>> Americans without a high-school diploma are losing ground against those who have college degrees. But this argues not for higher taxes on the rich, who already pay the vast bulk of U.S. taxes. It argues for reforming K-12 education so even the weakest and poorest students can compete against the world."

Total bullshiat but what else would you expect from the Wall Street Urinal.

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Retraining Laid-Off Workers, but for What?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/business/yourmoney/26lou.html?pagewanted=1&e i=5070&en=6ee9319f78ec49ce&ex=1157342400

There are plenty of highly educated software people and engineers who's jobs have been outsourced too. Not to mention being replaced by h-1b guest workers brought into this country.

>> "We'd suggest readers ignore the inequality fad that is intended for election-year consumption and keep their eyes on what really matters--the policies that promote growth and prosperity for all Americans."

They must be talking about periods 1 and 2 when the left leaning economic policies were in effect.

You can see that that raygun swing to the right did nothing except make inequality worse.


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http://64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk226.shtml

1) The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.

2) The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.

3) Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.

4) The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent - people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 - rose 135 percent.

>> They're just trying to keep the populist hordes from the gate.

yep and look at the convoluted stats they come up with.

And the whole subtext is that Clinton was a big liberal instituting all kinds of left wing policies .

What a desperate reach but thats all they got on their side at this point.

I love bad economies cause nothing does a better job of throwing conservatives out on their butt. Ask daddy shrub.

5 million more people in poverty than when shrub took office.

Yeah i believe the Wall Street Urinal.

>> We are SO screwed, and we did it to ourselves.

Not really it was conservatives and their idiot followers that did it to us.

Downward Mobility

Aug 30, 2006

If you're still harboring the notion that the economy is "good," prepare to be disabused.

Even the best number from yesterday's Census Bureau report for 2005 is bad news for most Americans. It shows that median income rose 1.1 percent last year, to $46,326, the first increase since it peaked in 1999. But the entire increase is attributable to the 23 million households headed by someone over age 65. So the gain is likely from investment income and Social Security, not wages and salaries.

For the other 91 million households, the median dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under-65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full-time working men for the second year in a row, and among full-time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under-65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out.

Despite the Bush-era expansion, the number of Americans living in poverty in 2005 - 37 million - was the same as in 2004. This is the first time the number has not risen since 2000. But the share of the population now in poverty - 12.6 percent - is still higher than at the trough of the last recession, when it was 11.7 percent. And among the poor, 43 percent were living below half the poverty line in 2005 - $7,800 for a family of three. That's the highest percentage of people in "deep poverty" since the government started keeping track of those numbers in 1975.

As for the uninsured, their ranks grew in 2005 by 1.3 million people, to a record 46.6 million, or 15.9 percent. That's also worse than the recession year 2001, reflecting the rising costs of health coverage and a dearth of initiatives to help families and companies cope with the burden. For the first time since 1998, the percentage of uninsured children increased in 2005.

The Census findings are yet another indication that growth alone is not the answer to the economic and social ills of poverty, income inequality and lack of insurance. Economic growth was strong in 2005, and productivity growth was impressive. What have been missing are government policies that help to ensure that the benefits of growth are broadly shared - like strong support for public education, a progressive income tax, affordable health care, a higher minimum wage and other labor protections.

President Bush is unlikely to push for those changes, wed as he is to tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. But the economic agenda for the next president couldn't be clearer.

Sorry about not including the source in my previous post

New York Times editorial

>> Your old econ teacher was an asshole.

Yep.

And stupid enough to try to use a disproven philosopy like Calvinism to prop up a lie.

>> ever notice the ones crying the most about the inequities, are the ones who have the most?
just a casual observation

No just a dumb observation with no basis in reality.

Plenty of rich people don't give a shiat about the poor and plenty of people of modest means do care.

But it does show that we should ignore somebody like yourself that has nothing intelligent to say