LA Times: If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

For 25 years, government and business have forced workers to take on mounting risk. A Times analysis shows ever-larger swings in household incomes.


One in a series of occasional articles about the changing economic circumstances of working Americans.

HORNELL, N.Y. — By most conventional measures, Paul Fredo is an American success story.

The son of a coal miner, he made almost $200,000 in the last year, enough to place him in the top 2% of wage earners. As a financial manager for the U.S. unit of Alstom, the French bullet-train maker, he has lived an expense-account life, spending most nights in hotels and jetting to meetings in Washington and Paris.

But look carefully at Fredo's circumstances and a less appealing picture begins to emerge — one in which, over the last 25 years, economic risk has been steadily shifted from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working families like his.

<snip>

Starting in the late 1970s, the nation's leaders sought to break a corrosive cycle of rising inflation and stagnating output by remaking the U.S. economy in the image of its frontier predecessor — deregulating industries, shrinking social programs and promoting a free-market ideal in which everyone must forge his or her own path, free to rise or fall on merit or luck. On the whole, their effort to transform the economy has succeeded.

But the economy's makeover has come at a large and largely unnoticed price: a measurable increase in the risks that Americans must bear as they provide for their families, pay for their houses, save for their retirements and grab for the good life.

A broad array of protections that families once depended on to shield them from economic turmoil — stable jobs, widely available health coverage, guaranteed pensions, short unemployment spells, long-lasting unemployment benefits and well-funded job training programs — have been scaled back or have vanished altogether.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-riskshift3oct10,1,4792299.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I've reached the conclusion that anything that destabilizes the

middle class is treasonous. Forcing us to take personal financial risks without a safety net is the Republicans way of abdicating responsibility as competent stewards of this country. Why are we voting for people whose ultimate purpose is to be underachievers in their public office positions?

[teryang]

2. Faith based jobs reports

September Jobs Report
Faith-Based Economics
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10092004.html

<snip> Of September's 96,000 new jobs, 73% are accounted for by two categories: government jobs and temporary help! There were only 59,000 private sector jobs created in September, and 33,000 of those--56%--are temps!

Manufacturing lost another 18,000 jobs. More Americans are employed in accommodations and food services than as production workers. <snip>

<The US is losing the ability to manufacture a range of advanced technology products and is now dependent on imports of advanced technology goods from China and Japan. Entire high tech occupations are beginning to disappear in America, with computer engineering enrollments in topflight schools such as M.I.T., Georgia Tech, and UC, Berkeley shrinking by 45%.

Last week economist Joseph Stiglitz reported that median US income has fallen by over $1,500 in real terms over the past three and one-half years.<snip>

[The Zanti Regent]

3. Idiot family prays to Jesus for jobs

I got a buinch of nieces and nephews brainwashed by Jesus TV and the idiots at the Assemblies of Gawd. They cannot afford to go to college and cannot find full time jobs. What does Pastor Idiot tell them????

PRAY HARDER and Give MORE MONEY to the church, and, oh yeah, vote Republican to stop the gays...

These idiots should be considered for the Darwin Awards!

[Demeter]

4. When $7 TRILLION Evaporated Into Fraud From Bush's Buddies

how could anyone claim we as a nation were richer?