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Mike Ch

Bad Employment Report Even Worse Than It Appears - 0 views

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    Despite the Corporate media's overly optimistic and distorted reporting of today's employment report, the news was not good at all. The economy continues to lose jobs at a rapid rate. And without the multiple statistical manipulations used to concoct today's report, job losses in August would have been almost -300,000 or more.
thinkahol *

YouTube - The End Of America - 0 views

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    More at http://www.theuptake.org ABOUT THIS VIDEO: President Obama's stimulus package is intended not only to shore up the economy, but the U.S. psyche. The American Dream itself. But what if we euthanize the American Dream? The Uptake wants to hear your voice. Submit your own video "letter to the editor." More information: How to submit a video 1) Have something intelligent to say 2) Record it on a video using your real name. 3) Upload it at www.tubemogul.com using info@theuptake.org as your log in and uptake411 as your password. 4) Send an email to info@theuptake.org telling us about your video. Dennis Trainor, Jr is a regular video contributor to TheUptake.org. He was a writer & media consultant for Dennis Kucinich's 2008 presidential campaign & a 2007 "Best of YouTube" nominee for his work as writer/ performer on "The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood." He is currently at work on two books: "My Progressive Dilemma" (chronicling President Obama's 1st year in office) and a novel adapted from his play, "I Coulda Been a Kennedy." Contact: dennistrainorjr (at) gmail (dot) com
Sarah Eeee

Income Inequality and the 'Superstar Effect' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite clutch of superstars threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try.
  • It is true that the nation grew quite fast as inequality soared over the last three decades. Since 1980, the country’s gross domestic product per person has increased about 69 percent, even as the share of income accruing to the richest 1 percent of the population jumped to 36 percent from 22 percent. But the economy grew even faster — 83 percent per capita — from 1951 to 1980, when inequality declined when measured as the share of national income going to the very top of the population.
  • The cost for this tonic seems to be a drastic decline in Americans’ economic mobility. Since 1980, the weekly wage of the average worker on the factory floor has increased little more than 3 percent, after inflation. The United States is the rich country with the most skewed income distribution. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average earnings of the richest 10 percent of Americans are 16 times those for the 10 percent at the bottom of the pile. That compares with a multiple of 8 in Britain and 5 in Sweden.
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  • Not coincidentally, Americans are less economically mobile than people in other developed countries. There is a 42 percent chance that the son of an American man in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will be stuck in the same economic slot. The equivalent odds for a British man are 30 percent, and 25 percent for a Swede.
  • Just as technology gave pop stars a bigger fan base that could buy their CDs, download their singles and snap up their concert tickets, the combination of information technology and deregulation gave bankers an unprecedented opportunity to reap huge rewards. Investors piled into the top-rated funds that generated the highest returns. Rewards flowed in abundance to the most “productive” financiers, those that took the bigger risks and generated the biggest profits. Finance wasn’t always so richly paid. Financiers had a great time in the early decades of the 20th century: from 1909 to the mid-1930s, they typically made about 50 percent to 60 percent more than workers in other industries. But the stock market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression changed all that. In 1934, corporate profits in the financial sector shrank to $236 million, one-eighth what they were five years earlier. Wages followed. From 1950 through about 1980, bankers and insurers made only 10 percent more than workers outside of finance, on average.
  • Then, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration unleashed a surge of deregulation. By 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act lay repealed. Banks could commingle with insurance companies at will. Ceilings on interest rates vanished. Banks could open branches anywhere. Unsurprisingly, the most highly educated returned to banking and finance. By 2005, the share of workers in the finance industry with a college education exceeded that of other industries by nearly 20 percentage points. By 2006, pay in the financial sector was again 70 percent higher than wages elsewhere in the private sector. A third of the 2009 Princeton graduates who got jobs after graduation went into finance; 6.3 percent took jobs in government.
  • Then the financial industry blew up, taking out a good chunk of the world economy. Finance will not be tamed by tweaking the way bankers are paid. But bankers’ pay could be structured to discourage wanton risk taking
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    (Part 2 of 2 - see first part below) What impact do the incredible salaries of superstars have on the rest of us? What has changed, technologically and socially, to precipitate these inequities? This article also offers a brief look at the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, comparing the US throughout its history and the US vis a vis several European countries.
thinkahol *

Will US Mayors Vote Against War? - 0 views

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    But Barry's words ring true. The city of Detroit stands as a mirror to the United States' battered economy and failing wars. Our nation's continued military exploits in Iraq and Afghanistan are fueling Detroit's destruction. Taxpayers from Detroit shell out over two billion dollars a year for war, money that could cover healthcare for over 150,000 children or the payment of some 3,000 teachers' salaries. While Senator Levin might not want to make the link between war funding and the financial woes of our cities, mayors around the country are doing just that. At this year's annual US Conference of Mayors, to be held from June 17-21 in Baltimore, hundreds of mayors will gather to discuss diverse issues from job growth to homeland security. One of the issues they will vote on is the Bring Our War Dollars Home resolution, introduced by Mayor Kitty Piercy from Eugene, Oregon, which calls on Congress to redirect military spending to domestic priorities.
Joe La Fleur

China and Russia are Acquiring Gold, Dumping US Dollars | Global Research - 0 views

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    OBAMAS DISTRUCTION OF US ECONOMY ALMOST COMPLETE
thinkahol *

Robert Reich: The Tortoise Economy - 0 views

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    Economically, the underlying problem is structural, not cyclical. There will be no return to normal because normal got us into the hole in the first place, and the normal set of prescriptions can't possibly get us out of it.
Skeptical Debunker

Obama, Republicans clash at heated health summit - Yahoo! News - 0 views

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    "We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem." With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation." And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House - a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public. The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next. Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.
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    Of course the "we" in "We can't afford this" is the big health care monopolies (pharma, insurance, etc.). Supposedly, the country and people can afford the continued gouging by those special interests (up to 40% in some places this year alone!). Too, if the government were to find a way to "afford it" (disregarding that Medicare and Medicaid savings might pay for it altogether!), that would probably be on the "back" of the richest 5% and by reducing corporate and business subsidies (like those to oil companies, the military industrial complex, "big finance" bailouts and sweetheart Federal funds rates and "liquidity" pumping, non-risk underwriting for things like coastal flood insurance, etc., etc., etc.). Since that is the "invisible hand" that feeds most "conservatives" and Republican politicians, that would never do.
rich hilts

Government Control Legislation? - 0 views

shared by rich hilts on 13 Jan 11 - No Cached
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    Control this, don't get too close, don't say that. Don't touch this, don't use that word, don't own this, don't use that. Don't argue too loud, don't get too emotional, don't engage in rhetoric. It's the left, it's the right, it's the speech, it's the radio, it's the tv, it's the politicians, it's the economy, it's the healthcare, it's the currency, it's the movies, it's the music. What is coming down the pike and is there any stop to it?
thinkahol *

The Blog : How Rich is Too Rich? : Sam Harris - 0 views

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    I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing. Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment. Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy. Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money. But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion doll
thinkahol *

BBC News - Ben Bernanke says US economy 'close to faltering' - 0 views

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    But he warned that the eurozone debt crisis, as well as overly hasty spending cuts by the federal government, risked undermining the US recovery.
thinkahol *

Guest Post: Take This Job And Shove It | zero hedge - 0 views

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    The true picture of the American economy is that in 2007 there were 146 million Americans employed, or 63% of the working age population. Today, there are 139.9 million Americans employed, or 58.5% of the working age population. Over this time frame, an additional 7.1 million Americans entered the working age population. In 2007 there were 26.3 million Americans on food stamps, or 8.6% of the US population. Today there are 44.2 million Americans on food stamps, or 14.3% of the US population. To call the current economic disaster a recovery is to practice the art of the Big Lie.
thinkahol *

They Only Have 400 Votes | MichaelMoore.com - 0 views

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    Michael Moore's comments today delivered and relayed at the "We Are One" rally at the State Capitol in Honolulu: Greetings! I want to thank you for turning out today to make your voices heard -- and they ARE heard, even across ocean and land. Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans are joining with you to honor Dr. King by standing up for working people all over America. It was what he was doing in Memphis when he was killed 43 years ago today, supporting sanitation workers on strike.   Today everywhere is Memphis, and it's not just sanitation workers being attacked. It's teachers and firefighters and social workers -- yes, all those greedy public workers who caused the Great Recession we are in! It was the greedy teachers who caused the crash on Wall Street! It was the greedy firefighters who sent millions of jobs overseas! It was the greedy social workers who insisted that GE pay no taxes and that CEOs should make 500 times what the average employee makes! No, my friends, it wasn't! It was the top 1% of the country who did this. THEY brought on the mortgage crisis. THEY made off with billions of dollars from our economy. THEY have systematically destroyed the middle class. And THEY have bought and sold the very people elected to represent us! America is not broke! It's just that the wealthy have absconded with the money! They've removed it from circulation and left us begging for school supplies and fire trucks and libraries. Even the Wall Street Journal admits that the uber-rich are currently just sitting on almost $2 trillion of cash. They're not creating jobs with it. They're not re-circulating it. They're just hanging on to it hoping to make more money off it by continuing their casino games in the stock market, the derivatives market, the credit default swaps market and any other crazy scheme they can invent. This has to stop. But it won't stop unless we make it stop. 400 wealthy Americansnow have more wealth than 150 million Americans COMBINED!  But what
thinkahol *

"Captured Europe" by Simon Johnson | Project Syndicate - 0 views

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    The Greek default has turned out to be the proverbial dog that didn't bark. The lesson for Europe - and for the US - is clear: it is time to stop listening to what banks say, and start focusing on what they do. We must re-evaluate the distorted political economy of the financial sector, before the excessive power of the few imposes even larger costs on everyone else.
thinkahol *

Good Government vs. Less Government « The Baseline Scenario - 0 views

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    Recently, a controversy raged in the blogosphere about whether neo-liberalism has been a bane or a boon for the world economy. The argument is rather coarse, in that it fails to distinguish between the various elements of neo-liberalism, or moderate deregulation vs. extreme deregulation. But if we take the argument at face value, one of the major claims of neoliberals is that countries in the world which are more neoliberal are more successful (because they are more neoliberal). I disagree. My disagreement is not with the raw correlation between the Heritage Index and Per Capita GDP. A number is a number. My disagreement is with the composition of the index itself, and interpreting this correlation as causation between neo-liberalism and 'good things.' My primary contention below is that many of these measures used in the composite Heritage Index have nothing to do with less government, and a lot more to do with good government. It is these measures of good government that correlate to economic growth and drive the overall correlation between the "Freedom Index" and positive outcomes. Secondarily, I will argue that many of the other items in the index (like investment freedom) are not causes of growth, but rather outcomes of growth.
thinkahol *

Why Banks Try to Make Borrowers Feel Like Sinners When They Can't Pay off Their Mortgag... - 0 views

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    Crazy views about homeownership are helping the very bankers who screwed us in the first place.
Michael Haltman

The United States, China and 15 days to global economic collapse - 1 views

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    What happens if you rely on the neighborhood bully to give YOU your lunch money every day? The same thing that could happen to the U.S. by relying on China for our deficit spending and the funding of those same deficits!
thinkahol *

FT.com / Global Economy - Zoellick's call on gold standard dismissed - 0 views

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    Reactions to World Bank president Robert Zoellick's suggestion that gold might be used as part of a package of measures to reconstruct the international system ranged from the lukewarm to the bewildered.
thinkahol *

Chris Hedges: Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig - 0 views

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    There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal and the absurd. Universities prostitute themselves for corporate dollars. Labor unions are marginal and ineffectual forces. The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators. And the public, enchanted by electronic hallucinations, remains passive and supine. We have no tools left within the power structure in our fight to halt unchecked corporate pillage.
thinkahol *

FORA.tv - The Financial Crisis: Will It Lead to America's Decline? - 0 views

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    US: The Next USSR? Ferguson Says Economy on Edge of Chaos
thinkahol *

Robert Reich (The Big Lie) - 0 views

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    Republicans are telling Americans a Big Lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that's too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it. The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can't borrow as before, and must save for retirement.
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