@liberalchik
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“Oh, I’m sorry — did I say rich? I meant “job creators“… when did the business community become so sensitive that we have to treat them like some kind of rare, exotic animal? Don’t startle them or they’ll fly away! We need to soothe them so they can nest here and lay their magic eggs full of jobs, WHICH NEVER HATCH, by the way.” — Bill Maher

We can all agree that they’ve banked enough tax cuts in the past decade to create many, many jobs. Hilarious how the GOP is trying to convince us that the wealthy are now ‘job creators’ and we shouldn’t raise taxes on the job creators.
We shouldn’t have to bribe the rich with tax cuts to create jobs. If businesses and corporations had lots of customers (you know, people with good, steady jobs and a little extra cash), there would be plenty of jobs and a thriving economy. Isn’t it weird how things slow down when the wealthy bank all their extra cash, ship American jobs overseas, and either stagnate everyone wages or bust unions so they can pay minimum wage with no benefits? You’d think there was some kind of cause and effect going on here.
The GOP would like us all to believe the wealthy might create jobs. Maybe. Someday.

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“Oh, I’m sorry — did I say rich? I meant “job creators“… when did the business community become so sensitive that we have to treat them like some kind of rare, exotic animal? Don’t startle them or they’ll fly away! We need to soothe them so they can nest here and lay their magic eggs full of jobs, WHICH NEVER HATCH, by the way.” — Bill Maher

We can all agree that they’ve banked enough tax cuts in the past decade to create many, many jobs. Hilarious how the GOP is trying to convince us that the wealthy are now ‘job creators’ and we shouldn’t raise taxes on the job creators.

We shouldn’t have to bribe the rich with tax cuts to create jobs. If businesses and corporations had lots of customers (you know, people with good, steady jobs and a little extra cash), there would be plenty of jobs and a thriving economy. Isn’t it weird how things slow down when the wealthy bank all their extra cash, ship American jobs overseas, and either stagnate everyone wages or bust unions so they can pay minimum wage with no benefits? You’d think there was some kind of cause and effect going on here.

The GOP would like us all to believe the wealthy might create jobs. Maybe. Someday.

Rick “Secede With Me” Perry: Big Money donors and job creation in Texas

RICK PERRY HAS RECEIVED A LOT OF MONEY FROM THE RICH AND POWERFUL — and he’ll likely receive even more during his presidential campaign. What’s interesting is that if top donors like the wealthy and oil companies pay his way, which do you think Perry would be more likely to do away with for budgeting purposes: 1) tax breaks for the rich, 2) tax subsidies and loopholes for profitable corporations, or 3) Medicare and other services and programs for everyone else?

Read the rest…

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Does America REALLY want what Texas has?

Robert Reich | How to Create More Jobs By Lowering Wages: Texas and America:

[…] While Texas leads the nation in job growth, a majority of Texas’s workforce is paid hourly wages rather than salaries. And the median hourly wage there was $11.20, compared to the national median of $12.50 an hour.

Texas has also been specializing in minimum-wage jobs. From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers there rose from 221,000 to 550,000 – that’s an increase of nearly 150 percent. And 9.5 percent of Texas workers earn the minimum wage or below – compared to about 6 percent for the rest of the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state also has the highest percentage of workers without health insurance. Texas schools rank 44th in the nation in per-pupil spending.

The Perry model of creating more jobs through low wages seems to be catching on around America.

According to a report out today from the Commerce Department, the median income of U.S. households fell 2.3 percent last year – to the lowest level in fifteen years (adjusted for inflation). That’s the third straight year of declining household incomes. Part of this is loss of jobs. Part is loss of earnings.

More and more Americans are retaining their jobs by settling for lower wages and benefits, or going without cost-of-living increases. Or they’ve lost a higher-paying job and have taken one that pays less. Or they’ve joined the great army of contingent workers, self-employed “consultants,” temps, and contract workers – without healthcare benefits, without pensions, without job security, without decent wages.

It’s no great feat to create lots of lousy jobs. A few years ago Michele Bachmann remarked that if the minimum wage were repealed “we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

I keep on hearing conservative economists say Americans have priced themselves out of the global high-tech labor market. That’s baloney. The productivity of American workers continues to soar. The problem is fewer and fewer Americans are sharing the gains. The ratio of corporate profits to wages is the highest it’s been since before the Great Depression.

Besides, how can lower incomes possibly be an answer to America’s economic problem? Lower incomes mean less overall demand for goods and services — which translates into even fewer jobs and even lower wages.

In short, the Perry (and Bachmann) model of job growth condemns Americans to lower and lower living standards. That’s nothing to crow about.

How is this not a war on the middle-class and income redistribution, bottom to top?

The high cost of low wages | A World of Progress

The “Make Work Pay: Why Empowering Workers & Holding CEO’s Accounable is Vital to Economic Growth” workshop at next weeks Take Back the American Dream conference, will examine why America can’t afford to go the way of Texas on jobs.

[…]

As I wrote almost a year ago, conservative think you (and I) need a pay cut.

The underlying factors remain the same. At the time, the GOP had the minimum wage in its crosshairs, but middle- and working-class Americans were already taking a pay cut in the form of unpaid furloughs and reduced working hours. The decades preceding the 2008 economic crisis saw working-class wages stagnate while the incomes rose for the wealthiest. The stagnation and decline in middle- and working-class wages paralleled the decline of organized labor. Increased productivity, added to the mix, means that Americans who still have jobs are working harder for less. Fewer of them are quitting their jobs, even if they’re dissatisfied with their jobs cause And in a “no-quit economy,” it’s pretty much true.

The past few years have born more evidence that a American workers, already weakened by decades, are bearing the brunt of the recession.

Americans are earning even less than they did 15 years ago.

Real median income fell 2.3% since 2001.

Wages are fallign for 90% of the country.

Most Americans, 64%, don’t have the cash on hand to handle a $1,000 emergency expense.

American’s are worried sick, and health professionals report increase of heart attacks in younger men, anxiety and stress-related problems, and even upticks in suicide.

Our children fall behind academically, and 22% of them live in poverty.

But perhaps the biggest price tag on low-wage jobs creation is the potential for a “lost decade” of economic growth. Fewer people working means fewer people purchasing goods and services, leading to a drop in demand, which leads to further job loss. Two reports. It’s simple enough, but Republicans swear that lowering wages — like Michele Bachmann, who advocates doing away with the minimum wage in order to “offer jobs at whatever level” — will reduce unemployment to nil.

Since 1990: CEO pay up 300%, average workers’ pay up 4%, minimum wage has dropped. DISCUSS

Wealth, Income, and Power (via: liberalsarecool)

…It probably involves several factors. At the least, on the workers’ side, it reflects their loss of power following the all-out attack on unions in the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail in an excellent book by James Gross (1995), a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right (Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren’t allowed to compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage foreign-born workers are…

Figure 5: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in theUnited States, 1922-2007.

Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

(Read it all) Source: sociology.ucsc.edu

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Minimum Wages Could Be Lowered In Arizona, Florida - Republican lawmakers in Arizona are pushing legislation that would lower the legal minimum wage for younger part-time workers and tipped workers such as restaurant servers, just as Florida lawmakers are considering dropping their state’s tipped rate as well. In both cases, proponents of the measures are arguing that the wage floor for such employees is too onerous on businesses.

The current minimum wage is actually lower than what a minimum-wage worker earned in 1968

abaldwin360:

Here’s an unhappy observation about the minimum wage: Congress last increased the rate in stages in 2006, topping it out at $7.25 an hour in 2009, or $15,080 a year.

That amount, when adjusted for inflation, is actually lower than what a minimum-wage worker earned in 1968 and is too meager to offer anyone the chance to climb out of poverty, let alone afford basic goods and services.

About 10 states are now considering raising the rate, and Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, is proposing to increase the federal rate in three increments to $9.80 an hour in 2014. Many of the initiatives under consideration would smartly tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, meaning that those workers’ wages would finally keep up with inflation.

read more

WOMEN ARE the richer sex, if by “richer” you mean “making less money.”

I wrote about this subject on Equal Pay Day, before I came across Bryce Covert’s fabulous Nation post “How to Close the Gender Wage Gap In Just Seven Easy* Steps.” (Do read it for serious policy ideas written with verve.) One of her steps: raise the minimum wage. See? Easy! — Are Women the Richer Sex?

Rep. Bill Young (R-FL) semi-conscious at parade yesterday, talks to constituents anyway

Yesterday at a Fourth of July parade, Rep. Bill Young (R-FL) proved that one’s elevator doesn’t need to get anywhere close to the top floor to be a Republican Member of the House:

CONSTITUENT: Hi, I’m (inaudible) how are you? Happy Fourth of July. Jesse Jackson, Jr. is passing a bill around to increase the minimum wage to 10 bucks and hour. Do you support that?

YOUNG: Probably not.

CONSTITUENT: 10 bucks, that would give us a living wage.

YOUNG: How about getting a job?

CONSTITUENT: I do have one.

YOUNG: Well, then why do you want that benefit? Get a job.

What I’m saying is, a GOP Congressman doesn’t need to be in possession of all the fries in his Happy Meal to be elected. If Rep. Bill Young and a sack of earthworms were competing on a game show, there’s a real possibility the sack of earthworms would be walking away with the prize money. That said, it’s inevitable that the conservative brain trust of Florida will re-elect this guy again and again and again. ‘Merika!