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posted by martyb on Friday August 03 2018, @08:21AM   Printer-friendly
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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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:48AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:48AM (#717089) Journal

    The education system fails even before it reaches the compound interest level. The most simple, the most basic skill of "value" is neglected. Somewhere in my education history, there were attempts to make us understand value.

    An item costs twenty dollars, and has a life expectancy of twenty uses. A similar item costs forty dollars, and has a life expectancy of hundreds of uses. Which has the greater value?

    We all witness decisions every day, in which the buy purchases the less valuable item. Sometimes, the item with greater value is actually priced LESS than the item with lesser value.

    Someone is dying for an example. Walk into your local hardware store or farmer's coop. Walk into the gardening tools section. The price range can be surprising. Hickory handled tools are expensive, while wooden handled tools using pine are less expensive. Most of the time, the fiberglass or plastic handled tools are considerably cheaper than either. I have found that those fiberglass handles last, and last, and last, even in the hands of people who abuse their tools, and even in the hands of people who leave tools out in the weather. Hickory handles suffer abuse pretty nicely, but they don't like being left out in the elements. Plastic handles suck in all respects. But those cheap wooden handles are the worst. They will readily break even in the hands of a skilled worker who never abuses his tools.

    Figuring the value and the quality of an item is a lost art. It is simply not taught, because it would interfere with our whole mass marketing philosophy in the US.

    Economists would have heart attacks if people started to demand only high quality items, with high value. The junk tools market would dry up overnight. That would be bad enough, but those shoppers would soon begin applying those demands to other markets. Imagine how it would affect business when homes and automibiles were subjected to the same scrutiny.

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