The Destruction of the American Dream

The Great American Paycheck Squeeze

Over Last Two Decades, as U.S. Workers Became More Productive, a Third of All Income Growth Went to Top .01

Is the American working family being squeezed? The Obama Administration seems to think so. According to The New York Times, the White House is planning to use federal contracts to try to leverage higher wages and benefits for workers. Of course, just how squeezed the average paycheck appears depends a lot on where you sit . . . and where you work. Our Cover Story is reported by Jim Axelrod:

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(Economic Policy Institute)

The reality is, for more and more Americans in these recessionary times, SAS might as well be Disney World. The fact is, most workers feel overworked, under-appreciated and - most of all - under-paid.

"We're living through one of the worst times for wage growth ever," said Larry Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit Washington think tank. "From 2002 to 2007, the hourly compensation of a typical college graduate or a typical high school graduate went up zero - didn't grow at all."

Mishel says for most American workers, wages have been under assault for nearly 40 years. >>>>>

Which made those some forty years easy for some to forecast, continually over that time frame, exactly what would happen as we're now living in that time while some, mainly those that led the changes in what they referred to still as capitalism and the younger followers, still think they can continue as if nothing had happened, they'll fall even harder and blame everyone else for that fall!

To make their dream and profits connected with last they added relatively easy credit and financial schemes of same while keeping wages stagnant and forcing more work on those that really do the work creating huge debt but ever growing profit for themselves and the investor, especially the big wall street investment houses and banks, damn the quality and consumer protections full speed ahead and grotesque ever growing wealth for the few!

Personal experience: You know those ever rising residential, wait till the commercial bubble that already collapsed hits the msm, property prices, many using the good ole meme's of the cost of labor, well like every other reality the trademans labor wages didn't go up, and like most jobs more work was pushed on fewer people and cost cutting use of sub contractors, but has been relatively stagnant for some thirty years now, and now quickly heading backwards, as many of the trades have reverted from the professions they once were, with hard work both physically and mentally to give quality product, to labels like 'skilled labor' or 'semi-skilled labor' or just plain 'labor' and are looked down on as also uneducated or under educated as we've created the education industry of pieces of paper that those who have are all classed as the educated, many are but even the ones lacking in the norms of common sense and critical with actually think they are up with the real intellectuals and educated.

Getting Back On Track

Anthony Mason spoke with Lakshman Achuthan of The Economic Cycle Research Institute about where the U.S. economy stands and how it's getting back on track.