The United States is the Most Overworked Nation in the World

George W. Bush was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, and he was pretty stupid, along with being one of the, if not the, worst presidents in U.S. history. As president, he actually had the stupidity to tell a working-class woman how “uniquely American” it is for her to work three jobs. In other words, the guy who took several months of vacation during his first year as the U.S president told the woman how uniquely American it was to be overworked, that is, if you work for a living.

According to a recent study, the people of the United States are the most overworked in the developed world. We are talking about the 99 percent, not the rich. On this matter, their fates are inversely entwined. Anyway, studies show American workers work more hours and have more stress-related illnesses than workers in Europe and Japan.

The authors point to rising economic inequality as one possible reason for the culture of overwork. The United States has the most unequal maldistribution of income and wealth in the developed world. It is not a coincidence that income and wealth inequality and Americans being overworked and overstressed are happening at the same time.

As income and wealth are redistributed by the major political parties from the 99 to the 1 percent since 1980 using state and federal governments, the 99 percent has had to work more and more hours to make ends meet.

That, in a nutshell, is why working folks in the United States are most overworked and overstressed people in the developed world.
The United States is the Most Overworked Nation in the World–Forbes

Here’s How Many Hours the Average American Works per Year-Vox

Why Are Americans Spending So Much Time at Work–The Guardian

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IS THIS ANOTHER BIG LIE? IRAN DID IT: Trump show us your proof!

Last week, two oil tankers were hit by explosives in the Gulf of Oman. President Trump immediately declared that Iran did it, and without any evidence to support such a statement. Bush, I mean Trump, claimed Iranian mines caused the explosions. According to crew members of both tankers, the tankers were hit from the air by things that looked strangely like drones.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and PBS have all reported this, but the rest of the billionaire owned corporate news outlets continue to report the Bush, I mean, the Trump lies as being fact. They are marching in goosestep formation with the president. The United Kingdom’s Express newspaper put it bluntly, “THE owner of the oil tanker attacked in the Gulf of Oman dismissed the US claims it was hit by a torpedo, saying two “flying objects” struck the ship,” which is precisely what the New York Times reported.

Some people have long memories, especially me. We remember how George W. Bush and the members of his administration lied us into a war, how they were so incompetent as to allow the most horrific attack on US soil in US history despite repeated warnings from the CIA, the FBI, M16, Mossad, and numerous other intelligence agencies of an impending Al Queda attack. Bush and every one of his major administration heads refused to meet with Bush’s own counterterrorism chief, Richard Clark, until September 12th. According to his biography, Clark wanted to warn Bush of the impending attack and take measures to prevent it, but Bush refused to meet with him. Then the attacks of 9/11 occurred, and Bush ordered an attack against the wrong nation in retaliation, but it had a lot of oil, which brings us back to the bombings of the tankers.

Big Oil is a big financial backer of the RepubliCon Party, Trump included. Escalation of tension with Iran will send oil prices, profits, and stock prices higher. The embargo against Iran has already sent oil prices and profits higher; this is the real reason why Trump is against the Iranian nuclear deal. Letting Iranian oil onto the world market pushes oil prices and profits down.

Of course, the presidential election cycle has also begun in earnest. Trump is way behind in virtually every head-to-head poll against literary every candidate in the Democratic primary. Maybe manufacturing a war with Iran is his way of galvanizing his base, which seems to be shrinking more and more.

Americans should not allow themselves to be lied into war again. Don’t let the media goosestep us into war with Iran with contrived evidence. Let Trump and warmongers come up with real evidence as to why we and our sons and daughters should shed our blood so the billionaires can become wealthier in another profitable oil war.

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What the Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About The Republican Party Tax Cuts for the Super Rich Who Control Their Political Party

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You only need to look at the Bush tax cuts of almost 15 years ago to recognize how tax cuts for the rich destroy jobs and redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent in the process. George W Bush was the first president since Herbert Hoover to experience negative job growth during his presidency. Now Trump will be the second president since Hoover to experience negative job growth. Here’s how the scam works.

The tax cuts for corporations will increase their after-tax profits. This will be handed out to the rich in the form of higher stock prices (capital gains) and dividend payments.

Meanwhile, the tax-cuts for the rich will deliver them more after-tax income with which to purchase more speculative investments. Both corporations and the individual wealthy will then inflate the current stock market bubble by purchasing more stocks, futures options, and other things of those natures. (A futures market is an auction market in which participants buy and sell commodity and futures contracts for delivery on a specified future date)

Naturally, this will bid up the price we pay for commodities, such as food, natural gas and oil. The difference between the current prices and the new higher (inflated via tax cuts for the rich) prices we will pay means that more of our income will be redistributed from us to the 1 percent.

In other words, we will be made to pay more to the rich for the food we eat, the natural gas we use to heat our homes, and the gasoline we need to power our cars, as well as other things, and that extra money we will be forced to pay will go straight into the pockets of the billionaires, people like Warren Buffett, the Koch Brothers, and Donald Trump.

The stock market bubble, perhaps the biggest in US history, will now continue to grow as both corporations and the individual wealthy have more money to bid stock prices up. The stock market bears a remarkable resemblance to a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise (or artificially high stock prices) is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors. In this case, the rich will be paid more and more for so long as the bubble continues to inflate, and for so long as it takes for the bubble to fizzle out. Corporate management will feel the pressure to export more and more US jobs in order to pay what is necessary to prop up their stock prices.

In other words, the tax cuts will produce greater pressure on corporate managements to export more US jobs to low age nations whenever possible. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower overseas wages will go straight into the pockets of the superwealthy. The rich will get all the increasing returns on investment from us, the stakeholders, rather than later investors. In that way, along with one other way which I shall not go into now, the stock market closely resembles a Ponzi scheme.

Trump’s disastrous tax cuts will cause a one trillion dollar increase in the federal deficit over the next ten years. Naturally, in order to reduce the deficit, Republicans will demand reductions of federal expenditures on education, road maintenance, social security payments to the elderly and disabled, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, food stamps and other programs that benefit the middle class and the poor, because of the deficit they have created with their tax cuts for the rich. In this way, the billionaires will become richer at the expense of everybody else, thanks to the unnecessary tax cuts.

Meanwhile, quite naturally, Republicans will insist on increased federal military expenditures and expanded deportations of undocumented immigrants because these programs are highly profitable to their base, which is the billionaires who control the party, and not the grassroots. The US currently spends more on its military than the next 26 nations combined, 25 of who are US allies. Talk about overkill or unnecessary.

The tax cuts are unnecessary inasmuch as the 1 percent are stealing a record amount of the total national income, going from 8 percent in 1980 to 37+ percent nowadays. Three people, (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates now own wealth (assets) than the bottom 50 percent of the US population. The top 1 percent now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. In addition, corporate profits are at record levels. So neither corporations or the rich need the money except as a way to steal more money from the rest of us, and the money from their theft will keep those stock markets, futures market, and other markets boiling upward until the bubbles pop. And that will produce a disaster for Trump, the Republicans, and us.

Every Republican who voted yes on the bill knows everything that I have written above. Yet, they still voted yes. This shows that the billionaires are their real constituents and not the grassroots. They all know the bill was passed on a series of lies.

Read more: Futures Market https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/futuresmarket.asp#ixzz507u73Y1m The d
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How Trump and the Republican Party Plan to Redistribute Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent Via Trump’s Proposed Tax Policy

We can pretty much see from the graph above what the Trump tax plan does. It raises taxes on those couples earning less than $80,000 a year, and reduces taxes on those earning more, until you get to the million dollar couples.

However, beyond the graph is something more illuminating, and both the liberal and corporate so-called news media won’t mention this because they don’t want you to know.

Income and wealth inequality will increase under Trump’s tax plan. In the United States, the top 1 percent already steal via legislation and trade treaties about 37 percent of all income produced in the United States, compared to just 8 percent in 1980. In addition, wealth inequality, already the most unequal in US history, will increase under Trump’s plan.

Do you know why? Because that’s what the Republicans and some Democrats like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden want to do!

Trump’s tax cut proposal will also reduce corporate tax rates, which will, quite naturally, result in higher corporate after-tax profits, which will then be redistributed to rich shareholders and bigwig corporate officers in the form of surging share prices and rising dividends. It will also help bid up the price of corporate bonds since corporations will be able to offer the rich higher rates of return with corporate tax cuts. Trump’s tax plan is really a plan to redistribute more money to himself and rich Democrats and affluent Republicans from the rest of us.

The government will experience greater budget deficits, which will mean reducing federal funds for Social Security, Medicaid, Aid to Needy Children, Food Stamps, etc…while, of course, maintaining or increasing funding for the military (which benefits only the rich).

Trump’s tax plan essentially calls for continued inflating of the current stock market bubble. Historically, the bigger the bubble, the greater will be the shock to the rest of the economy.

Naturally, one can look at the Republican created stock market bubble of the 1920s, and the income and wealth inequality that fueled that bubble, which led directly to the Great Depression. Then there was the Reagan bubble, and after a short blip of a recession in 1991 that cost President George H.W. Bush the presidency, the bubble renewed under the vigorous presidency of Wall Street’s very much owned Bill Clinton.

Under Clinton, there was a tech bubble, a telecommunications bubble (Bill signed the legislation guaranteeing it), a housing bubble (Bill refused to sign the legislation that would have prevented this), and, of course, all of these helped to fuel a stock market bubble (also fueled by exporting jobs to Mexico thanks to Clinton’s NAFTA). When the bubbles burst in 2001, the economy became a shambles.

Sure, the incompetent, corrupt and worst president in US history, President George W. Bush, followed the incompetent and corrupt President Bill Clinton into office, and did some really stupid things, like passing a tax cut for the rich that helped to create negative job growth in his eight years. However, to some degree, the economy under George W never recovered from the Clinton bubbles. It still has not, and likely never will, not without a major shift in political power from the billionaires who control both major political parties to people who will represent working folks, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the rich shows who is in control. It isn’t Trump, and it isn’t congress. A handful of billionaires need the bubble to continue to expand. Otherwise, they will lose trillions of imaginary dollars when it bursts, like back in 2008.

The best evidence of this collusion is Trump himself. When Trump was running for president he verbally assaulted in the most vicious of ways Chinese currency manipulation. The president has made certain not to mention this since shortly after he became president. This suggests one or more billionaires grabbed him by the lapels and told him if he mentioned Chinese currency manipulation again the billionaire’s club would take him behind the woodshed and give him a good political beating. Why would they do that?

When the Chinese manipulate their currency, it increases the profits of US corporations that manufacture in China and export those products to the US, and this, as you might suspect, fuels the stock market bubble.

As a senator, former President Obama also viciously attacked Chinese currency manipulation. However, once he became president Obama never mentioned the issue again, at least not in public. This suggests the same billionaires also threatened to take President Obama behind the political woodshed if he ever mentioned the subject again.

This suggests the same billionaires control both major political parties. Or, more than likely, there are two groups of billionaires, each in control over a major political party. However, it also suggests both groups close ranks when they have a common goal, such as making certain the public doesn’t know about how Chinese currency manipulation enriches them at the expense of everybody else, just like Trump’s tax cuts will.

 

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Trump Haters: Don’t get your hopes up! He may never be as bad of a president as George W. Bush

Former President George W. Bush recently came out in a public speech with veiled criticism of President Donald Trump. I remember Bush as president really well. Bush shouldn’t be allowed to criticise Trump since Trump hasn’t lied us into a war, nor has he ignored the warnings of his own intelligence agencies and those of several other nations of an impending attack on the United States, like Bush did. While Trump may turn out to be the 2nd worst US president in US history, (Trump haters can rejoice at that possibility), it would take more than stupid tweets for him to overcome the corruption and or complete incompetence of President George W. Bush.

Below is a list of some of President Bush’s finest accomplishments as President of the United States. As I look at them, it makes me realize Bush is the worst and most corrupt US president in history, even more so than President Herbert Hoover. Let’s face it. Trump has a long way to fall to overcome our worse US president.

 Bush’s Greatest Accomplishments

*Bush presided over the worst attack on the US by ignoring repeated warnings from his own Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke, CIA Director, FBI Director, Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s M16, and others, and instead of responding to the warnings, went on one of the longest presidential vacations in US history. The incompetence and or stupidity of Bush made it appear he wanted that attack to happen. This is why many people believe Bush—

• Attacked the wrong country in retaliation, but it had lots of oil.
• Only president in US history to launch a sado-sexual torture program in violation of the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, and Christian beliefs.
• Only US president who, along with most members of his cabinet and former Vice President Dick Cheney, cannot travel to Europe, South America and most nations of Asia for fear of being apprehended and tried as a war criminal.
• Attacked and took over two other countries.
• Began the NSA program allowing for the unwarranted spying and breakin’s of US households and businesses in violation of the US Constitution, a policy continued by president’s Obama and Trump.
• Spent the Clinton surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
• Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
• Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
• His economic policies produced the first negative US private sector job growth in any eight-year period in US history.
• Presided over the biggest housing bubble in US history and didn’t do anything about it.
• His economic policies redistributed more income and wealth from working Americans to the super rich more than any president, with the exception of President Bill Clinton.
• Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
• First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
• First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
• First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
• Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
• In his first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
• Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
• Set the all-time record for most home foreclosures in a 12 month period.

* Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
* Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.
* Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.
* Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed. (Think Enron and the California energy shortage)

* Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.
* Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
* Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest him (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of humankind.
* Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
* His presidency was the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history until President Barack Obama came along.
* Members of his cabinet were the richest of any administration in US history up to its time. (the ‘poorest’ multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has an Exxon oil tanker named after her). Trump’s cabinet has beaten that record.
* Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world. (He hated regulations and they had to be dispensed with)
* First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.
* Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.
* Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in US history.
* First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the human rights commission.

* First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.
* Removed more checks and balances, and had the least amount of congressional oversight of any presidential administration in US history.
* Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
* Withdrew from the World Court of Law.
* Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abided by the Geneva Conventions.
* First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).
* All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations. This has since likely been beaten by Obama, Hillary and Trump.
* His biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
* Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
* First president in US history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
* First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
* First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
* Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 9-11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
* With a policy of ‘dis-engagement’ created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.
* First US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
* First US president in history to have the people of South Korea feel more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
* Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

* Set all-time record for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
* Failed to fulfill his pledge to get Osama Bin Laden ‘dead or alive’.* Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capital building. Many people think those attacks were secretly ordered by Bush or his Vice President Richard Cheney.
* In the 18 months following the 9-11 attacks, he successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
* Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
* In a little over two years created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the civil war.
* Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category straight down, and wound up with negative and wage job growth.
* Bush and Trump’s lack of response to Hurricane Katrina and the hurricane that leveled Puerto Rico and pretty much about the same.
* Only president in US history that cannot travel to South America and European nations because he will be arrested and tried for war crimes the moment he steps on their soil.

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What the Democratic and Republican News Organizations Don’t Want You to Know; Trump’s Tax Cut Plan is Another “Supply Side” Disaster for the USA as Income and Wealth Inequality Will Accelerate

President Donald Trump has proposed tax cuts for the rich and corporations, which is another way of saying Trump wants tax cuts for the rich and then more tax cuts for the rich. In other words, the person who will most likely benefit from the Donald Trump tax cuts is billionaire Donald Trump. The 99 percent will get virtually nothing. In other words, Trump’s tax plan is designed to create greater income and wealth inequality in a nation that already has the most income and wealth inequality among the industrialized nations.

You will note in the video above, while they make some good points about Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, the folks at MSNBC fail to mention growing income and wealth inequality because the Wall Street controlled Democratic leadership doesn’t want its station MSNBC to mention it any more than the billionaires who control the Republican Party want their news outlets to mention it. Currently, the rich steal anywhere from 24 to 38 percent of all income produced in the United States, compared to 8 percent in 1980. In addition, the richest 10 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, a historic and still growing record.

As corporations get tax cuts, much of those tax savings will go to the rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends, and surging stock prices. The rest of us will suffer the consequences. In addition, of course, corporations will have more money to invest, supposedly to create jobs, as if giving corporations tax cuts will magically increase consumer demand. That’s not likely. So what will they invest in?

Historically, US corporations buy other corporations, especially rivals, when they receive tax cuts or higher profits. This, of course, creates redundancies in a variety of job areas, such as accounting and computer technicians. When mergers occur, employees are the first thing to go in order to eliminate those redundancies. Of course, to help pay for these mergers, income will be redistributed from those who work for a living to the idle rich as US jobs are exported to low-wage nations and the difference between the higher paying US jobs and the new lower wage jobs in China, India and elsewhere will fuel corporate profits, and push up dividends and share prices. This fuels the bank portfolios of the rich, and this obviously creates greater income inequality. That’s what those free trade treaties have been negotiated to do, and Democrats, like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, are not stupid little boys and girls who are ignorant of this fact.

This is one of the reasons why there is not a shred of evidence that supply-side economics, otherwise known as tax cuts for the rich, has ever created a single job, but there is plenty of evidence tax cuts for the rich and corporations have destroyed US jobs. Under President George W. Bush, tax cuts were enacted for the rich, making certain that the growth in jobs and real wages were negative, the only time in US history that has occurred under a single president since Republican Herbert Hoover.

Naturally, there are other things the Republicans are refusing to mention.

Gary Markstein / Creators Syndicate

There will be an increased federal deficit of $2.5 trillion, which is typical under irresponsible Republican administrations and Congress, just like the Reagan years, and the other twelve years under the Bush presidents. Naturally, cutbacks in federal spending will be proposed.

Republicans and some Democrats will insist the US is not spending a sufficient number of dollars on its military, so that will not be subject to reductions. The US spends more on the military than the next 25 nations combined, 24 of whom are US allies, but clearly, that’s insufficient because US military spending is quite profitable. However, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other less profitable programs that help the politically powerless will be on the table for cuts if Trump’s tax cuts for the rich sails through Congress.

The rich, of course, have stolen just about all real income and wealth increases over the last thirty-five years, thanks to their financial abilities to corrupt both major political parties and the federal government in the process. Naturally, their dirty money has also corrupted most state and city governments. So, obviously, the financial and political deck is completely stacked against the 99 percent.

Luckily, the Democrats in the US Senate will object to this irresponsible behavior because the billionaires of Wall Street who control the party will object to it. That’s the only reason why Democratic senators like Ron Wyden will likely oppose the legislation. Even some Republicans may oppose Trump’s tax plan because it is completely against the national interest, that is if one assumes the citizens of the United States who make up 99 percent of the population are a part of that national interest.

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Happy Labor Day! But Here Is Some Sobering Information

For the past several years, US job growth has been weaker on a monthly average than when Jimmy Carter was US president. There’s a reason for this and a lot has to do with US corporations exporting jobs. Click here for that story. This brings us to former President Obama.

As a United States senator, Barack Obama demanded President George W. Bush do something to counter Chinese currency manipulation. As president, Obama mentioned Chinese currency manipulation one time. Then some politically powerful billionaires likely placed their arms over Obama’s shoulder and probably said something like, “Don’t mention that again, or we’ll take you behind the wood shed.”

Notice President Trump railed against Chinese currency manipulation as a candidate and hasn’t said a word about it as president. It’s likely some of his fellow billionaires threatened to take him behind the woodshed too if he ever mentioned the issue again.

This is because millions of US jobs have been exported to China; and US corporations have created millions of jobs over there rather than here thanks to President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, both of whom gave China “most favored nation trade status,” and which allowed US corporations to export US jobs and create jobs in China rather than here.

When China manipulates its currency vis-a-vis the US dollar, it increases the profit margins of US corporations manufacturing in China and exporting to the US, while simultaneously decreasing the profit margins of companies manufacturing in the US and exporting their goods to China. This is why all those Nike, Dell, Apple, Treetop, Campbell’s Soups, and thousands of other things are made nowadays in China and exported to the US rather than in the United States. See the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-op-ed-the-liberal-and-conservative-corporate-media-doesnt-want-you-to-see–JohnHively.wordpress.com

This is one of the reasons why income and wealth inequality has grown so great during the last thirty-five years. In the US, the top 1 percent own more wealth nowadays than the 90 percent lowest Americans, and that gap is growing.

The Federal Reserve Bank and the US Treasury could easily counter Chinese currency manipulation, but those organizations work for the billionaires and not for the rest of us. In the meantime, the US economy weakens over the long haul. That’s because workers wages now represent a smaller portion of US gross domestic product since 1947. That’s because when jobs are exported the difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new lower foreign wages with no benefits goes straight into the fat wallets of the billionaires via higher corporate profits, rising dividends, and surging share prices. Trade agreements, nice scams huh?

This is precisely why the rich are now stealing about 37 percent of all income produced in the United States, compared to 8 percent when Carter was president in 1980. This is why job growth was greater under Carter on a per monthly basis than nowadays even though the US economy was only about 40 percent the size of today’s US economy, and the population was only 60 percent the size of today’s US population.

This is something to reflect on when some Wall Street US Senator like Ron Wyden says we need more trade agreements to create more jobs. When Wyden, or Wall Street Senator Mitch McConnell says crap like this, you know it’s a lie.

 

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Why It’s Time to Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 or More an Hour: What the Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want You to Know

Source: Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

More than 40 million US workers would get a raise if the US minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour. Doing so would do five important things to help the US economy.

1. It would increase the demand for goods and services and create jobs in the process. Currently, we are in the worst post World War II economic expansion in US history, except for the last one, you know, that negative job growth under the economic policies of the worst president in US history, George W. Bush! Outside of that expansion, the current expansion is the worst, with the lowest job growth, the least GNP growth, and lots more historically weak statistics.

2. Every US economic expansion since 1981 has been caused by artificial bubbles which have created artificial stock market bubbles, which have almost completely benefited only the rich, and mostly the super rich, at the expense of everyone else. The Bill Clinton presidency saw the creation of 22 million jobs, which came about because of simultaneous housing, tech, stock and telecommunications bubbles. The tech and telecommunication bubbles were created by Clinton’s signature on legislation. The current economic bubble has been created by an illegal housing bubble created by the big banks. See The fix is In! The Banksters are Manipulating the rise in housing prices: Mortgage applications are down for home sales–Johnhively.wordpress.com Raising the minimum wage would create more demand, possibly creating the first demand inspired economic expansion since the Great President Jimmy Carter.

3. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would steer money away from the stock market bubble because it would decrease corporate profits, and perhaps gently deflate the current bubble that is due to burst in a few months anyway. The other option is to allow the bubble to run its course and essentially ruin the US economy like what occurred from 2007 to 2012 and from 1929-1933. The next recession will be worst than the last one, and it’s just around the bend.

4. Income inequality is at an all-time US high with the 1 percent stealing about 37 percent of all income produced in the USA every year compared with only 8 percent in 1980. That means the 99 means we have less money to buy things, while the rich primarily purchase things like stock options, stock, bonds and politicians. This inequality is stifling the demand sector and weakening the economy which is why the US economic expansions since 2000 are the weakest in history. This is, of course, unless, the creation and functioning of the US and worldwide economies are solely for the benefit of the 1 percent, and always at the expense of the 99 percent. You can see from the graph above the rich are stealing $17,867 from every working American, and they do this year after year after year. I think it’s time we get a little of our money back.

5. Wealth inequality is also near an all time high in the USA, and this means (along with income inequality) the rich can afford to buy the services of more politicians, which has already effectively turned our democracy into both an illusion and a myth, and this occurred perhaps as early as 1981. Raising the minimum wage would cut away a bit of the economic cancers known as wealth and income inequality.

The corporate talking heads will also insist raising the minimum wage will result in lost jobs, but there are plenty of studies showing not a whole lot on this issue. Most studies on this subject during the last twenty years show a rise in the minimum wage has a negligible impact on job loss, or jobs experience slight growth. On the other hand, most minimum wage increases that have been studied have been minimal and very local.

However, all of this is irrelevant because there is one gigantic study that shows that when the real wages of the 99 percent go up, so too does the US economy, and not just for the benefit of the few. This study is called the history of the US economy. Notice in the graph below real wages grew in the US economy from 1948 to 1978. In reality, you can go back to 1938 and see the same stuff. Inflation was low and job growth was high during the years 1938 to 1980. The middle class was strongest then, and demand for US goods was incredibly strong, especially the demand from US citizens. Even the rich got richer, although the percentage of income and wealth they could steal from the rest of us was small compared to today.

Source: Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

Corporate talking heads will always lie and say raising the minimum wage will increase inflation. In reality, allowing the financial markets to rise in bubbles creates inflation, as I pointed out in my book, The Rigged Game.

Now some people will say inflation was fairly high during the 1970s, and yes that is kind of true, and then kind of not. That’s because the US government has changed the way it measures inflation twenty times since 1981, and every change has the intended effect of lowering the rate of inflation. In other words, if inflation is 1.5 percent nowadays, using the methodology of 1975, today’s inflation would be about 6 percent. Average yearly inflation during the 1970s was 7 percent, and so using today’s inflation methodology, inflation during the 1970s would have averaged about 2.5 percent, which isn’t all that much.

You can also see from the graph above how real hourly wages have stagnated since 1978, but of course, that’s a lie since real wage increases are measured against inflation, and we know inflation is no longer measured like it used to be. If inflation over the last 35 years was measured with the methodology used by the US government in 1975, US inflation would be significantly higher each of those years, and real US wage growth during this period would be negative, year after year after year for the last thirty or more years. This means real wages are significantly lower nowadays than the available statistics will allow us to measure, and this, of course, is one of the reasons why the government changed the way it measured inflation: it stops us from seeing how much we of the 99 percent are getting screwed by our corrupt government in redistributing our income and wealth to the 1 percent.

I don’t know about you, but I want my money back! Raise the minimum wage!

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Part 6–The Accomplishments of President Barack Obama

The financial collapse of 2008 was the worst recession since the Great Depression. Give President Obama and his administration credit for saving the economy from the depredations of Wall Street despite massive Republic resistance to resuscitating it, which they did solely for political gain. However, this historically weak recovery masks a startling reality.

Only one perpetrator of Wall Street crimes was ever brought to justice, and he wasn’t a big figure in the massive corruption going on. In March 2009, Obama met with Wall Street leaders and said, “I stand between you and the pitchforks. I am on your side and I will protect you.”

Only one banker from that era was prosecuted. That was Bernie Madoff, and the only reason he was carted off to prison was because he stole from rich people. And not one other Wall Street criminal executive went to jail after stealing billions via fraud, money laundering of Mexican drug cartel profits, and numerous other crimes. Many became his financial advisers, which meant Obama pursued policies to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent for eight long years.

At all times, Obama refused to bite the hand that funded his past, present and future, as well as funding much of the Republican and Democratic Parties. In other words, Obama was largely, if not completely, in the back pocket of Wall Street as were President Bill Clinton, both President’s Bush, Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch.

Obama operated in a cesspool corruption. He was part of the problem, not the solution.

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The Accomplishments of Barack Obama, Part Five, The Worst of President Barack Obama

There are actions and then there are inaction’s. There is biting the hands that feed you now and in the future, and then there are the decisions one makes to not bite the hands that feed you, now and in the future.

First there was the illegal torture program of President George W. Bush. Bush is the only former US president who couldn’t visit Switzerland and numerous other nations after his terms in office. Bush would be arrested and charged with war crimes should he or several other members of his administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, ever step foot into those nations. Obama called the torturers “patriots” and those who demanded justice “sanctimonious.”

When a judge in Spain began to pursue war crimes charges against Bush, Obama successfully began a diplomatic initiative to quash the charges.

Obama went out of his way to ensure that nobody of political and financial significance suffered the consequences of their actions.

Not one single person was charged with war crimes, torture or murder. Forget US laws, forget the US Constitution, and forget international laws the US had signed on to.

Perhaps Obama decided not to pursue charges, or quash prospective charges, because much of the torture was done by publicly traded corporate contractors. In other words, torture was to a large degree about profits; the more torture victims, the more profits.

Virginia-based CACI Premier Technology corporation is a military contractor that was a major US torturer at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The company made millions upon millions of dollars torturing people on behalf of President George W. Bush.

CACI’s share price hovered around $13 a share when Bush became president. Thanks to the torture contracts the company received from the US government, the share price increased more than five fold to $65+ by the summer of 2005. Under Obama, CACI’s share price rose to $122.25 the day before he left office, in part because of government contracts.

Why is it that a person can commit torture to somebody else and not be convicted of a crime? If anybody else not under contract to the US government kidnapped and tortured somebody they would be charged with crimes, but if the US government pays you for breaking national and international laws, then you will face no charges. That does not make a whole lot of sense.

No doubt Wall Street liked the torture program a lot because it fed into the pockets of the billionaires and millionaire investors of Wall Street, as well as Wall Streets large investment corporations, and Obama had to protect his financial benefactors, so justice could never be served, otherwise the financial spigot watering, seeding and fertilizing the corruption of government at all levels would have been turned off, and Obama could never have tolerated that.

 

 

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