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from the need-bigger-paychecks-or-shorter-weeks dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
America doesn't have a jobs crisis. It has a 'good jobs' crisis – where too much employment is insecure, and poorly paid
The official rate of unemployment in America has plunged to a remarkably low 3.8%. The Federal Reserve forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 3.5% by the end of the year.
But the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs, a growing number of contract workers with no job security, and an army of part-time workers desperate for full-time jobs. Almost 80% of Americans say they live from paycheck to paycheck, many not knowing how big their next one will be.
[...] The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year, not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few top executives of large companies, financiers, and inventors and owners of digital devices.
[...] Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages. Contrast this with the late 1990s, the last time unemployment dipped close to where it is today, when the portion of national income going into wages was 3% points higher than it is today.
[...] By the mid-1950s more than a third of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. In subsequent decades public employees became organized, too. Employers were required by law not just to permit unions but to negotiate in good faith with them. This gave workers significant power to demand better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. (Agreements in unionized industries set the benchmarks for the non-unionized).
[...] Today, fewer than 7% of private-sector workers are unionized, and public-employee unions are in grave jeopardy, not least because of the supreme court ruling. The declining share of total US income going to the middle since the late 1960s – defined as 50% above and 50% below the median – correlates directly with that decline in unionization. (See chart below).
[...] This great shift in bargaining power, from workers to corporations, has pushed a larger portion of national income into profits and a lower portion into wages than at any time since the second world war. In recent years, most of those profits have gone into higher executive pay and higher share prices rather than into new investment or worker pay. Add to this the fact that the richest 10% of Americans own about 80% of all shares of stock (the top 1% owns about 40%), and you get a broader picture of how and why inequality has widened so dramatically.
[...] It is no coincidence that all three branches of the federal government, as well as most state governments, have become more "business-friendly" and less "worker-friendly" than at any time since the 1920s. As I've noted, Congress recently slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. [...] The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009, and is now about where it was in 1950 when adjusted for inflation.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @08:38AM (15 children)
If you apologize for illegals depressing wage growth and increasing housing costs while paying no taxes - you are financially illiterate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @08:41AM (10 children)
And if not?
Nothing in the above suggests the topic is illegal immigrants.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @09:18AM (9 children)
You can't pay cash for a house working minimum wage unless it's a retirement property. Do the maths deducting rent, living costs and taxes.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @09:44AM (6 children)
How about living in a caravan and having the meals covered by food stamps?
Nothing suggested it's not about buying a retirement property.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @10:58AM (5 children)
Why is the government subsidising working people?
Don't have children, never spend any money and right before you die, you may be able to afford an asset that's overpriced due to immigration. Welcome to the American Dream. One offer per person, terms and conditions apply.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @11:45AM (3 children)
Worth your fate, then.
Cause it ain't the immigrants that rob you, it's the 1%-ers that take your money and the immigrants' money. all the same.
The difference between the immigrants and you? The immigrants manage to tighten their ass and grow some kids on the same or lower income as you.
All the while you are skulking over the immigrants instead of looking for who takes the money from both of you.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @12:18PM
Immigration places downwards pressure on wages and upwards pressure on property prices. A growing percentage of the population cannot afford to buy a home and raise a family without government assistance. The top 10% disproportionately pay for that assistance [dailysignal.com] and it is unsustainable. [wikipedia.org]
Sorry, no. We're discussing economics, not my personal finances.
That's not the poverty trap. Reread the first paragraph above until you understand it.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday August 03 2018, @12:28PM (1 child)
FTFY. But don't worry, the Western way of life (living on credit, throwing perfectly good stuff away, over-eating, designer clothes, must have latest shiny) will soon rub off on them - although they will still churn out those hordes of kids. As things are going, in a generation or two the USA (and maybe Europe too) will look like a combination of India and Mexico today and maybe the whites (those still around) will be in reservations. The One-Worlders actually want that, it would be the culmination of their self-hate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:49PM
What brought about such insanity? Or is your name indicative of being a North Korea plant? Hopeful, crazy, and insanely dedicated to making the world worse?
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday August 03 2018, @10:23PM
"Don't have children" is fundamentally good advice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @11:01PM (1 child)
I did. There are thousands of houses for sale around the US in the sub $20k range. Most are fixers, but a couple of year of fixing was enough to make it rentable and also to get a loan for an even better house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @12:04AM
I'm pretty sure GP was talking about people who weren't living in their mother's basement while earning the $20k for a fixer-upper to flip.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday August 03 2018, @10:42AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @11:35AM
Come on - that's not the driver of house pricing, it's simple supply and demand with an unhealthy dose of cheap credit forcing prices upwards.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:32PM (1 child)
There immigrants in Europe and Canada and they don't have wage issues there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @08:44PM
That's the thing. The issue with wages isn't the immigrants, the number of jobs that they can do is relatively small compared with what somebody born here can do. There used to be many janitors in the US with PhDs in things like nuclear physics because they didn't have the language skills for better jobs and there were already enough people working those jobs.
What depresses wages is the extremely low interest rates and tax structure. If we had a tax structure that encouraged poorer people to save and discouraged the hoarding of money by the wealthy we'd see an income distribution where it's realistic to expect that all but the very poorest would be saving money for the future. As it is, the government encourages the people with money to invest it in companies that try to return as much of the ROI as possible to the investors with no safety valve or sanity check on the process to protect the poorest from working for essentially nothing.
There shouldn't be people with full time jobs that are homeless or on government assistance.