The Great Recession came and went, and so did salaries and other compensation for people graduating with four year college degrees. The corporate news media continues to shower us with propaganda about why this has occurred.
Bloomberg news claims “technology and automation” have caused this decline. Only in the United States does there appear to be a problem with automation. It is strange how there is an overabundance of US manufacturing jobs in China, Vietnam and elsewhere. Those factories employ accountants, bookkeepers, managers, attorneys, and many more white collar employees. Those factories also purchase things from other local businesses that supply materials and designs and other things that employ white collar workers. Those factories used to be in the United States. And now they’re not. See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/u-s-college-grads-see-slim-to-nothing-wage-gains-since-recession
Those H1-B visa’s are also putting downward pressure on wages, as well as exporting high tech jobs to India and other nations.
Exporting jobs overseas by the tens of millions is why wages have declined on average for new college graduates, and why compensation has stagnated for older workers, and why wages have declined over the last thirty-six years. There are other reasons, but automation is not one of them. See Jobs: The Largest US Export Product–JohnHively.wordpress.com
As for those declining wages for new college graduates, what you study matters for your salary, the data show. Chemical and computer engineering majors have held down some of the best earnings of at least $60,000 a year for entry level positions since the recession, while business and science graduates’s paychecks have fallen. A biology major at the start of their career earned $31,000 on an annual average in 2015, down $4,000 from five years earlier. Some majors, such as petroleum engineers, have seen a bump in earnings for those just coming into the job market.
On the other hand, people with graduate degrees are still getting a bump in their salaries upon graduation.
According to US Uncut, “…a likely Hillary Clinton victory means her intent to defund Social Security may come to fruition.
The Democratic nominee recently came under fire in revealing articles by Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith and International Business Times’ David Sirota, for her potential plans to introduce mandatory retirement savings accounts set up to enrich Wall Street — rather than expanding Social Security.
Under the new mandatory accounts, Americans would pay a 1.5 percent payroll tax to go directly into retirement accounts managed by Wall Street banks that would invest in private equity, hedge funds, and other investments that would come with hefty fees for fund managers, all courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. One of the biggest proponents of mandatory retirement savings accounts is Blackstone CEO Tony James — one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest campaign donors — who is a possible pick for Treasury Secretary in a Clinton administration.”
Leaked emails also show Clinton is in favor of a hemispheric free trade zone for North and South America and open borders. Free trade is code for “exporting jobs from the USA,” while “open borders” is code for lowering wages and benefits in the USA. Like her supposed proposal on Social Security, Wall Street and major corporate investors would benefit from Clinton’s proposal.
That’s precisely why US government and Federal Reserve officials castigate the Chinese government for doing this, but then do absolutely nothing to counteract it. To do so would cut into the profits of Nike, Microsoft, Dell, Campbell’s Soups, and thousands of other US corporations making stuff in China for export to the USA. This would make thousands of CEO’s and rich investors angry enough to cut off campaign contributions to Republican and Democratic Parties and their politicians. It would also send stock prices tumbling big time. Sweet lobbying jobs after politicians leave office would end. Corporate paid vacations called fact finding missions would disappear for politicians, as would money under the table, and those sweet speeches at $200,000+ a pop would vanish.
The Oregon Democratic Primary is coming up in a couple weeks, and Bernie Sanders is leading in the polls here. Quite naturally, the Oregonian newspaper is blitzing its readers with anti-Sanders messages in the form of editorials and news stories. The editors are doing everything they can to shift the election to the Wall Street candidate.
There has not been one positive or even neutral story about Sanders in the newspaper in the last two months, which is most likely a symptom of why the Oregonian has been suffering from a continuously declining readership. The newspaper is just a ghost of what it once was because more and more Oregon citizens realize the newspaper is mostly propaganda for the 1 percent along with occasional legitimate news stories.
Over thirty-five million jobs have been exported from the United States over the last twenty-five years. The Oregonian editors, along with all other corporate news outlets, have been careful to not report this loss of jobs and the tax dollars that once came with them when they were still here. The tax dollars lost equal nearly a trillion dollars a year.
Everything that Bernie wants to finance; free college tuition, medicare for all, and more, would be easily financed if those jobs were still here, rather than in China, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Bernie Sanders is against those disastrous trade policies which have paved the legal road for exporting jobs overseas, and which has paved the legal road for creating jobs over there, instead of over here. So, quite naturally, the editors of the Oregonian are for them, and against Bernie. It would be in the interest of the vast majority of US citizens to put an end to these international income and political power redistribution scams, falsely marketed by the Oregonian editors and other supporters as international trade agreements.
But it would not be in the interests of the Oregonian advertisers and their rich investors to put an end to them. It also would force the Oregonian editors to be responsible and objective journalists. However, challenging cherished beliefs with critical thinking, logic, and facts is among the last thing many people want to do. That’s precisely why the Oregonian editors support the Wall Street candidate; Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In The Rigged Game, I wrote that the negative impacts of each successive recession would continuously get worse for a growing number of people because of growing income and wealth inequality, and a new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows this is the case.
Also note that the policies espoused by both Hillary and Bill Clinton brought this situation about. These policies include international income and political power redistribution scams they marketed as free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, giving China most favored nation status, and the South Korea, Panama and Colombia free trade agreements. These scams redistributed trillions of dollars from working Americans to rich fat cats as tens of millions of jobs were shipped overseas.
Now there is an approaching economic storm that will strike sometime between October 2016 and June 2017. The economic impacts of the coming recession will be worse than the last recession.
Some of the findings by EPI include:
Unemployment and underemployment rates among young graduates have improved but remain higher than before the recession began.
Unemployment of young graduates remains elevated today, but not because of something unique about the Great Recession and its aftermath that has affected young people in particular. Rather, it is high because young workers always experience disproportionate increases in unemployment during periods of labor market weakness—and the Great Recession and its aftermath is the longest, most severe period of economic weakness in more than seven decades (Italics mine).
The vast majority (65.8 percent) of people age 24–29 do not have a college degree. Access to good jobs for these individuals is especially critical, as stable employment allows them to build a career or pay for further schooling.
In addition to the unemployed (jobless workers who report that they are actively seeking work), the underemployment rate also includes those who work part time but want full-time work (“involuntary” part-timers), and those who want a job and have looked for work in the last year but have given up actively seeking work in the last four weeks (“marginally attached” workers).
For young college graduates, the unemployment rate is currently 5.6 percent (compared with 5.5 percent in 2007), and the underemployment rate is 12.6 percent (compared with 9.6 percent in 2007).
For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is 17.9 percent (compared with 15.9 percent in 2007), and the underemployment rate is 33.7 percent (compared with 26.8 percent in 2007).
Now we are hurtling into the worse recession since the Great Depression, and the results of the following boom period will be more egregious than the pathetically weak economic expansion after the Great Recession, which lasted from 2009 to late 2016 or early 2017. Income inequality is the big culprit in this explosion of poverty in the midst of plenty because your government actively works to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent via such things as trade agreements, which are really income redistribution agreements.
Click on the following link for the complete EPI study.
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, said last week;
“The time has come to create a new category of person in this town: Someone who supports expanded trade and is all for globalization with a voice for working people here and abroad, but who has completely soured on so-called free-trade agreements (FTAs), as they too often squelch that voice.
The need for this new type of person comes from two sources. First, after years of studying, critiquing, trying to improve and even helping to promote FTAs (when I worked for the Obama administration, I helped with the South Korean FTA), I’ve come to view the process as impossibly broken and essentially corrupted. It’s opaque, the end product is incomprehensible to most people, the input (and thus much of the output) is imbalanced, the politics are a hot mess, some of what’s called “free trade” is actually protectionist, and while many elites remain committed to evermore FTAs, there’s little trust among the people.
Second, if you suggest any of the above, you’re quickly labeled as a knuckle-dragging protectionist, not fit for elite company.”
The 1 percent now steal over 37 percent of total US income, up from 8 percent in 1980. They’ve been stealing their income by corrupting both major political parties, which control the federal and state, as well as most local governments. Wall Street Senators, such as Mitch McConnell and Ron Wyden, are notorious for pushing legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent.
This government created inequality has created an economy spiraling toward third world status, with only 50 percent of US adults considered middle class, down from 61 percent in 1970. Another by-product of this is that people are dying younger, but not if you are rich. A new study by Angus Deaton and Anne Case show the mortality rate for white males, ages 45 to 55, is increasing.
The author’s lay the blame straight at income inequality pursued by senator’s like McConnell and Wyden. So why only white males of this age? Why not white or Hispanic women? Why not younger white males? The answer is expectations.
White males of this age group could always count on getting decent jobs, such as in manufacturing, from the 1970s through the 1990s. They had jobs, and then millions of those jobs were exported, leaving millions of people in debt, and unable to find a suitable job replacement. This has led to financial and emotional distress, increasing suicides, alcohol use, drug use, eating excessively, and other methods of self-perceived alleviation.
Note below, that mortality rates for white males in this age group declined from 1979-1998. These three decades witnessed extraordinary job growth, which meant opportunity. The guys in the 45-54 age range were in their physical prime. While the rich were getting richer, their share of income rising from 8 to roughly 15 percent of the total national income, real wages, or the illusion thereof, rose for a few years of the late 1980s, and the late 1990s. Now those jobs and opportunities have declined in numbers.
The authors write:
Midlife increases in suicides and drug poisonings have been previously noted. However, that these upward trends were persistent and large enough to drive up midlife mortality has, to our knowledge, been overlooked. If the white mortality rate for ages 45−54 had held at their 1998 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999–2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone. If it had continued to decline at its previous (1979‒1998) rate, half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999‒2013, comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015. Concurrent declines in self-reported health, mental health, and ability to work, increased reports of pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all point to increasing midlife distress.
Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden was elected to represent the people of Oregon in the US senate. Instead, the senator represents Wall Street, along with major out-of-state corporations. This is why Wyden is one of the major tools the rich use in the US senate in their war against the middle class.
That’s precisely why Wyden always votes to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislatively approved policies falsely marketed as free trade agreements. The latest Wyden income redistribution scam is called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest income redistribution scam from the 99 to the 1 percent in US history.
This month, thanks to Wyden’s votes in the senate, the Newberg Oregon Paper Mill will be closing, resulting in the loss of 250 family-wage jobs and the largest tax source for the Newberg community. In all likelihood, in the next few months most the paper mill closure will cause a domino effect, resulting in the loss of several times as many jobs as those that are lost at the mill, as families are no longer able to afford to go to restaurants, get the car fixed and more, hurting local businesses that these family-wage union jobs support. Offshoring in the private sector also means less tax revenue in the public sector, leading to budget deficits, furloughs and layoffs of public employees, as well as less money for schools, roads, libraries, fire-departments and other critical public services. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is directly responsible for this situation through his votes on international income redistribution votes in the US congress.
All products manufactured at the Newberg mill were 100% recycled paper products made from recycled paper and wood gathered from the greater Portland, Oregon area. This mill was one of the last paper recycling facilities in Oregon and the recycled paper and wood once processed there will now likely be shipped and processed in countries with weak environmental policies.
The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower third world wages will go straight into the already fat pockets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and surging dividends, thanks to Wyden’s votes. And also thanks to Wyden, because the 1 percent are now stealing over 37 percent of all the income in the US, compared to 21 percent in 2008, and 8 percent back in 1980.
What could be worse than this?
The worse-than-NAFTA TPP threatens to offshore more Oregon and US jobs by the millions, further driving down wages and further harming the environment. Wyden has carefully rammed this disaster for Oregonians through the US senate, although most Oregonians oppose it.
Enough is enough. Click here to urge your Member of Congress to vote against the TPP and click here to RSVP for the carpool from Portland to the December 8th rally in Newberg against the TPP.
Join Oregon Fair Trade and other organizations, people and trade-displaced mill workers on Tuesday, December 8th — the anniversary of NAFTA (an income redistribution scam voted for by then Wall Street Congressman Ron Wyden)— to voice Oregon’s opposition to the worse-than-NAFTA income redistribution scam falsely marketed as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement.
Tues, December 8th:
11:00 AM – Photo op outside closing Newberg paper mill
11:30 AM – Speaker’s panel with trade displaced mill workers
Are the above the only reasons why Canada’s middle class is growing and the US middle class is shriveling? Of course not. Here’s another reason, and the likely biggest factor.
The top 1 percent of Canadians steal slightly more than 10 percent of the total Canadian national income, while the top 1 percent in the US are stealing 37 percent of all income, and this is growing massively since the top 1 percent have stolen 95 percent of all US income growth every year since 2009, thanks to legislation generously supported by US Senators Mitch McConnell and Ron Wyden, such as international income redistribution agreements, commonly and falsely marketed as free trade agreements.
International income redistribution agreements redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent by legally paving the way for US corporations to ship jobs overseas, as well as create jobs overseas, rather than investing in the USA. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower overseas wages goes straight to the already fat bank accounts of the 1 percent while the job losers get unemployment insurance if they’re lucky, and lower wages when and if they find a new job.
This legislatively induced US income inequality is the reason why the demand for goods and services is so weak in the USA, and why the current business expansion is the weakest on record, which, not so coincidentally, is also following the previous weakest business expansion in US history. The 99 percent only get 63 percent of income in the USA, and now they have less money to spend, resulting less demand for goods and services, in slower and slower job growth, decreasing wages, less tax dollars for schools, roads, fire, the social security trust fund, and police.
According to the Federal Reserve, 28 million jobs were exported from the US from 1990 to 2010, and millions more have been exported since. That means those jobs don’t pay social security taxes any more, as that income has been redistributed to the super rich. And the rich don’t pay social security taxes on their incomes above $118,500 a year. That means hundreds of billions of dollars of US income are no longer paying social security taxes, resulting in the social security shortfall anticipated in twenty years.
In other words, part of your future retirement income has been redistributed by Wyden and McConnell to the 1 percent via their income redistribution scams. And now the pair are pushing through congress the largest international income redistribution scam of all time, the Trans Pacific Partnership, falsely marketed as a trade agreement.
In the video below, President Franklin Roosevelt talked about the powerful wealthy vested interests that had taken over the USA government prior to his election in 1932. FDR proposed and signed into law legislation that curbed the power and influence of those vested interests in government at all levels, including a 90 percent top marginal tax rate. That reduced the influence of corruption in government, by reducing the money the corrupting people possessed.
President Carter was the last president under the old regime of anti-corruption established by FDR, which is why the US government never fired a missile, or a pistol, or dropped a bomb on another nation during his reign, which, coincidentally, is looking better and better every time we look back at it.
The Reagan tax cuts for the rich unleashed the power of the rich to corrupt government, and that is precisely why, as FDR said in 1936, corporate interests now consider the US government to be a “mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money (corporate interests) is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob (organized crime).” Parenthesis mine.
This is why the US government,
1. demands state wide testing, because it’s highly profitable for the publishing industry, and it redistributes income from local and state taxpayers to rich investors of the publishing industry.
2. wages constant war, because it is highly profitable in that it redistributes income from the taxpayers to the rich shareholders of the war industry.
3. gives fewer grants to university students, because it forces college students to take out more student loans, which redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wall Street banks purchase the loans, and then issues bonds against the loans to rich investors. Students pay back the loans, but a large portion of their payment goes to the rich bondholders.
4. raised student loan interest rates from 3.4 to 6.8 percent on all new loans a year ago. Republicans and Democratic lawmakers supported this because it forces students to pay more interest to rich investors.
5. negotiates trade treaties, which are nothing more than income redistribution scam. The treaties pave the legal way for corporations to ship and create jobs overseas, and the difference between the old higher US pay and the new lower third world pay goes straight into the wallets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, surging dividends and rising share prices.
The list goes on and on. The federal government is totally corrupted to the core, as are many state and local governments. This corruption is the only cause of the income inequality that has occurred in the USA over the last thirty-five years, whereby 1 percent of the population stole 8 percent of the total income produced in the USA when Carter was president, but now rob the rest of us blind by stealing 37 percent of all income produced in the USA. Since President Obama took office, the 1 percent have been stealing 95 percent of all income growth.
That’s why President Carter created on average more jobs per year with rising real wages than every president since him. That’s why Carter was one of the great presidents in US history. The 99 percent earned 92 percent of all income back then, and were able to purchase goods and services in sufficient quantities to create more jobs per year, and with rising real wages every year, than during the reign of any president since then. And that’s precisely why the propaganda machine known as the corporate news media, politicians like Wall Street Senator John McCain, and rich parasites are always putting President Carter down, and call him weak and a bad president, If we look back at the economy of Carter, and his foreign policies, we would call his era the last golden age of the American dream.
Today’s economy is the weakest in history by any measure, including wage and job growth. That’s because the 99 percent now receive only 63 percent of all income in the US. Those people can no longer afford to purchase the goods and services necessary to sustain a strong economy, and those in business and political offices know this is the problem that vexes this economy, but they won’t do anything about it due to the massive corruption.
Excerpt from FDR’s speech:
“For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace‹business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me‹and I welcome their hatred.”
After thirty-five years of globalization, most people in the world are still living a wretched existence by US middle class standards, according to the Pew Research Center. More people than ever before have entered the middle class throughout the world, which the US corporate news media will brag about, but definitions of middle class vary throughout the world, which the same corporate news media won’t tell you. So, for example, people living in poverty in Vietnam on $2.70 a day might be considered middle class if their wages double, which would mean those folks are still living a wretched existence by any standard, except now they’re considered middle class, by somebody’s definition.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis, “…though there was growth in the middle-income population (in the world) from 2001 to 2011, the rise in prosperity was concentrated in certain regions of the globe, namely China, South America and Eastern Europe. The middle class barely expanded in India and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America.”
This rise in the third world middle class corresponds with a decline in the middle class in the United States, which the corporate news media won’t mention. That’s because globalization is a facade hiding the reality that free trade as is currently negotiated is nothing more than an income redistribution scam. Here’s how it works, and here’s how the researchers at Pew have been easily fooled.
One needs to earn between $6,000 and $25,000 a year to be considered middle class in China. See understanding-chinas-middle-class–China Business Review. In China, these people are free from such things as social security, free from overtime pay, free to suck in the world’s worst air pollution, free to drink among the world’s most polluted water, and they’re are often forced to work sixteen hours a day.
Do a little math. A person in the USA earning the federal minimum wage of $7.50 an hour working forty hours earns $15,600 a year, hardly middle class by US standards. The difference between middle class in the US and China is one of income redistribution.
When the US government signs a so-called free trade treaty, the result redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent because these agreements legally pave the way for US corporations to ship jobs from the US to lesser paying nations, like China. The treaties also pave the way for US corporations to create jobs overseas, rather than in the US, so they serve to discourage US job growth, and corporate investment in the USA. The difference between the old higher US pay and the new lower pay, in say China, goes straight into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and soaring dividends.
So, for example, a job paying $50,000 in the US may pay only $6,000 in China (with no overtime pay, and often being forced to work 16 hours a day). The difference between the two figures is $44,000, and that goes toward rising corporate profits, which in turn, goes into the pockets of the one percent via rising dividends and share prices. The US jobs losers get a few months of unemployment insurance, if they’re lucky.
In the meantime, as millions of jobs are shipped overseas, or created there when they would have been created over here in the absence of these income redistribution scams known as free trade agreements, the tax dollars that normally go to schools, fire, police, roads and other infrastructure, and our social safety nets, are being redistributed to the 1 percent with every job that is exported overseas. By the way, the BIGGEST EXPORT PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES IS JOBS.
These agreements weaken the Social Security Trust Fund because the people earning $55,000 a year are paying into it, and the people who steal their wages when jobs are shipped overseas, pay social security taxes on only the first $118,500 of their their $10,000,000+ income, which, coincidentally, violates the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause of the US Constitution.
However, narrow minded researchers and corrupt news media reporters influenced by corporate dollars will declare that free trade agreements are good things, and they’ll point to China’s growing middle class as their evidence, rather than the declining US middle class, as an example. And they’ll do this without mentioning that middle class in China means living a very subsistence life style at best, and being encapsulated with dire poverty at the worst.
So when the corporate news media reports on the growth of the middle class throughout the world, take it for what it’s worth, which is nothing.
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and A People Betrayed
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed
Wall Street is up to no good, and has been since 1980, when it took over the Republican Party, and then the Democratic Party in 1994. Income has been massively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislative scam after scam, from tax cuts for the rich to international income redistribution schemes falsely labeled as trade agreements. In The Rigged Game, John Hively exposes how this has all come about starting with a revolutionary, but simple reality, all recessions begin in the financial markets.
John Hively's Blog: News and Analysis of the War Against the Middle Class 