As President-elect Donald Trump takes office today, January 20, 2017. the Pew Research Center reports “the public has starkly different expectations about which groups in society will gain influence – and those that will lose influence – under his administration.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say wealthy people will gain influence in Washington when Trump takes office. Just 8% say they will lose influence, while 27% expect the wealthy will not be affected.”
I agree with the 27 percent who say the wealthy will not be affected. The reason is simple. The rich already control both major political parties, and through them, the rich control the federal government, virtually all state governments, and most big city governments, as well as a lot of local governments.
The wealthy are not going to improve upon that score a whole lot under Trump. Control of the legislative process has been the primary means by which the 1 percent has methodically increased its share of wealth and income of the United States year after year for the last thirty-five years.
That’s why the 64 percent who say wealthy people will gain influence are wrong inasmuch as wealthy people have so much power they can’t possibly gain anymore.
The difference is that those rich folks who use the Democratic Party as a vehicle to control the mechanisms of government and to profit via those mechanisms, have lost influence. Think Warren Buffett, George Soros, Bill Gates and other Democratic Party billionaires. Their rivals who control the Republican Party will gain influence at their expense.
Those Republican billionaires include Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, Charles and David Koch, hedge fund managerz Paul Singer and Robert Mercer, and a lot of other Wall Street investors.
Together, the billionaire Democrats and billionaire Republicans form a kind of good old boy network with some rivalries among them. They also control the media in such a way as to ensure we don’t see this, although it’s pretty obvious.
In an economy dominated by the financial desires of the 1 percent, why has educational services experienced the most job growth over the last twenty-five years?
Look at the list below. Scroll down toward the bottom. There you have manufacturing, in negative job growth, and once the biggest employer in the United States a scant sixty years ago. Those jobs have experienced negative growth. That’s because US corporations have exported tens of millions of them over the course of the last thirty-five years, forcing more and more people to seek training in other occupations.
As the economy has redistributed trillions upon trillions of dollars to the super wealthy via the exporting of jobs, the demand for goods and services has declined per capita. The result is a lack of job growth, sending more and more students into the university systems. That’s because the US population continues to grow.
80-90 percent of all US population growth over the last thirty or so years has been driven by immigration. This has kept the demand for K-12 teachers higher than it would with no or little immigration, thus fueling educational services.
Notice the top six places in US job growth is in services. This says a lot, and none of it is good. Services are the top employers, but all rest on construction, mining, farming and manufacturing since the wealth of all nations is the things created by their people.
A new poll by the Pew Research Center show that 80 percent of US citizens believe that trade agreements have cost the United States jobs. According to the poll:
“The public sees threats to jobs coming from several directions: Eight-in-ten adults say increased outsourcing of jobs to other countries hurts American workers, and roughly the same share (77%) say having more foreign-made products sold in the U.S. has been harmful. Significant shares also cite increased use of contract or temporary workers (57%) and declines in union membership (49%) as trends that are hurting, rather than helping, workers. At the same time, global markets for U.S.-made products are seen as helpful for workers by 68% of adults. And seven-in-ten say the rise of the internet and email has been a net positive.”
The poll suggests the US public is not fooled by these trade scams that redistribute income from working folks to the rich. And they’re spot on.
According an Economic Policy Institute Study shows that over 2 million US jobs were exported to the eleven nations participating in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2015. That doesn’t count China, since it is not a part of the as of yet not approved TPP.
The U.S. trade deficit with China was $365.7 billion in 2015, or about double what it was with the TPP nations. This is a new record, up slightly from last year’s record of $343 billion. Counting the trade deficit with China suggests US companies exported at least 4 million more jobs in 2015, for a total of over 6 million jobs in 2015.
At least one study suggested US corporations have exported 26 million jobs since 2000. The EPI study for jobs loss in 2015 coupled with the US trade deficit with China suggests this is very likely, and perhaps even understates the job loss numbers.
That’s why Americans have wised up to these income redistribution scams falsely marketed as trade agreements. They may not know the exact number of jobs lost, but given that the current economic expansion is the weakest since the Great Depression, most people can see and feel that something has gone terribly wrong with the US economy.
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.
Pope Francis began this year as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentine archbishop. He finishes it as Time magazine’s Person of the Year, beating out second place contender Edward Snowden. Pope Francis was elected after a whirlwind of activity that included news-making comments about homosexuality and other social issues, as well as an apostolic exhortation that focused on caring for the poor and inveighed against the “idolatry of money,” which could be used as a euphemism for the parasites of Wall Street, large corporations, thousands of corrupt Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and the rest of the parasites of the 1 percent.
Income and wealth inequality is a big concern throughout, as a poll by the Pew Research Center shows. It should be pointed out that income and wealth inequality is growing because so many politicians have been purchased by the 1 percent to achieve this inequality.
Income and wealth distribution is a function exclusively of political power. Government’s sets the rules, and then reset them, mostly to benefit the 1 percent over the 99 percent.
People throughout the world have serious concerns about income and wealth inequality, according to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, and as the graph to the side shows. Notice in Greece 84 percent of the population are concerned about this issue. Also note that government corruption is a massive problem in Greece, and note that it’s the 1 percent that does the corrupting and receives all the benefits of this corruption, and all at the expense of the 99 percent.
The same corruption, and at the same or similar scale, is occurring in the United Statesgovernment, and at all levels, but the people of the US are less concerned about income and wealth inequality than the folks in Greece. That’s because the US corporate media is also corrupted, and it serves its owners and shareholders, who are members of the 1 percent. So the US corporate propaganda media dutifully keeps the American public ignorant. The other reason why citizens of the US are less concerned about inequality and government corruption that brings it about is because the 1 percent has not sucked them as dry as the 1 percent of Greece has sucked the 99 percent as dry there.
As of 2011, the United States rated as the 75th worse nation in the world in terms of income distribution. Greece was rated 39th. Why are the Greeks protesting in the streets and Americans are not? Who knows? We can throw a few guesses out there. As mentioned above, Americans are starved for information and kept, for the most part, deliberately ignorant by the corporate propaganda machine about these issues compared to the their Greek counterparts.
Of course, the US is larger in territory and greater in natural resources than relatively tiny Greece, and these factors may play a role in giving Americans a higher standard of living than the people of Greece. So, in a way, income in the US can be legislatively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent, as has been the case for the last thirty-two years, and Americans can still have a higher standard of living than the Greeks. Of course, it is possible the US social safety nets might be stronger, as well.
Most likely it is a combination of these and other factors that see Greeks rise up while overweight Americans sit in their chairs, a GMO loaded hotdog in one hand and a beer in the other, while watching the television shows, and sports and news programs intended to distort their reality.
Notice when it comes to inequality, Canadians have as much concern about this issue as US citizens, and yet Canada ranks 30th in the world in income inequality, way ahead of the US. It’s interesting that Fox News was banned in Canada because of a law there that makes it a crime for a news organization to lie to the public. Currently, Fox has a limited broadcast area in Canada. It is much bigger in the US where Fox is the most glaring example of a propaganda machine for the 1 percent. That is, in fact, the sole reason for its existence, or, at least, it seems to be.
This suggests perception is very important, and the US propaganda machine (we erroneously call the news media) plays a big role in suppressing dissent in the US by keeping our minds off certain subjects, such as income and wealth distribution and redistribution. This also suggests the US propaganda machine has done its job well.
According to new research from the Pew Research Center, this year, a record 36 percent of young adults (18-31 years) live with their parents. That’s up from 34 percent in 2009, the year the Great Recession officially (so we’re told), but not really, ended.
Since 1981, the percentage of young adults living at home hovered around 31 percent. The Great Recession continues to change that.
As usual, the folks at Pew don’t seem to understand the underlying reasons why this has occurred. They cite three reasons why the trend is increasing. By the way, the phase “Millennials” is used to describe the 18 to 31 year old people in their report.
1. “Declining employment. In 2012, 63% of 18- to 31-year-olds had jobs, down from the 70% of their same-aged counterparts who had jobs in 2007. In 2012, unemployed Millennials were much more likely than employed Millennials to be living with their parents (45% versus 29%).
2. “Rising college enrollment. In March 2012, 39% of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college, up from 35% in March 2007. Among 18 to 24 year olds, those enrolled in college were much more likely than those not in college to be living at home – 66% versus 50%.”
3. “Declining marriage. In 2012 just 25% of Millennials were married, down from the 30% of 18- to 31-year-olds who were married in 2007. Today’s unmarried Millennials are much more likely than married Millennials to be living with their parents (47% versus 3%).”
Those reasons seem okay, but they’re like looking at a house that’s burned down and saying a fire caused that. Wouldn’t a more important question be, “What caused the fire?” Ergo, they’re saying more Millennials are living at home because less of them have jobs. The more important question is, Why is this so?
The answer is that over the last thirty years, the federal government has been corrupted by big money, and so our favorite politicians continue to pass legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent, such as corporate trade treaties, erroneously called “free trade treaties.”
The result is that less and less of the income produced in the United States goes to the 99 percent. The 99 percent took home about 92 percent of the national income in 1978. The economy created almost 4 million private sector jobs that year because the 99 percent had enough money to demand the goods and services necessary to create those jobs. That’s almost 250 thousand private sector jobs per month that was created, despite the economy being about 50 percent the size of today, and with only about 58 percent of the population.
In the last three months, the economy has created an average of 175 thousand jobs on average, a fairly high rate for the last thirteen years, and a massive underachievement worthy of Bart Simpson. That’s because the 99 percent nowadays only get about 68 percent of the total income produced in the nation, so the demand for goods and services is far less than those days when the 99 percent had a voice in the federal government.
The 1 percent doesn’t use their money to buy the goods and services necessary to create jobs. They purchase such things as derivatives, stocks, bonds, gold, politicians such as Wall StreetSenator Ron Wyden, and legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent.
The war against the middle class continues, more and more income and wealth is being redistributed to the 1 percent via the corrupt federal government every week, so that this low grade Depression we’re in will get worse in the long run. So we can anticipate a growing number of young people will have no choice but to live with their parents in the years to come.
The rich are getting richer under President Obama, and this is partly true because of his policies, such as the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.
According to a report out of the Pew Research Center, “During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%.”
There’s are several reasons for this trend. One of the worst is that one to two plus million jobs are exported every year from the US, according to the Federal Reserve. The difference between the old wages and the new lower wages over there are redistributed from the job losers to rich shareholders via higher corporate earnings, increased dividends and rising share prices.
And that is precisely what has occurred, a massive redistribution of income, which has fueled a rise in share and bond prices (wealth). BTW, income is money coming in, such as weekly pay checks and corporate dividends, while wealth is composed of assets.
The people in the top 7 percent saw their total wealth increase $5.6 trillion, mostly in the form of stocks and bonds. The 93 percent and lower saw their wealth decrease by $0.6 trillion. Their wealth is mostly in their houses.
What happens when job get shipped overseas? Many people lose their houses. If enough jobs are shipped overseas, then local tax bases begin to shrink. Teachers, fire fighters, government lawyers and accountants; they lose their jobs, they lose their houses. But corporate share prices rise because labor costs are reduced. In other words, a massive redistribution of income results in a massive redistribution of wealth.
The 1 percent have stolen virtually all income growth during the last five years. They now steal over 30 percent of all yearly US income, up from about 8 percent thirty-three years ago. Free trade treaties have played a massive role in this.
According to Pew, “During the period under study, the S&P 500 rose by 34% (and has since risen by an additional 26%), while the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index fell by 5%, continuing a steep slide that began with the crash of the housing market in 2006. (Housing prices have slowly started to rebound in the past year but remain 29% below their 2006 peak.)”
The reason for the results of this study is massive corruption in the US government. Money is the reason why many congress persons and senators vote to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. All of this was easily predictable, and I did so in The Rigged Game.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that 71 percent of the US public favors raising the federal minimum wage. Nineteen states already have higher minimum wages. Fifty percent of Republicans also support an increase, as opposed to 47 percent opposed.
Wall Street is also against raising it. That’s because when wages go up, share prices go down. That’s because higher wages can cut into corporate profits in the short term. In the long term, however, rising real wages increase demand, spur sales, push up profits and create jobs. Recent studies show raising the minimum wage has a small impact on unemployment, most likely because it increases the demand for goods and services.
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, “The multiple positive effects that would result from a higher minimum wage are clear: It would boost the earnings of working families hardest hit by the Great Recession, spur economic growth, and create about 100,000 net new jobs. In an economic climate in which wage increases for the most vulnerable workers are scarce, raising the minimum wage to $9.80 by July 1, 2014, is an opportunity that America’s working families cannot afford to lose.”
Despite the positive impacts of a raise, on behalf of Wall Street, House Republicans will vote in goose step against any increase, as will some corporate Democrats.
Conversely, when wages go down, share prices go up. That’s good if you’re a member of the 1 percent, but it’s bad for the economy and the 99 percent in the long term. When real wages go down, so does the demand for goods and services. In the long run, corporate profits cannot be constantly raised, which is something that must occur in the long term, otherwise, the Ponzi Scam known as Wall Street would collapse.
As demand goes down due to the massive redistribution of income from the 99 to the 1 percent legislatively undertaken over the last 32 years by the federal government, Wall Street has had to invent new investment instruments that redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. In the past, this has included bonds backed by home mortgages and credit default swaps, neither of which has been good for the economy.
So overall, an increase in the federal minimum wage will be a good thing (however tiny) for the vast majority of Americans, as well as for the economy. They’ll have more money to spend. Better yet, CEO’s and rich shareholders will possess less money with which to purchase politicians.
Although the US as a whole is doing better than when the Republican created economic collapse began four years ago, most Americans do not feel better off when it comes to their personal finances. There’s a reason for this. The rich have been stealing 93 percent of all income growth during these years. The rest of us are getting nothing but our jobs and incomes redistributed to the 1 percent via the policies of Obama and the policies put in place before the current president. So it’s impossible for us to feel better about our personal finances.
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 