The Times on the good times that weren't all that good:
And if the good times have really ended, they were never that good to begin with. Most American households are still not earning as much annually as they did in 1999, once inflation is taken into account. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, a prolonged expansion has never ended without household income having set a new record. ... It now looks as if a full decade may pass before most Americans receive a raise.
Thanks, George!
Over the last year, the number of officially unemployed has risen by 500,000, while the number of people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking for a job — has risen by 1.3 million.
Employment has risen by 100,000, but even that comes with a caveat: there are also 600,000 more people who are working part time because they could not find full-time work, according to the Labor Department.
“The decline in the unemployment rate,” said Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR, a research firm in New York, “should not be viewed as good news.”
Well, look. Who said "the economy" was for everybody? Let's be reasonable, here. I say put the losers out on the ice floes and let them make their way. Give 'em a few minutes to gather their cans of dog food, then out.
And the kicker:
For a variety of reasons that economists only partly understand — including technological change and global trade — many workers have received only modest raises in recent years, despite healthy economic growth.
Feh. Most of us understand the reasons perfectly well, and the economists are lagging indicators for the reality-based community. Our wages were frozen because the Conservative Movement changed the rules so that the rich could cream off the gains of economic expansion. "The economy" is their economy. End of story. Edwards understood that. Hillary doesn't, nor does Obama.
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ah, but let not the bitter draught of poverty cloud the
lovely aroma of schadenfreude. b/c a lot of lesser rich people, bushlovers mostly, are feeling it too. in a way that really hurts them.
investor class republicans need employed little people to skim off the flow of money back and forth between us and china, and SA. they've gone too far this time, and killed the golden slave, or something. there will be a lot of blood flowing at the top, at least more than most of them have felt for a long time.
everyone will enjoy the shitpile.
You might be right, but...
Since I've been alive (over 40 years), the system has been "privatized profits and socialized losses".
Meaning the investor class will get bailed out, and the rest of us will get to pay for it. And everyone who isn't a member of the investor class will pay -- middle class adults through taxes, working class adults through inflation, and our kids through national debt. Ain't capitalism grand?
Just thinking...
... of some post over at Pandagon that I'm too lazy to find the link for, but the gist was that capitalism sucked, but at least there were ways to bring the market under control and ameliorate the bad effects. Patriarchy, now--the world's most popular ideology--is a lot older, a lot more powerful, and much harder to ameliorate.
And it now occurs to me that one could look at the fruits of the Conservative Movement on income distribution as a process of setting up, again, a family/clan-based system of rule which is, of course (?), patriarchal in nature. See Erik Prince, Christianist
son of Edgar Prince, for example. Bill Kristol, Irving Kristol. And on and on and on.
One would then look at "privatized profit, socialized risk" as a massive market failure -- brought on by patriarchy. Just a thought. And possibly a node to add to the triangles...
Not sure where to go with this. But.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi