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Almost 80% of US Workers Live From Paycheck to Paycheck

posted by martyb on Friday August 03 2018, @08:21AM   
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

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Original Submission

• Re:*You* elected Trump instead of Bernie (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:09PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @01:09PM (#716671)

  No, the DNC elected Trump instead of Bernie. In fact, the DNC is so far still completely unable to admit their fuck-up.

  But was it really a fuck-up? Trump seems to have given them the perfect excuse to go on an Orwellian crusade against "fake news." Facebook censorship targets the left [wsws.org]:

  Earlier this year, the organizers of the August 12, 2017 Charlottesville rally, known as “Unite the Right,” announced a plan to hold another demonstration on its anniversary, this time in Washington D.C. In response, over a dozen left-wing organizations and dozens of prominent individuals, including whistleblower Chelsea Manning, called a counter-protest on the same day.

  As part of a campaign to block what it called “divisive,” “violent,” and “extremist” activity, Facebook, working in conjunction with US intelligence agencies, announced Tuesday that it had blocked not the Nazi rally, but an event page for the demonstration protesting it.

  The statements accompanying Facebook’s action make clear that the blocking of the counter-demonstration is a deliberate effort to repress and criminalize left-wing political views, setting a far-reaching and dangerous precedent.

  Facebook’s blog post announcing the blocking of the event, together with 32 other accounts, cited an analysis by the Atlantic Council think tank noting that all the accounts targeted by Facebook were left-wing, including accounts opposing police violence, attacks on immigrants and the Trump administration’s promotion of fascist groups.

  Renee DiResta is director of research at New Knowledge, a consultancy firm that claims to protect the reputations of businesses from what it calls “suspicious communities.”

  With reference to “fake” ads run ahead of the 2016 election, she noted that the accounts promoted statements “targeting the left,” aiming “to paint Secretary Clinton in a negative light as compared to candidates Jill Stein or Senator Bernie Sanders.”

  There you have it, folks. Facebook is going to shut down "fake news," and what "fake news" looks like is opposition to Hillary Clinton from the left.

  "Fake news" opposing Hillary Clinton from the right will never be shut down, because that is not the intention. Instead we see CNN promoting and publicizing some hysterical conspiracy theory having to do with bad Reddit haiku and QAnon.

  Overtures of impeachment have been a drawn-out, dramatic reality TV show with the sole intention of distraction from what's really going on. Does anybody here except our obvious DNC shill really think that if the Democratic Party gains control of Congress in November, they will begin the impeachment process to remove Trump from office?

  Parent

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