Barbara Ehrenreich: The Boom Was a Bust for Ordinary People

[marmar]

from the WaPo, via AlterNet:




The Boom Was a Bust for Ordinary People

By Barbara Ehrenreich, The Washington Post. Posted February 5, 2008.

Our challenge isn't just to prop up stock prices but to rebuild an economy in which everyone shares the good times.



It begins to sound a bit naughty -- all this talk about the need to "stimulate" the economy, as if we were discussing how to make a porn film. I don't mean to trivialize our economic difficulties or the need for effective government intervention, but we have to face a disconcerting fact: For years now, that strange stimulus-crazed beast, the economy, has been going its own way, increasingly disconnected from the toils and troubles of ordinary Americans.

The economy, for example, has been expanding, at least until now, and growth is supposed to guarantee general well-being. As long as the gross domestic product grows, World Money Watch's Web site assures us, "so will business, jobs and personal income."

But hellooo, we've had brisk growth for the past few years, as the president has tirelessly reminded us, only without those promised increases in personal income, at least not for the poor and the middle class. According to a study just released by the Economic Policy Institute, real wages actually fell last year. Growth, some of the economists are conceding in perplexity, has been "decoupled" from widely shared prosperity.

I first began to sense this in the boom years of the late 1990s, when I was working in entry-level jobs for my book "Nickel and Dimed." While the stock market soared and fortunes were being made in the time it takes to say "IPO," my $6-to-$8-an-hour co-workers lunched on hot dog buns because that was all they could afford and, in some cases, fretted about whether they could find a safe place to sleep.

Growth is not the only economic indicator that has let us down. In the past five years, America's briskly rising productivity has been the envy of much of the world. But again, there's been no corresponding increase in most people's wages. It's not supposed to be this way, of course. Economists have long believed that some sort of occult process would intervene and adjust wages upward as people worked harder and more efficiently. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/75944/

[SpiralHawk]

1. "But on the bright side, oil & munitions profits are UP for republicon cronies." - Commander AWOL

[TomClash]

2. Good article from a bright woman nt

[madrchsod]

3. i made 5700 dollars last year

and i owe more than that in medical bills. but my wife made just enough that we can not get any aid..

the harder american`s work the more "they" take away...

[Greyhound]

4. Here's your 5th. n/t

[paulk]

5. it's the same damn thing that happened under Reagan/Bush

and the media is finally getting around to talking about it.