street has such liberals as Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Earl Blumenauer on their ideological and perhaps financial payroll, at least in some way. Why else would Wall Street’s Fetch Boy Ron Wyden and Wall Street’s Fetch Boy Earl lead the charge against the middle class on behalf of the 1 percent? No doubt both will vote for the Trans Pacific Income Redistribution Trade Treaty, which will redistribute income and democracy from the 99 to the 1 percent. Both Fetch Boy Wyden and Fetch Boy Earl know this.

Click below for more on this issue.

Labor's Share of National Income at Lowest Level in Sixty Years

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Raising the Minimum Wage Will Create Jobs

Jacking up the federal minimum wage will increase the demand for goods and services because people will have more money to purchase stuff. On the other hand, keeping the federal minimum wage where it is will not create any more jobs, but will likely destroy some. Here’s why this is true.

Corporate profits are at or near record highs. The 1 percent has stolen this money via their control of federal legislation. 93 percent of all US income growth during the last two years has gone to the 1 percent. When jobs are shipped overseas, the difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower foreign wages goes into the pockets of the rich via higher corporate earnings, increased dividends and rising share prices. That leaves the 99 percent with less money to spend, and so the demand for goods and services shrinks, even as the money the 1 percent steals goes toward eliminating more US jobs, or pushing US wages down.

In the same way, reducing the minimum wage will give the 1 percent more money, but the 99 percent will have less income to spend, and this will debase the economy by lessening the demand for goods and services. Keeping the minimum wage the same will have the same negative effect.

That’s because inflation erodes the value of the unchanged minimum wage; as inflation rumbles through the economy year after year, a stagnant wage means the 99 percent can purchase less and less goods and services, and this dilutes the demand for goods and services, which accelerates the economy into a stagnant or downward spiral.

If wages, salaries, and or benefits are static, inflation results in massive transfers of income from the 99 to the 1 percent. As corporations jack up their prices, which is done to ensure they meet the expectations of financial market analysts, the process raises their earnings and results in higher dividends and share prices for the 1 percent; but this occurs at the expense of the 99 percent.

That means an increase in the federal minimum wage will provide the 99 percent with more money to spend, which will create jobs and a more robust economy. This action also means lower corporate profits, dividends and potentially lower share prices for the 1 percent, which is a good thing because it means these parasites will have less money to purchase legislation that sucks the 99 percent financially dryer.

The economy is weak because the parasite has grown too large for the 99 percent “host” to support the 1 percent “parasite.” Click on the links below for more information.

Related links

The middle class is Shrinking because of tax cuts for the rich

Economic Policy Institute–Economic Research Supports Raising the Minimum Wage

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Why and Can Americans Work Less, Like the Germans

Dean Baker of the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reports that the United States could solve its unemployment problem if the government encouraged businesses to spread out their work to include more people. Some people would take a cut in hours so that others could step in and take up the slack. Baker points out that people in Germany and the Netherlands work 20 percent less than we Americans. However, there are some serious flaws in his logic.

One is that the US middle class is working more and earning less, which is the reverse of what is going on in Germany. Also, the German economy didn’t experience a housing or a tech bubble, so people aren’t underwater on their houses in Germany to the same degree as in the USA. Millions of people in the US need to keep working more and more just to stay afloat. They can’t afford to take a cut in hours.

There are a ton of other differences between the two nations, all in favor of the Germans. How about this?

Half of the seats of every board of directors in every German corporation are filled by labor union members. These people most likely aren’t all that interested in shipping their jobs to China and Vietnam and redistributing the difference between the higher paying jobs in Germany and the new lower wages in some third world country from the 99 percent of Germans to the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and soaring dividends. That’s a primary reason why the Germans have higher wages and rising standards of living, which is the opposite of their American counterparts.

That’s why Dean’s logic to cut worker hours is utterly ridiculous. The German economy is managed so that the vast majority of Germans share in their rising prosperity, while US economic policy for 30 years has been to redistribute the income and wealth of the 99 percent to the 1 percent. Both governments have been extremely successful in their policy objectives.

Click on the link below, if you like, and read Baker’s article.

Why Americans Should Work Less the Way the Germans Do

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Stunning News: US Median Family Wealth and Income Dropped Off a Cliff From 2007 to 2010

The Great Recession erased so much off the value of family assets that their wealth fell back to levels not seen since 1992, the Federal Reserve said Monday in a new study.

One of the big culprits was the fall of home values, but also of unrealized gains on stocks, mutual funds, and businesses, the Fed said, an event that put strains on families’ ability to borrow and on many older Americans’ plans for retirement.

Family income in the same period fell 7.7 percent, according to the Fed’s new survey of family finances from 2007 to 2010.

Incomes dropped from a median of $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 three years later, as millions were laid off or found incomes from businesses slashed by the economic contraction.

The fall in the net worth of families was much more stunning, 38.8 percent, showing just how deep the crisis rocked the country. Median family wealth had soared from $106,100 in 2001 to hit $126,400 by 2007. Then in three short years, it plunged back to $77,300, the level of 1992.

And while Americans slashed their debt over the three-year period, by 2010 the ratio of debt to household assets was higher — 16.4 percent of assets — because asset values had sunk.

The Fed’s study gave a darker and more accurate view than what had been seen in earlier government figures on what happened to families and incomes during the US economic crisis, further explaining why the recovery has been so tough and prolonged.

While assets like stocks have rebounded in value since then, home values continue to fall despite interest rates having been cut to record lows. Of course, there are other reasons why the economy is so weak and the Federal Reserve wasn’t going to point out the obvious.

The rich are getting richer. The top one percent took home 93 percent of US income growth from 2009 to 2010, and those figures are likely even better for the 1 percent from 2010 to 2011. The financial markets have pushed corporations to slash jobs and cut wages and salaries so that income can be redistributed to rich shareholders. That’s why median family income growth is down. It’s been redistributed to the one percent, not just by Wall Street, but also by legislators such as Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

They knowingly voted to redistribute income when they voted yes for the South Korea free trade agreement. That makes it easier for US businesses to ship jobs from here to there, or create jobs there that would have otherwise been created here. The difference between the old higher wages here and the new lower wages there go into the already fat wallets of the affluent political contributors via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and soaring sharing prices.

That’s why middle and working class family incomes dropped from a median of $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 three years later, as millions were laid off or found incomes from businesses slashed by the desire of corporations to redistribute incomes from the 99 percent to the 1 percent.

That’s a loss of $3,800 per working family, but it didn’t disappear. Abra cadabra! That money was redistributed to the 1 percent and is the reason why those parasites received 93 percent of total US income growth. In other words, the middle class was robbed of an average of $38,800 and that amount and more was redistributed to the 1 percent.

This income redistribution is why the stock markets have been soaring under Obama.

Related story

The One Percent Took Home 93 percent of total US Income Growth from 2009 to 2010

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Weak Economic Recovery is Because of the Mal-Distribution of Income and Wealth

The US unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent in April as the economy created a modest 115,000 jobs, official figures showed Friday, the eve of President Barack Obama’s maiden reelection rally.

Despite the meager job creation, the Labor Department data showed unemployment at the lowest level in over three years.

But the report will do little to sweeten popular sentiment about the health of the recovery, which has been beset by pitfalls.

The number of unemployed fell by 200,000 to 12.5 million.

The drop in unemployment was in part due to workers dropping out of the jobs market.

Participation fell to 63.6 percent.

Confidence has become a shaky plank of the US recovery from the 2008-09 recession, hit by earthquakes, fiscal crises, revolutions and infuriatingly mixed data.

Economists had expected unemployment to be stuck at 8.2 percent, with the economy creating 162,000 jobs during the month.

The report will be more keenly parsed over by the White House than usual.

On Saturday Obama will visit Ohio and Virginia to begin to make his case for re-election.

Half of all voters say the economy is the single biggest issue in this November’s election.

Since Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate has arched from 7.8 percent at inauguration to 10 percent as the impact of the financial crisis spread, and back down to 8.1 percent today.

Obama’s fate could turn on whether he can convince voters that his policies avoided another Great Depression and that his rival would return to policies that failed in the past.

Obama will not mention, nor will any Republican, especially Wall Street Mitt Romney, that the economy sucks because the demand for goods and services are not there. And this is cause by the mal-distribution of income that the government has engineered during the last 32 years through free trade treaties, deregulation and other things.

That’s why the economy is so terrible.

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Why Are Teacher Cut Backs Coming? Blame Free Trade Agreements

The Oregonian writer Steve Duin wrote a nice piece about teacher cutbacks at Franklin High School coming in the next few months. He only told the effects, and I asked him to write about what has caused these cutbacks. Below is a link to his well written column, and below that is my response.

At Portland's Franklin High School, the Bell Tolls for…Them

Dear Steve Duin,
I appreciate your nice, but short-sighted, story titled, “At Franklin, the bell tolls for…them.” You quote teacher Portia Hall as saying, “’I’ve been teaching for fifteen years, and I’ve never had a year when we didn’t cut. Even when times were good.’”

Why don’t you tell the whole story about school funding and teacher cut backs? Why don’t you write about how free trade treaties have shipped jobs and much of the tax base overseas? Why don’t you write about how those treaties make it more profitable for American businesses to create jobs in other nations rather than here? Why don’t you write about how the difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages over there go into the pockets of Wall Street fat cats and other rich people via higher corporate profits, enhanced dividends and rising share prices? The people that lose those jobs wind up searching for work. That’s not a very good trade. This leads to a good question.

What are the federal government and the American economy for? Is it to redistribute more income to the already rich at the expense of working people? That’s been happening for the last thirty years.

These agreements are the primary reason why the rich are getting richer. They’re why the one percent received 93 percent of total US income growth from 2009 to 2010.

Why is the tax base crumbling? Why are teachers being laid off three years after the official end of the recession? Why can’t the economy create over 12 million jobs with rising real wages nowadays, like it did when Jimmy Carter was president and the economy and the population were only about 60 percent the size of what they are now? Why have only 4 million jobs with declining real wages and salaries been created in the twelve years since George W. Bush took office? Why is the economy so weak?

Free trade “income redistribution” agreements are the greatest reasons the one percent receive nearly 25 percent of the total US income nowadays compared with about 8 percent under Carter. The result has been devastating to the 99 percent in lost jobs, declining real income, demand too weak to create jobs in the US at previous levels, evaporating tax bases, teachers voting to strike in Gresham-Barlow and the Parkrose districts. These agreements are also the primary reasons why Portia Hall has never seen “a year we didn’t cut.”

Just open your eyes and look at those free trade treaties and ask yourself what the upcoming Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement is going to do to 99 percent of Americans. If it’s implemented, the agreement is going to redistribute even more income to the one percent from the 99 percent, leading to more jobs shipped overseas, jobs created in other nations rather than here, shrinking tax bases, cutbacks in education, police, firefighters and all kinds of government positions and programs that the 99 percent rely upon. Are these the results we want from our federal government and our economy? I don’t think so, but that’s what we’ve got.

So I ask you again, Why don’t you write about the causes, as well as the effects? Why don’t you tell the whole story?

Warmest Regards,

John Hively

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