Inflation Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record

[callady]

Fastest Decline in Real Wages on Record

Inflation Up; Wages Down

By JARED BERNSTEIN

Employers' wage costs grew 2.3% over the past year, the slowest growth rate on record, according to today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Factoring in the recent energy-driven increase in inflation, the real wage is down 2.3%, also the largest real loss on record for this series that began in 1981.

With hourly wages falling in real terms, the only way working families can raise their incomes is by working more hours-certainly not the path to improving living standards that we would expect in an economy posting strong productivity gains.

This 2.3% rate is a slight tick down from the 2.4%--the previous historical low--that prevailed for the last four quarters. Compensation-wages plus benefits-also grew more slowly in the third quarter of this year, up 3.1% over the same quarter last year, the slowest yearly growth in six years.

For the first time in this employers' costs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics presented these values adjusted for inflation. Both wages and compensation are losing growth in real terms, down 2.3% and 1.5%, respectively, as slower nominal wage growth is colliding with faster inflation. In both cases, these are the largest yearly real losses on record.

http://www.counterpunch.org/bernstein10282005.html

[sarcasmo]

1. Exact Republican Corporate Fascism thinking. Wages down

Profits up. NOM and Kick

[Mnemosyne]

2. .

:kick:

[HawkerHurricane]

3. A link, a link, my kingdom for a LINK.

I complained about getting only 3%, I guess I'll shut up now.

[callady]

5. oops-here you go

http://www.counterpunch.org/bernstein10282005.html

And this:

October  Friday 28th  2005 (10h17) :
Your Misery is OUR Gain! - Over inflated Gas Prices mystery solved!!
 
Exxon, Shell net record profits

Largest publicly traded oil company earns nearly $10 billion in third quarter, with rival posting $9 billion.

By Steve quinn, Donna McWilliam

Lee Raymond is chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp., which earned nearly $10 billion in the third quarter.

DALLAS -- Exxon Mobil Corp. rewrote the corporate record books Thursday as the oil company’s third-quarter earnings soared to almost $10 billion and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion. Anglo-Dutch competitor Royal Dutch Shell PLC wasn’t far behind, posting a profit of $9 billion for the quarter.

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=8969



CEO Lee Raymond- What a caricature

[rpannier]

7. OMG...It's Paul Bearer

I wonder what happened to the man after he was no longer the UNdertaker's manager and had to leave the WWE.

[applegrove]

4. Some of this wage loss is put off because goods you buy are cheaper

now. But you still have to buy gas & food which have not gone down.

My question is still - during this time of war, what the hell are the "haves" sacrificing?

[callady]

6. actually most goods are skyrocketing

due to increase in transportation costs and increase in costs of raw materials.

Now of course I'm not talking about the plastic thneeds at Mall-Wart

[applegrove]

8. Right you are. But it was a long term strategy to pass on civil goods

production to the Chinese..so they would have to worry about energy for their factories. think about when oil goes even higher? Then some of the jobs may come back to the USA. Perhaps even local stores will come back.. who knows.. of course the local (within walking distance) mom & pop stores will sell Chinese plastic.

And at some point the oil will only be used for emergency services. But that is a long way off.

I just wich the wealthy were sacrificing. I wish that big oil was not getting subsidized and that there had been more thought put into SUVs and alternative energy years ago.

[1932]

17. I think I read that clothing is one of the few consumer items that

is cheaper now than it was a few years ago, but considering that everything is crappy and extreme in style, people probably spend just as much (if not more) on clothing because they have to replace stuff that is falling apart or that is no longer in style.

[applegrove]

21. I'm sure about that.

[Ioo]

9. Thanks - B L O G G E D

http://www.bushsamerica.com/index.php/2005/10/29/bush_and_the_republicans_reign_over_the_

[callady]

12. Inequality is non-partisan

From your blog:

"Nothing confuses me more than people, like a few readers here, that make far less than $100,000 a year, but swear that George Bush is the greatest thing under the sun. These people are being crushed by the gas prices, rising inflation, staggering increases in healthcare costs, and this administration will not even acknowledge that these are ever issues, I would go so far as to say, Bush does not even know that there are people in this nation that make less than $100,000.

Why are you still supporting this man and the Republican Party? Do you think he or they cares about you? They don’t, they want you to shut-up, pay your taxes, so their rich friends do not have to, and keep pumping out babies so they can send them to war."

<snip>

"How does it feel to be used like cheap whore? Thank you for your vote, now run along and die now."

http://www.bushsamerica.com/index.php/2005/10/29/bush_a...

Seems implausible that folks can be living with such a false conscious and remain largely unaware of their circumstances. But there is such a wall of noise between their (our) daily lives and how we have come to this state. Of course it is not a recent phenomenon and not exclusive to the Cheney cabal. Inequality is bi-partisan:


A State Of Inequality

By Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel



The United States is now the third most unequal industrialized society after Russia and Mexico. This is not a club we want to be part of. Russia is a recovering kleptocracy, with a post-Soviet oligarchy enriched by looting. And Mexico, despite joining the rich-nations club of the Organization for Economic and Community Development, has some of the most glaring poverty in the hemisphere.

In 2004, after three years of economic recovery, the U.S. Census reports that poverty continues to grow, while the real median income for full-time workers has declined. Since 2001, when the economy hit bottom, the ranks of our nation's poor have grown by 4 million, and the number of people without health insurance has swelled by 4.6 million to over 45 million.

Income inequality is now near all-time highs, with over 50 percent of 2004 income going to the top fifth of households, and the biggest gains going to the top 5 percent and 1 percent of households. The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker.

<snip>

Inequality is non-partisan. The pace of inequality has grown steadily over three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Gini index, the global measure of inequality, grew as quickly under President Clinton as it has under President George W. Bush. Widening disparities in the U.S. are the result of three decades of bi-partisan public policies that have tilted the rules of the economy to the benefit of major corporations and large asset owners at the expense of people whose security comes from a paycheck.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10733.htm

[Ioo]

13. You are welcome to add a comment to the post...

Thank you for reading it, I am not sure if you are supporting it or not.

I welcome support on the site, others comments.

THANKS!

[callady]

14. The way the issue of poverty is framed is wrong

the focus needs to be on eliminating wealth of which poverty is the necessary offspring. Another progeny of wealth is ecocide.

It's not the fact that people don't have enough money it's the fact that they are required to have so much. We can't just keep ratcheting the figures up, rather we need to do the right (meaning left)-radical
thing and focus on why we need to have so much. Eliminating rent might be a start.

This whole issue of fighting poverty obscures the fact that it is our expected standard of living that is the deeper problem and seems to allow the grotesquely wealthy hide in the lurches as we focus on handing out a few more crumbs to the needy-meaning me. Yes, of course that $25 extra a week can be a matter of survival for the parent/child in East St. Louis etc. so let's fight for it. But let's also not be satisfied with negotiating over the terms of our slavery.

In total support of your blog and anything anyone does to bring to the light the gross economic disparity in this country. we desperately need to ratchet everything down starting at the top. The only thing that can make that happen in my view is mass action from the grassroots.

The notion of the "middle class" is not healthy for our perceptions of stratification and is a nightmare on the biosphere.

We could all live elegant lives in poverty if allowed to by the ruling class. They will never allow for that so the issue must be forced.

[Ioo]

15. I was not framing Poverty.

I am sorry, I was not framing poverty, I am making a point that people are voting against your own best interest. It was not ment to be a post of povery, I did not use the word. The new story that this post is about is not about poverty, it is about real wage is down 2.3%.

You see, I have a lot of very Pro-Bush people that read my blog, and send me emails and comments. I write a lot of my blog to them, those that voted for bush, for reasons that in the end, do not matter.

So I am sorry that you read my post wrong.

[Jim Sagle]

10. All according to plan.

[Zenlitened]

11. The christmas merchandise is out on store shelves now.

Happy holidays, American economy! :scared:

[1932]

16. Is America still too distracted by terror to care about this?

Are Americans still blaming terror for their declining economic circumstances (even while the rich get richer), or are they finally clued into the fact that it's all part of the plan to screw the middle class?

[bluedawg12]

19. I think pessimism is growing about the economy but voters do see Dem's

as offering solutions, they are skeptical about congress and politicians.

There was a Yankelovich poll I heard about last week, couldn't find a link to it, but I heard it on CSPAN, it was an eye opening pessimistic poll about our nation and our leaders on both sides.

[bluedawg12]

18. This is about the erosion of the middle working class.

As the gap grows and the standard of living decreases our workers will descend to a third world standard of living.

Low wages, long working hours, no retirement benefits, no health care benefits, and salaries that can't support insurance premiums.

We need to frame the issues exactly as pointed out in this thread, that real wages are decreasing and the ideal two parent household that conservative corporate whoring think tank scum are advocating is a big lie- because both parents are working like beasts of burden to make ends meet.

Mark my words, the strength of this nation was the blue collar middle class that was impervious to totalitarianism. Marx said that America will fall to communism like a ripe apple from a tree, well, it will fall to corporate anarchy now more easily than it could have ever gone communist. It doesn't make a difference how the workers are exploited and in whose name- exploitation is exploitation.

Agreed that both parties lied to us about free trade. It was meant to bring jobs and trade over seas so we had expanded markets abroad to sell to and improving the host nations economy. Instead we heard the much predicted giant sucking sound as jobs went south and then east.

Forget the bull sh*t about Plame gate and let's focus on the issues that affect voters lives daily.

[texpatriot2004]

20. It is a DELIBERATE attack on the middle class. n.t