NYT: "Worked Over and Overworked" - About the SCREWED-OVER American Working Person

[El Pinko]

http://tinyurl.com/6cnust


Worked Over and Overworked

Published: April 20, 2008

(snip)

ONE OF THE LEAST EXAMINED but most important trends taking place in the United States today is the broad decline in the status and treatment of American workers — white-collar and blue-collar workers, middle-class and low-end workers — that began nearly three decades ago, gradually gathered momentum, and hit with full force soon after the turn of this century. A profound shift has left a broad swath of the American workforce on a lower plane than in decades past, with health coverage, pension benefits, job security, workloads, stress levels, and often wages growing worse for millions of workers.

That the American worker faces this squeeze in the early years of this century is particularly troubling because the squeeze has occurred while the economy, corporate profits, and worker productivity have all been growing robustly. In recent years, a disconcerting disconnect has emerged, with corporate profits soaring while workers’ wages stagnated. The statistical evidence for this squeeze is as compelling as it is disturbing.

In 2005, median income for nonelderly households failed to increase for the fifth year in a row, after factoring in inflation. That is unprecedented in a time of economic growth. In 2006, median income for those households did finally rise, but it still remained lower — $2,375 lower — than six years earlier. That, too, is unprecedented. Even though corporate profits have doubled since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation). With the subprime mortgage crisis threatening to pull the economy into recession, some economists say this may be the first time in American history that the typical working household goes through an economic expansion without any increase in income whatsoever.

This, unfortunately, is the continuation of a long-term squeeze. Since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private-sector, nonsupervisory jobs) have risen by just 1 percent, after inflation. The average hourly wage was $17.71 at the end of 2007. For male workers, the average wage has actually slid by 5 percent since 1979. Worker productivity, meanwhile, has climbed 60 percent. If wages had kept pace with productivity, the average full-time worker would be earning $58,000 a year; $36,000 was the average in 2007. The nation’s economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece. The squeeze on the American worker has meant more poverty, more income inequality, more family tensions, more hours at work, more time away from the kids, more families without health insurance, more retirees with inadequate pensions, and more demands on government and taxpayers to provide housing assistance and health coverage. Twenty percent of families with children under six live below the poverty line, and 22 million full-time workers do not have health insurance. Largely as a result of the squeeze, the number of housing foreclosures and personal bankruptcies more than tripled in the quarter century after 1979. Economic studies show that income inequality in the United States is so great that it more closely resembles the inequality of a third world country than that of an advanced industrial nation.

[lonestarnot]

1. 60% wealth owned by top 5%, in 1999 is was 55%

[Juche]

2. average vs median

It is worse when you calculate median instead of average incomes.

At the same time this is happening taxes on the rich are going down dramatically. Federal income tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax & estate tax have all gone down or are being eliminated. Taxes on the middle class like sales, property or FICA are going up.

I don't think this is sustainable for much longer. The tide can be held back a little longer by dufus distractions or who puts their hand where during the national anthem but it isn't sustainable. In 10 years when only 40% of jobs offer healthcare, people can't afford homes or college and people are really struggling, not even flag pins will distract the public from voting their interests.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Sounds like someone's been reading Thom Hartman's book

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It

Review on Buzzflash:
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/305

[bushmeister0]

4. Same as it ever was . . .

FDR:

"Here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished . . .

FDR's second inaugural.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105/

Unless, either Obama or Hillary says something like . . .

"But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to comfort, opportunism, and timidity. We will carry on."

<end>

. . . I'm not very exited. Roosevelt identified the most basic danger to the lack of economic injustice; the threat to our democracy.

He was facing being overthrown by either a right-wing/corporate coup or a communist revolution. He saw what happened in Germany and he knew it COULD happen here unless he saved the economy.

I don't think any of our "leaders" have a freakin' clue about what to do about what's going on here, except to stock up on lots of anti-riot gear.

[gratuitous]

5. Not to mention gains in worker productivity

Working people are being more productive than they've ever been, and wages continue to stagnate or fall behind. Kind of makes you wonder where all the wealth being created by the workers is going, doesn't it? And they keep cutting and cutting taxes on the overrich, yet wages don't follow. Maybe another couple rounds of tax cuts will make it happen?

Sure do wish the guy who lives around the corner from me, the one with the beater pick-up and the Bush-Cheney sticker, connects some dots soon. We both leave for work about the same time, I get home and his truck isn't in his driveway, which makes me think he works longer hours than me, and yet he can't afford a vehicle upgrade. His house is pretty run down. His yard looks like hell. It seems to me he's working damn hard, and still doesn't have the time, money or energy to get even a half step ahead.

[eridani]

6. Doncha just LOVE that good ol' passive voice?

"American workers are being squeezed." Well, no shit, Sherlock! And who, pray tell, is doing the squeezing?

[snot]

7. doan no how this got past the NYT eds., but K&R!!!

[Trailrider1951]

8. The 800 lb gorilla ignored in this article is the bloated CEO

and CFO salaries being given to those at the top of any corporate culture. Just where did you think that money came from? A money tree? It was produced by the labor of the employees on the front line. And they, the workers, deserve to profit from their productivity. And if that sentiment makes me a communist, so be it.

[El Pinko]

9. Seconded. And I would add...

CEOs and CFOs who run their companies into the ground should be forced BY LAW to give their golden parachutes and ill-gotten wealth back to the shareholders.

[n2doc]

10. And hmmm, what did this trend coincide with? The rise of Reagan!

And it will continue until people figure out that they can't trust what the media is telling them and have had enough. Probably during this depression we are entering...

[Overseas]

11. Still waiting for the Trickle Down eh? EOM

[Brigid]

12. Some still are, I think.

Suckers.