Tag: Economic Injustice

Economic Inequality

The Dems should be all over this situation but instead they want to mess around with Epstein and other such nonsense none of which will improve the lives of Americans on iota.

Economic inequality should be the priority as elections start coming into view…for instance…

On Saturday, data shared by The Kobeissi Letter highlights a stark divergence in wealth growth since 1976.

According to the post on X, the real wealth of the top 0.001% of U.S. households has surged roughly 3,500% over that period.

By comparison, the top 0.01% and 0.1% saw gains of about 2,200% and 1,200%, respectively, while the average household’s wealth increased by just 200%.

The post also noted a sharp rise in ultra-wealthy households, estimating that about 430,000 U.S. households now hold at least $30 million in net worth, including roughly 74,000 worth more than $100 million.

A large share of wealth at the top is tied to financial markets. “~72% of wealth for the top 0.1% is concentrated in corporate equities, mutual funds, and private businesses,” the post said.

In contrast, lower-income households have struggled to build wealth.

“The bottom 50% of US households had more debt than assets for nearly 2 decades,” the post stated, adding that their net worth turned positive only after 2020, aided by stimulus checks and rising home values.

Summing up the trend, the post concluded: “Asset owners are the only winners.”

https://www.benzinga.com/news/politics/26/04/51903117/us-wealth-inequality-hits-record-high-as-top-0-001-gains-3500-since-1976-while-average-households-lag-at-200

Let’s be honest the plan is to pay workers as little as possible to keep the CEOs rolling in bonuses….

Janine Jackson interviewed Institute for Policy Studies’ Sarah Anderson about “successful” corporations paying poverty wages for the April 17, 2026, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: In 2024, Forbes asked, “What Is the Secret to Walmart’s Success?” The answer:

Walmart’s strategy is boring but reliable. The foundation is provided by the scale of the business, creating the fuel necessary to maintain cost leadership.

In 2025, the Economist explained to readers “How Walmart Became a Tech Giant—and Took Over the World.” The answer, well, founder Sam Walton, a “trucker-capped, pickup-driving penny-pincher,” had a simple idea: “Keep costs low, pass savings on to customers, win market share, harness scale to further lower costs, and listen as the cash registers sing.”

Early this year, Inc. Magazine gave us “One Bold Decision Helped Make Walmart a Trillion-Dollar Company.” That story says:

Early this year, Inc. Magazine gave us “One Bold Decision Helped Make Walmart a Trillion-Dollar Company.” That story says:

Most experts see the company’s tremendous growth as a triumph of technology, including AI, and that’s certainly true. Walmart has used its heft, highly efficient warehouse network and the ubiquity of its stores as a competitive advantage.

But oho, the shocker, the big reveal, is that former CEO, Doug McMillon, “visited Walmart stores and asked the people working there what they needed. He listened to their answers and he started paying them more.”

Well, I hope you’re sitting down for this: “To begin with, every associate, as Walmart calls employees, would earn at least $9 an hour and soon move up to $10 an hour.” McMillon took home $27.4 million in 2024.

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/its-all-about-keeping-wages-at-poverty-levels-to-overpay-their-ceos/

There you have a simple plan….give the voters something that will help make their wallets fatter and you have hit on a winner.

But instead the Dems crawl back to the high dollar donors and become their representatives not those of the people….they will be losers as long as they lay with the dollars.

You can change that but instead you had rather stand on the sideline and wish for change….and whine about your plight.

Not coming as long as you have that kind of attitude.  PERIOD!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“The Rich Get Richer”

How many times have you heard that in your lifetime?

As much as one may not like this slogan it is true….in the past year billionaires fortunes have shot up 81%….last year alone they shot up 16%….and it ain’t over yet.

Billionaires are entering 2026 wealthier and more numerous than ever, even as global poverty progress stalls, according to a new Oxfam report timed to the World Economic Forum in Davos. The charity says billionaire wealth hit a record $18.3 trillion last year, climbing 16% or $2.5 trillion, with more than 3,000 individuals in the club, per CNBC. Since 2020, their fortunes have grown 81%, or $8.2 trillion—enough to eliminate global poverty 26 times—while overall poverty levels have remained roughly where they stood in 2019, per the Guardian. The report, titled “Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power,” argues that concentrated wealth increasingly translates into political and media influence.

It points to Elon Musk’s role in the US administration, Jeff Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post, and French billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s control of the news outlet CNews as examples. “The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty,” said Oxfam Executive Director Amitabh Behar. Oxfam also highlights President Trump’s 2025 tax package, which it says delivered notable breaks for high earners, including an estimated 3% income boost for those making more than $1 million, while many Americans struggle to cover basic needs; about 10% lived in poverty in 2024, while a 2023 study found most can no longer afford a “minimal quality of life.”

Beyond the US, Oxfam connects economic strain to social unrest, referencing more than 140 significant anti-government protests across 68 countries last year. The organization urges governments to adopt national inequality-reduction plans, increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, strengthen barriers between money and politics, and protect free expression. Without such moves—and with rich nations cutting foreign aid “further and faster than before,” including the shuttering of USAID—Oxfam warns that as many as 14 million additional people could die by 2030. “Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger,” Behar said.

You work, right?…did your income grow by 81% in the last 5 years?  Or for that matter did it grow by 16% last year?

Look at the timeline…..the past 5 years includes Biden as well as Donny….so matters not which party sits in the WH….they are all responsible.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Gilded Age–Second Coming

We know how much I like history and what it can teach us about our future…..so without further ado….

Before we jump into today’s economics we need to step back and take a look at the first Gilded Age….

The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth and industrialization that lasted from the late 1870s until the early 1900s. It was characterized by extreme inequality; the wealthy, including the famous robber barons, experienced high levels of prosperity, while the working classes experienced extreme poverty and labor exploitation.

Key Takeaways

  • The Gilded Age was an era of American history that lasted from the late 1870s until the early 1900s. It was characterized by extreme wealth inequality and industrialization.
  • Major changes during the Gilded Age included the movement from agriculture to industry, shifts from rural to urban living, women’s entry into the labor force, and westward migration.
  • Immigration increased during the Gilded Age, while Black populations migrated north and west in pursuit of economic opportunity and land ownership.
  • The life-threatening working conditions and economic devastation of the working classes partly fueled the rapid industrialization and innovation of the Gilded Age.
  • The rise of investigative journalism, progressive ideologies, and organized labor eventually undermined the Gilded Age’s rigid class structures and exploitation.

https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-age-7692919

Does any of that sound familiar….the inequality, the working class suffers, the ‘Robber Barons’…..any of it?

“Trump’s golden age looks an awful lot like a new Gilded Age,” wrote Politico this month, reflecting on the second inauguration of the United States’ president, prominently attended by tech billionaires. The day after that inauguration, historian Beverly Gage “couldn’t stop thinking about the Gilded Age” and its “rapid technological change as well as stark inequality, corporate graft and violent clashes between workers and bosses”.

But what was the Gilded Age – and does the comparison hold up?

The term, which spans the 1870s–1890s, came from an 1873 novel by celebrated satirist Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day, co-written with journalist and neighbour Charles Dudley Warner. It meant a nation that glittered from its growth and the accumulation of economic power by the extremely wealthy. The title referenced Shakespeare’s King John, in which the Earl of Salisbury states, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily […] is wasteful and ridiculous excess” (Act IV, scene 2).

Trump himself has cited this era as an aspiration. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” Trump said, days after taking office. “It’s fine. It’s OK. But it would have been very much better.”

Experts on the era, however, say he is idealising “a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality”, and “dramatically overestimating” the role of tariffs.

“The most astonishing thing for historians is that nobody in the Gilded Age economy – except for the very rich – wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy,” said Richard White, emeritus professor of history at Stanford University.

early 1870s was full of gilded lilies – a period of wasteful excess, shady dealing in business, and political corruption.

The year 1872 saw a massive scandal over the railroads’ influence in politics, after “a sham construction company”, Crédit Mobilier, had been chartered to build the Union Pacific Railroad “by financing it with unmarketable bonds”.

Representative Oakes Ames of Massachusetts sold the shares at bargain rates to high-ranking House colleagues to secure political clout for the company. While most sold them quickly, representative James Brooks of New York (also a government director for Union Pacific Railroad) profited from a large block of shares.

Ames and Brooks were censured by the House in 1873 for using their political position for financial gain. The Crédit Mobilier Scandal, as it was called, became nationwide news.

The Gilded Age satirised such blatant pursuit of wealth. Its story centred around the members of the fictional Hawkins family, trying to get rich by selling their essentially worthless land in Tennessee under false pretences that misrepresented its value. The novel employs pathos as well as satire. An adopted daughter, Laura Hawkins, kills her married lover. She is tried and acquitted, but before her death, she feels guilty about her past behaviour.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2010/03/Trump-presidency-compared-gilded-age

Our first Gilded Age was so bad it brought on the Progressive era…..we should be so lucky this time around.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Financial Insecurity

If one actually shops then they will have noticed that everything is going up from eggs to autos…..and most Americans see their paycheck worth less and less with each passing check…..

The Century Foundation commissioned a survey last month with polling firm Morning Consult and found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Trump’s policies are to blame for their current financial struggles. However, the report also emphasized that Americans’ “financial insecurity is widespread and runs deep,” and that their concerns stretch back well before Trump’s second term.

“More than 4 in 5 Americans (83%) are concerned about the price of groceries, with nearly half (46%) saying they are very concerned,” writes the Century Foundation. “Nearly half (47%) of Americans are worried about their current ability to pay their rent or mortgage. And nearly two-thirds (64%) worry about their ability to pay an unexpected medical expense if one should arise. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) believe they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill without borrowing.”

These anxieties were particularly strong among younger Generation Z voters, as well as among Black and Latino voters across all age demographics.

Even more troubling, the survey found that Americans are increasingly using financially risky strategies to keep up with paying their bills.

“More than a third of Americans are turning to high-cost debt to cover their bills,” writes the Century Foundation. “Significant shares have also had to turn to credit cards (37%) or take on debt (29%) to afford the bills. This is consistent with the larger trends in use of credit products, like the notable shift in use of ‘buy now, pay later’ products for groceries. The rates of families using credit card debt to cover expenses is all the more concerning as credit card delinquencies continue to rise.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-economy-poll

+++This next report should send those creepy GOPers into a panic attack for after decades of attempting to make actual financial security through politics as something evil the feelings are changing+++

If there is one thing that Republicans and Democratic consultants can agree on, it is that the working class of America loves racism and sexism and hates socialism. Alas, not only does this ignore the rather glaring fact that people of color make up 45 percent of the working class (many of whom even live right here in the Midwest) and that women make up 47 percent, but it turns out that large swaths of this group are quite fond of the kind of left-wing economic policies we have long been told would “scare them off.”

In fact, a recent study from Center for Working‑Class Politics and Jacobin has found that they are even more fond of some of them than non-working class people who consider themselves to be “egalitarians.”

ia Jacobin:

To answer these questions, we analyzed 128 public-opinion questions from three of the most trusted and comprehensive surveys in US political science: the American National Election Studies (ANES), the General Social Survey (GSS), and the Cooperative Election Study (CES). Our data spans from 1960 to 2022, allowing us to track long-term shifts in working-class attitudes across six issue domains: immigration, civil rights, social norms, environmental policy, and two categories of economic policy — predistribution (like wages and job protections) and redistribution (like taxes and social programs).

The results found that there is majority support among the working class for import limits to protect jobs, new limits on imports, increasing the federal minimum wage, belief that the government should do more, labor unions, a jobs guarantee, lower drug prices, increasing state transportation spending, and workers on boards of directors.

As far as redistributive policies go, majorities support increasing spending on Social Security, the poor, health care, social services and public education, as well as expanding Medicare, higher taxes for the rich, a millionaire tax, and paid parental leave.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/shocking-working-class-actually-quite

There is only so much screwing the working class can take before their suppressed attitudes come to the forefront.

We will see if this translates into policy and changes in the next couple of elections.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How About Some Economic News?

Trump tells us that since the markets are making CEOs wealthy the rest of us are doing super good…..let me say here…there is more to an economy than what the markets do or don’t do…..but hey you believe the crap you want then don’t coming crying when it all goes to sh*t.

Markets are up….unemployment is high…..foreclosures on the rise…..food expensive…….medical expensive…..but according to Trump all is well….even good.

First let’s look at Q2 (Second Quarter)……

The US economy plunged at a record rate in the spring but is poised to swing to a record increase in the quarter that just ended. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday in its final estimate for the April-June quarter that the gross domestic product, the economy’s total output of goods and services, fell at a rate of 31.4%. (This estimate, the third, is down from the initial estimates of 33% and 31.7%.) The report shows a decline that is almost four times larger than the previous record-holder, a fall of 10% in the first quarter of 1958 when Dwight Eisenhower was president. The Washington Examiner reports the biggest GDP drop during the Great Recession was 8.4%. The Q1 decline was 5%.

The AP reports economists believe the economy will expand at an annual rate of 30% in the current quarter as businesses have re-opened and millions of people have gone back to work. That would shatter the old record for a quarterly GDP increase, a 16.7% surge in the first quarter of 1950 when Harry Truman was president. The government will not release its just-ended July-September GDP report until Oct. 29, just five days before the presidential election. Many are forecasting that growth will slow significantly in the final three months of this year to a rate of around 4% and could actually topple back into a recession if Congress fails to pass another stimulus measure or if a rising number of coronavirus cases sharply curtails economic activity.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news…..but inflation is already here….at least for the stuff you buy as a normal person…..

If it feels like the price of everything you buy has been soaring, that’s because it has—even as central bankers everywhere worry about the danger of deflation.
The gap between everyday experience and the yearly inflation rate of 1.3% in August is massive. The price of the stuff we’re buying is rising much faster, while the stuff we’re no longer buying has been falling, but still counts for the figures.
Economists will be relieved that the laws of supply and demand are still working, at a time when so much in the discipline is in doubt. But for investors it hangs a veil over the outlook for perhaps the single most important issue for the markets: whether we’re headed for a future of inflation, deflation or a continuation of the past decade’s lackluster price rises.
 
Have you noticed that banks can do whatever they want and never have to pay for their stealing and perjury?
 
Take JP Morgan got caught manipulating the stock and what was the penalty….a slap on the wrist and a fine…..
Following hard on the heels of revelations that major global banks have been involved in a network of criminal money laundering, JPMorgan Chase has been fined $920 million for manipulating markets on two of its trading desks.

The charges involved the practice of spoofing—quickly placing and then withdrawing buy and sell orders to give other traders and their algorithms the false impression that there is a surge of activity.

The spoofing activity covered trades in gold, silver and other metals futures markets as well as markets for Treasury bonds and cash. It covered thousands of trades and involved numerous traders and staff at JPMorgan in New York, London and Singapore.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which conducted the investigation, said traders knowingly placed orders on trading platforms they did not intend to fulfil in the hope this would trick others and enable the JPMorgan traders to obtain a better price.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/01/jpmo-o01.html

Now think back to 208….Morgan was part of the problem that cause the recession and the economic crash….and they are still doing illegal stuff and getting away with it.

And you think it is a fair and equatable system…..NOT!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–20Mar20

Time to bring back the punishment of a firing squad for profit takers in time of a national emergency……especially elected officials that could be acting on insider information….

It seems a couple GOPers have sold their stocks ahead of the pandemic getting worse……

At least two senators who received briefings on the coronavirus outbreak earlier this year publicly offered reassurances that America was ready and privately sold off large amounts of their stock holdings. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13, a week before the market started to tank, ProPublica reports. Records show that the stocks sold by Burr, a North Carolina Republican who was receiving daily briefings on the coronavirus outbreak at the time, included holdings in hotels, shipping firms, and other industries hit hard by the pandemic, reports the Washington Post. Burr’s net worth was estimated at $1.7 million in 2018, meaning the sale likely included most or all of his holdings, ProPublica notes.

Burr is also under scrutiny for remarks he made to a group of VIPs at a private luncheon on Feb, 27. He gave them warnings much stronger than anything he had said in public.”It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to a recording obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.” The Daily Beast reports that Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the newest member of the Senate, sold up to $3 million in stock between Jan. 24, the day of a private all-senators meeting on the coronavirus threat, and mid-February. Loeffler, a Republican from Georgia, jointly owned the stocks with her husband, New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher. Government watchdogs have called for an ethics investigation to determine whether lawmakers profited from inside information, the Post reports.

Four Republican Senators have now been implicated in this coronavirus insider trading scandal. 1. Richard Burr (NC) 2. Jim Inhofe (OK) 3. Ron Johnson (WI) 4. Kelly Loeffler (GA)

If you would like more information…..https://www.rawstory.com/2020/03/republican-jim-inhofe-dumped-up-to-450000-in-stock-the-fourth-gop-senator-implicated-in-scandal-report/

They say that insider trading is hard to prove….but I say…if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck then these guys need to be held up as examples of how bad elected officials are……

Again I say bring back firing squads for those that betray the country in time of emergency.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Economic Realism–2019

We hear almost daily at a Trump rally just how good the economy is doing since he became president….I will admit that the markets, stock markets, are doing well and that is where it ends…..there is nothing good happening beyond those hollow promises.

Trump and the GOP keeps Tweeting about what great condition the economy is in….but I feel they need a refresher course….the economy means….”the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services.”

Markets are soaring…the economy not so much.

I mean a 10% drop in manufacturing (I thought it would all come back under a Trump admin) and investment lagging…..all thanks to the economic policies of this president….

Decisions based on false or misleading information can lead to wrong and harmful solutions. The constant harping on Chinese trade having “cost” America millions of jobs is false, especially given what we now know: that 85 percent of American job losses have resulted from technology, not trade.

This complicated issue is detailed in a Yale University School of Management report. However, this is not the end of the story.

Millions of simple manufacturing jobs have been replaced with service and advanced manufacturing jobs, where America still leads. In fact, American manufacturing’s major problem right now is a shortage of a million skilled workers. We need better worker re-training programs and a campaign to change attitudes towards the social standing of skilled workers in place of our current hyper-focus on college degrees.

Trump’s Trade War Has Dire Consequences

Americans are starting to see just how disastrous Trump policies are for them….these policies may help his rich friends but do very little for mainstream America…..

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters said they are not better of financially since Donald Trump took office, a new poll of likely voters finds.

The October 2019 poll conducted by the Financial Times and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation found that 31 percent of potential U.S. voters reported being worse off financially since Trump took office in January 2017. An additional third of Americans surveyed, 33 percent, said there has been no change in their financial status under the Trump administration.

Just over one-third of those surveyed, 35 percent, said they were better off since Trump moved into the White House.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-presidency-helped-americans-financial-standing-poll-us-voters-1469625

The bottom line on the economy is…..not good.

While you weren’t looking — perhaps while you were watching impeachment hearings – the trade war with China went completely off the rails and lost its meaning.

To understand why, you have to know why the US started a trade war with China started in the first place. It started with a very specific investigation — an investigation into China’s theft of US intellectual property (IP) using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

The investigation determined what many in the business community had been talking about for years, the fact that China abused its US partners, stole the IP of American companies, forced those companies to reveal their technology to Chinese counterparts and muscled US firms out of the Chinese economy in favor of state owned enterprises (SOEs).

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-war-us-china-tariffs-lost-no-meaning-2019-11

Sadly those so-called “Free Markets” are killing the very sector it is suppose to help and advance…..

National industrial policy was once something you might read about in today’s equivalent of a friend’s Facebook post, as hard as that might sound to believe. It was in newspapers; it was on the radio. Taxi drivers had opinions about it. That all changed in the last 35 years, when the rise and fall of the stock market and a shallow conversation about unemployment rates took over. Industrial policy became an inside-baseball conversation, and to the extent that it was discussed, it was through the prism of whether it imperiled the golden gospel and great economic distraction of our time, “the free market.”

The decades of free-market propaganda we’ve been exposed to are basically an exercise in distracting the public from the meaningful choices that are now made behind closed doors. The two big political parties that outwardly represent symbolic issues like gun rights and school prayer spend the bulk of their time and political energy on complex industrial and regulatory questions.

America Will Keep Losing Its Middle Class as Long as ‘Free Markets’ Dominate the Economic Debate

Trade wars do nothing to help the Middle Class advance….and after so many years of a “free Market” mentality the proof is in the dwindling of the Middle Class.

The stock markets are not the economy in its entirety.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Closing Thought–18Oct19

How do we fight economic injustice?

Appears AOC, one of Trump’s nemeses on the Hill, has a plan….a plan that she has put into motion as a bill/law…..

Representative Ocasio-Cortez believes that we must build a just society to protect our communities and uplift our neighbors. A Just Society legislation aims to combat one of the greatest threats to our country, our democracy, and our freedom: economic inequality

…

A Just Society aims to ensure that we are on a path towards shared prosperity for all. A just society provides a living wage, safe working conditions, and healthcare. A just society acknowledges the value of immigrants to our communities. A just society guarantees safe, comfortable, and affordable housing. By strengthening our social and economic foundations, we are preparing ourselves to embark on the journey to save our planet by rebuilding our economy and cultivate a just society. To learn more, follow the links below.

https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/ajs

Check out her plan and then tell me your thoughts.  Please keep the lies of socialism to a minimum…..if you cannot be constructive and unbiased……. then move along.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

2020 #1 Issue

We can pretend that there is a wealth of issues that will drive them voters to the polls…..beating, Trump, Climate Change, nation security, etc etc, but the truth is that all these are secondary………the main issue that the candidates need to clarify their positions is…..economics.

Whatever distractions candidates promote to win voters, some underlying issues will wield their influence on 2020 election outcomes in any case. The biggest of these are the historically accumulated anger and betrayal felt by millions of working class Americans. Since the 1970s, their relative position within income and wealth distributions has declined. Real wages stagnated while workers’ rising productivity made ever more profits for employers, widening inequality. That alone depressed the class, but US society is structured to add many political, cultural, and social demotions onto those whose relative economic position declines.

As stagnant real wages constricted workers’ consumption growth, political supports (from government programs to politicians’ attentions) shrank. Shifting cultural norms (smart phones, fashionable bars, fancy sports arenas, etc.) entailed new costs that were increasingly unaffordable. Rising consumer debt (mortgages, car loans, and credit card balances) only partly offset the new costs. Yet that debt also raised new kinds and degrees of financial anxieties.

American History and the 2020 Election

Candidates, the party matters not, do what they must to gain votes….pretend the issue is important then lie about what they will do to rectify the problem.

And the American worker is still waiting for that candidate that will do what they say to improve their lot…….this batch of candidates is a typical batch…..liars and pretenders every one.

But since they seem to have a hard time finding a foothold then let me help them out…..

A Congressional Budget Office analysis published Monday showed that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would significantly increase pay for over 27 million workers and lift 1.3 million people—including hundreds of thousands of children—out of poverty.

The CBO also found that more than doubling the federal minimum wage would boost the income of families earning less than three times the poverty rate by nearly $22 billion.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/09/cbo-analysis-shows-15-federal-minimum-wage-would-raise-pay-27-million-workers-and

See!  It is that easy to find an issue that would make the voters smile.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Are You Middle Class?

Remember when that was something to strive for in your job search? Remember when that was the American Dream? Remember when you could work 40 hours a week and still have enough to live on and even save a little for retirement?

If you remember that then you are an old fart and are remembering something from the “good old days”.

The American Conservative has looked into the Middle Class……

Can we define the middle class in practical terms? To be sure, there are probably as many sociological definitions of the middle class as there are commentators seeking definitions. So let’s set aside the socio-swamp of beliefs, values, and taxonomies of class in favor of a definition with measurable thresholds.

Many commentators attempt to define the middle class by income, and people tend to self-report that they belong to the middle class based on income. The self-evident way to define the middle class by income is to set aside the top 10 percent (households earning $145,000 or more) and those defined as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau (households making less than $25,000), roughly 25 percent of all households.

Somewhere between the two is the middle class, though trying to narrow it down forces us into an impassable statistical thicket. For example, government agencies report income in different ways. The IRS reports individual tax returns (147 million) while other agencies report household income (117 million households).

Are You Really Middle Class?

If you are asking yourself….”what the Hell happened”? Then this can help explain it as simply as possible…..

Something massive and important has happened in the United States over the past 50 years: Economic wealth has become increasingly concentrated among a small group of ultra-wealthy Americans.

You can read lengthy books on this subject, like economist Thomas Piketty’s recent best-seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (the book runs 696 pages and weighs in at 2.5 pounds). You can see references to this in the campaigns of major political candidates this cycle, who talk repeatedly about how something has gone very wrong in America.

Donald Trump’s motto is to make America great again, while Bernie Sanders’s campaign focused on reducing income inequality. And there’s a reason this message is resonating with voters:

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/this-cartoon-explains-how-the-rich-got-rich-and-the-poor-got-poor

We need to assign guilt to the best person….Ronald Reagan….his policies started this decline and it has never let up……

The Middle Class is quickly disappearing and as it does it is taking the American Dream with it.

And the GOP wants you to be happy with your decline…..

Listening to Republicans, it’s apparent they don’t have much respect for the intelligence of the American people.

Over 70 percent of Americans want a national health care system like every other developed country in the world has, but the GOP tells us that we just aren’t smart enough to make it work. It’ll be too confusing and complex for average Americans, they say, and, besides that, if the government “takes over” our health care system, we’re on our way to tyranny.

About two-thirds of Americans think that we should have free college education for anybody intellectually capable of attending, and free trade schools as well—like pretty much every other developed country in the world (and quite a few of the developing countries). Republicans tell us that we can’t use government funds to pay off our nation’s $1.5 trillion in student debt because we just borrowed that exact amount last year to give tax rebates to billionaires, so there’s nothing left. We’re just not smart enough to fix the problem.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/04/republicans-have-put-our-country-path-warp-speed-decline-and-they-want-you-think

As the article says….”as long as the GOP gets some of the people to believe their bullshit all the time”…..the rest of us are screwed!

On a side note……the Pentagon is also in the Middle Class screwing game……

According to SAIS Professor Hal Brands, progressives and Americans should embrace the social benefits military spending offers to the middle class. Not only does American military strength support the liberal world order that makes the world “safe for democracy,” Brands claimed, but military spending undergirds millions of middle-class jobs for service members, civilian employees, and contractors for the Pentagon.

In reality, the opposite is true: American military adventurism and massive spending undermines middle-class prosperity and makes the world less free and secure. A militarized approach to American foreign policy harms global freedom and security far more than it helps.

How the Pentagon Budget is a Threat to the Middle Class

You can stop this…….VOTE!

Vote for the candidate that has the best plan to stop this slide.

Vote for the candidate that best has the best interests of the country at heart.

VOTE!