“The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.”
"The Democrats have provided the votes to fund the Pentagon’s record $700 billion budget and secure the confirmation of black-site torture administrator Gina Haspel to head the CIA. They put up no serious opposition to Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and the rich. Meanwhile, work requirements are being imposed on Medicaid and food stamps, with virtually no opposition from the Democratic Party."
"The Democrats have provided the votes to fund the Pentagon’s record $700 billion budget and secure the confirmation of black-site torture administrator Gina Haspel to head the CIA. They put up no serious opposition to Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and the rich. Meanwhile, work requirements are being imposed on Medicaid and food stamps, with virtually no opposition from the Democratic Party."
"While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely
parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009."
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009."
A Gutted I.R.S. Makes the Rich Richer
With
enforcement enfeebled, as much as 20 percent of potential tax revenues go
uncollected.
By The
Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its
editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed
section.
Let’s take a moment to pity the Internal Revenue Service.
Yes, to many Americans, it’s a money-grabbing ogre siphoning hard-earned cash
to the faceless federal bureaucracy.
But the nation’s tax collector today is an enfeebled
enforcer. Its budget has been bled dry by a Republican Congress in service to
wealthy donors and businesses aggressively pursuing tax avoidance, leaving
uncollected 18 percent to 20 percent of potential tax revenues annually. That’s
the conclusion in articles by the journalism site ProPublica, co-published by
The Atlantic and The Times.
Loopholes are beyond the means of most Americans who earn salaries
or are paid hourly wages, and are exploited by those who derive significant
income from investments or business revenue. Although we’d all like to pay
less, relative to most developed nations our tax burden is a pretty good deal.
It’s an even better deal for the richest Americans, who have
benefited the most from President Trump’s tax cuts. The rich are different:
They’re more likely to cheat, according to one study of I.R.S. data. And the
I.R.S. has about as many auditors now as it did 60 years ago, when there were
half as many Americans. The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending cuts
for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by not
holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.
Dodging taxes is as old as taxes themselves. Just ask Mr.
Trump, who has employed systematic dodging for decades, according to a Times
investigation.
We got a good look at one of the bigger problems, the
proclivity of the wealthy to hide cash from the I.R.S., in 2008, when the
Justice Department was able to pierce the Swiss bank secrecy veil during an
investigation of UBS. The department uncovered thousands of rich Americans who
were hiding about $18 billion in offshore accounts arranged by that Swiss bank.
Many were compelled to fess up and pay up. But eight years later, the Panama
Papers, millions of files hacked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in
caching money for the rich and powerful, disclosed that there were still plenty
of rich people willing to play hide-and-seek with the I.R.S.
The odds are in their favor, and growing. ProPublica reported
that I.R.S. audits dropped 42 percent from 2010 to 2017, a period in which the
I.R.S. budget was lopped by $2.5 billion, adjusted for inflation. New
investigations of people who don’t file dropped to 362,000 last year, from 2.4
million in 2011. That costs the Treasury $3 billion annually in uncollected
taxes. More than $8 billion in back taxes did not get collected in 2017 because
the agency couldn’t get to them before the 10-year statute of limitations ran
out, another worsening problem. Tax delinquents can simply wait the agency out.
ProPublica estimated the total shortfall of uncollected funds since 2011 at $95
billion.
These uncollected billions could pay for any number of
things: better care of wounded veterans, infrastructure improvements such as a
desperately needed new tunnel between New York and New Jersey. You could even
build an expensive wall.
One area where the I.R.S. still bares its teeth is in
auditing people in the lowest tax bracket. If you are claiming the
earned-income tax credit, which provides cash for people who typically earn
less than $20,000 annually, you are as likely to be audited as someone earning
between $500,000 and $1 million. ProPublica reported that 36 percent of all
I.R.S. audits focused on this group. It may not be a crime to be poor in the
G.O.P.’s America, but you can expect to be treated like a criminal for
accepting the government’s cash to make ends meet. At best, that’s an
inefficient use of I.R.S. agents: Compliance should apply to all, but the
I.R.S. should do most of its fishing where the big fish are.
The Trump/G.O.P. tax policy is now operating at peak failure.
The tax cuts have failed to increase gross domestic product beyond the “sugar
high” stimulus they gave to an economy already heading toward record low
unemployment. The economy seems to be slowing, making a mockery of the promise
of strong growth that was used to peddle the tax cuts.
The stock market is shuddering at the idea of a slowdown,
which corporations contributed to by using their tax windfall to buy back more
than $1 trillion of their own stock. They have, to this point, immolated
capital instead of using it for additional hiring, increased wages or further
business investments.
A CNBC poll found that millionaires are still sanguine about
the economy. They can well afford to be. If their stocks lose value, they can
take a write-off. If stocks rise, their maximum long-term capital gains tax is
only 20 percent. Most American households don’t own stocks — or no longer own
them, having been forced to liquidate stock holdings in the Great Recession,
which was precipitated by a collapse in the housing market. Thus the wealth gap
grows, reaching levels not seen since the Roaring Twenties.
To pay for the millionaire tax cuts, sacrifices had to be
made. So Congress limited deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000
annually. While that generally applies to well-to-do people who can itemize
their tax returns, it was also a clear shot against blue states such as
California and New York that have relatively high state and local taxes. But
reducing these deductions, along with higher interest rates, punished the
housing market, which is stagnant nationally and in a free fall in the
Northeast.
Our ability to keep the $1 trillion deficit created by the
Trump tax cuts from deepening depends in part on collecting taxes to which the
government is legally entitled.
Think of it this way: To protect our nation, we have the most
powerful army in the world. To protect our tax base, we have an army on the
order of Liechtenstein’s.
The lack of deterrence will only encourage more cheating. The
I.R.S. needs to be capable of doing the job for which it was created — from
answering taxpayers’ questions to chasing down the richest cheats, even if they
occupy the Oval Office.
As CEO
compensation soars and
banksters'
plunder to new heights
While workers are told by politicians of both big business parties that there is “no money” to pay for decent wages, education, health care or retirement, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index are sitting on the largest cash stockpile in history, with estimates varying between $1.8 and $2.2 trillion as of the end of 2017.
Fifty-one million
US households cannot afford “survival budget”
By Kate Randall
Billionaire Class Enjoys 15X the Wage Growth of American Working
Class
AFP
The billionaire class — the country’s top 0.01 percent of earners —
have enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as America’s working and
middle class since 1979, new wage data reveals.
Study: Elite Zip Codes Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America
Left Behind
Getty Images
Wealthy cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic
recovery of President Obama while rural American communities were left behind,
a study reveals.
Record high income in 2017 for top one
percent of wage earners in US
Graph
from the Economic Policy Institute
OBAMA: SERVANT
OF THE 1%
Richest one
percent controls nearly half of global wealth
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By
Gabriel Black
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of
global private wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
"During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job." EVEN AS JEB BUSH, HILLARY CLINTON and BERNIE SANDERS PREACH AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY!
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY
BANKSTERS!
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
Federal
Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
By Barry Grey
As CEO
compensation soars and
banksters'
plunder to new heights
"Another Fed study, “The
Demographics of Wealth,” found that people born in the 1980s, part of the
millennial generation, were at the greatest risk of becoming a “lost generation”
in terms of wealth accumulation. This age group is one of the most likely to be
saddled with student debt."
While workers are told by politicians of both big business parties that there is “no money” to pay for decent wages, education, health care or retirement, companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index are sitting on the largest cash stockpile in history, with estimates varying between $1.8 and $2.2 trillion as of the end of 2017.
Fifty-one million
US households cannot afford “survival budget”
By Kate Randall
26 May 2018
Newly released data
cast a revealing light on the state of income inequality in America a decade
after the Great Recession. While CEO pay soars to unheard of heights,
nearly 51 million US households cannot afford basic necessities like housing,
food and health care. The figures show that a tiny oligarchy of the super-rich
continues to tighten its grip over society, as more and more families struggle
to get by.
The New York
Times on Friday published the Equilar 200 Highest-Paid CEO Rankings
for 2017. The survey, conducted annually by the executive compensation
consulting firm Equilar, lists the pay packages awarded to CEOs at US public
companies with more than $1 billion in revenue.
Entries regarding the 10
highest-paid CEOs in 2017 show not only massive compensation packages, but huge
percentage increases over 2016.
· No. 1: Hock E. Tan of Broadcom, total compensation of
$103,211,163—a 318 percent increase over 2016
· No. 2: Frank J. Bisignano of First Data, total compensation of
$102,210,396—a 646 percent increase over 2016
· No. 10: Stephen Kaufer of TripAdvisor, total compensation of
$43,160,584—a 3,400 percent increase over 2016
This year for the first
time, as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking law, publicly traded US
corporations must begin publishing comparisons between the pay of their chief
executive and the median compensation of other employees. (Figures are not yet
available for all of the highest-earning CEOs.)
The following are just a
few of the pay ratios for 2017:
· Mindy Grossman, Weight Watchers International, with $33,371,856 in
total compensation, received 5,908
times the median employee pay ($6,013).
· Margaret H. Georgiadis, Mattel, with $31,275,289 in total
compensation, received 4 , 987 times the median
employee pay ($6,271).
· Michael Rapino, Live Nation Entertainment, whose total
compensation rose by 577 percent to $70,615,760, received 2,893 times the median
employee pay ($24,416).
Put another way, a
Walmart worker earning the company’s median salary of $19,177 would have to
work for more than 1,000 years to earn the $22.2 million that company CEO Doug
McMillon was awarded in 2017.
Among the companies that
disclosed CEO pay ratios, the median was 275 to 1, i.e., the typical employee
would have to work 275 years to earn the annual compensation of his or her
company’s CEO.
While CEO compensation
continues to climb—with the top 200 CEOs receiving an average raise of 14
percent in 2017, compared to 9 percent in 2016 and 5 percent in 2015—there are
50.8 million US households that cannot afford a basic monthly budget, including
housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a smart phone. The
new data was made available Tuesday by the United Way ALICE Project.
Those struggling to meet
a basic monthly budget include 16.1 million households living below the
official federal poverty level, an abysmally low $24,300 for a family of four
in 2016. Also included, however, were another 34.7 million families called
ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. In other
words, these households include working members and are not “officially” poor,
but cannot afford basic necessities.
As the ALICE Project
press release on the data notes, “ALICE is the nation’s child care workers,
home health aides and store clerks—those men and women who work at low-paying
jobs, having little or no savings and are one emergency from poverty.” Workers
at companies whose CEOs rank in the top 200 in pay fall into this category,
including McDonald’s, Walgreens, Office Depot and food service companies Aramark
and Sysco.
Data highlighted by the
research includes the following:
· Two-thirds of all US jobs in the country are low-paying—less than
$20 an hour, or $40,000 a year if full-time.
· More than 30 percent of households in each state cannot afford a
basic “survival budget.” The percentage of these families ranges from 32
percent in North Dakota to 49 percent in California, New Mexico and Hawaii.
· Those families earning over the poverty level but struggling to
afford basic necessities outnumber similarly struggling households living in
poverty in all 50 states.
· California, Texas and Florida—the first, second and fourth most
populous states, respectively--have the largest number of ALICE households in
the country.
Also published Tuesday
was a study by the Federal Reserve Board that exposes the precarious financial
situation facing millions of American workers and their families. The “Report
on the Economic Well-Being of US Households in 2017” found that 4 in 10 adults,
if faced with an unexpected expense of $400, would either be unable to cover it
or would pay for it by selling a possession or borrowing money.
For working class
families, such unexpected expenses could include a medical bill, a car repair,
home repairs, appliance replacement, unexpected taxes or fines—the list goes
on. While the CEOs in the top 200 have assets stashed away in rainy day funds
in the millions, an unexpected emergency can mean going without food, being
forced deeper into credit card debt, debt collection or eviction. The study
found that 3 percent of renters were evicted or moved because of the threat of
eviction in the last two years.
The report noted that
one-fifth of non-retired adults are pessimistic about their future employment
opportunities. A substantial number of workers are in precarious employment,
with one-sixth having irregular work schedules imposed by their employer, and
one-tenth receiving their work schedules less than a week in advance.
The study reported that
over half of college attendees under age 30 have taken on debt to pay for their
education. Those who failed to complete a degree, and those who attended
for-profit institutions, were more likely to have fallen behind on their
payments. Among those making payments on their student loans, the typical
monthly payment was between $200 and $300, or 6 to 9 percent of total income
for someone working full-time at $20 an hour.
Another Fed study, “The
Demographics of Wealth,” found that people born in the 1980s, part of the
millennial generation, were at the greatest risk of becoming a “lost
generation” in terms of wealth accumulation. This age group is one of the most
likely to be saddled with student debt. While all families headed by someone born
in 1960 or later have failed to recover economically since the Great Recession,
those born in the 1980s are the least likely to have recovered to their
pre-1980 financial level.
Not surprisingly, the
“Economic Well-Being” report found that less than two-thirds of non-retired
adults thought their retirement savings are on track. One-fourth had no
retirement savings or pension whatsoever.
While workers are told
by politicians of both big business parties that there is “no money” to pay for
decent wages, education, health care or retirement, companies in the Standard
& Poor’s 500 stock index are sitting on the largest cash stockpile in
history, with estimates varying between $1.8 and $2.2 trillion as of the end of
2017.
The obscene levels of
compensation doled out to the CEOs and the corresponding struggle of working
class families to pay basic monthly bills provoke no serious response from the
Democratic Party, which is fixated on the claims of Russian “meddling” in the 2016
elections.
The Democrats have
provided the votes to fund the Pentagon’s record $700 billion budget and secure
the confirmation of black-site torture administrator Gina Haspel to head the
CIA. They put up no serious opposition to Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar tax cut
for corporations and the rich. Meanwhile, work requirements are being imposed
on Medicaid and food stamps, with virtually no opposition from the Democratic
Party.
The working class must
break from both parties of the capitalist class and build a mass socialist
movement to seize the wealth of the financial elite and put an end to the
profit system. This is the only basis for meeting essential social needs.
Billionaire Class Enjoys 15X the Wage Growth of American Working
Class
23 Dec 20181,726
3:00
The billionaire class — the country’s top 0.01 percent of earners —
have enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as America’s working and
middle class since 1979, new wage data reveals.
Between
1979 and 2017, the wages of the bottom 90 percent — the country’s working and
lower middle class — have grown by only about 22 percent, Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) researchers find.
Compare that small wage increase
over nearly four decades to the booming wage growth of America’s top one
percent, who have seen their wages grow more than 155 percent during the same
period.
Breitbart TV
The top 0.01 percent — the country’s
billionaire class — saw their wages grow by more than 343 percent in the
last four decades, more than 15 times the wage growth of the bottom 90 percent
of Americans.
In 1979, America’s working class was
earning on average about $29,600 a year. Fast forward to 2017, and the same
bottom 90 percent of Americans are earning only about $6,600 more annually.
The almost four decades of wage
stagnation among the country’s working and middle class comes as the national
immigration policy has allowed for the admission of more than 1.5 million
mostly low-skilled immigrants every year.
In
the last decade, alone, the U.S. admitted ten million legal
immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of
low-wage workers. Meanwhile, employers are able to reduce wages and drive up
their profit margins thanks to the annual low-skilled immigration scheme.
The
Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy
is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational
conglomerates as every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an
occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages
by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces
Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.
Mass immigration has come at the
expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job
growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of
millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.
Four
million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job
opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two new
foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce. Even
though researchers say 30 percent of the workforce could lose their jobs due to automation
by 2030, the U.S. has not stopped importing more than a million foreign nationals
every year.
For
blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but
in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S.
continues importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class
Americans are forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8
million mostly low-skilled immigrants.
Study: Elite Zip Codes Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America
Left Behind
10 Dec 2018549
4:49
Wealthy cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic
recovery of President Obama while rural American communities were left behind,
a study reveals.
The
Economic Innovation Group research, highlighted by Axios, details the massive
economic inequality between the country’s coastal city elites and middle America’s
working class between the Great Recession in 2007 and Obama’s economic recovery
in 2016.
Between 2007 and 2016, the number of
residents living in elite zip codes grew by more than ten million, with an
overwhelming faction of that population growth being driven by mass immigration
where the U.S. imports more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants
annually.
The
booming 44.5 million immigrant populations are concentrated mostly
in the country’s major cities like Los Angeles, California, Miami Florida, and
New York City, New York. The rapidly growing U.S. population — driven by
immigration — is set to hit 404 millionby 2060, a
boon for real estate developers, wealthy investors, and corporations, all of
which benefit greatly from dense populations and a flooded labor market.
The economic study found that while
the population grew in wealthy cities, America’s rural population fell by
nearly 3.5 million residents.
Likewise, by 2016, elite zip codes
had a surplus of 3.6 million jobs, which is more than the combined bottom 80
percent of American zip codes. While it only took about five years for wealthy
cities to replace the jobs lost by the recession, it took “at risk” regions of
the country a decade to recover, and “distressed” U.S. communities are
“unlikely ever to recover on current trendlines,” the report predicts.
A map included in the research shows
how rich, coastal metropolises have boomed economically while entire
portions of middle America have been left behind as job and business gains
remain concentrated at the top of the income ladder.
Economic growth among the country’s
middle-class counties and middle-class zip codes has considerably trailed
national economic growth, the study found.
For example, between 2012 and 2016,
there were 4.4 percent more business establishments in the country as a whole.
That growth was less than two percent in the median zip code and there was
close to no growth in the median county.
The same can be said of employment
growth, where U.S. employment grew by about 9.3 percent from 2012 to 2016. In
the median zip code, though, employment grew by only 5.5 percent and in the
median county, employment grew by less than four percent.
“Nearly three in every five large counties
added businesses on net over the period, compared to only one in every five
small one,” the report concluded.
Elite zip codes added more business
establishments during Obama’s economic recovery, between 2012 and 2016, than
the entire bottom 80 percent of zip codes combined. For instance, while more
than 180,000 businesses have been added to rich zip codes, the country’s bottom
tier has lost more than 13,000 businesses even after the economic recovery.
The
gutting of the American manufacturing base, through free trade, has been
a driving catalyst for
the collapse of the white working class and black Americans. Simultaneously, the
outsourcing of the economy has brought major wealth to corporations, tech
conglomerates, and Wall Street.
The
dramatic decline of U.S. manufacturing at the hands of free trade—where more
than 3.4 million American
jobs have been lost solely due to free trade with China, not including the
American jobs lost due to agreements like the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)—has
coincided with growing wage inequality for white and black Americans, a growing
number of single mother households, a drop in U.S. marriage rates, a
general stagnation of working and middle class wages, and specifically,
increased black American unemployment.
“So, the loss of manufacturing work
since 1960 represents a steady decline in relatively high-paying jobs for
less-educated workers,” recent research from economist Eric D. Gould has
noted.
Fast-forward
to the modern economy and the wage trend has been the opposite of what it was
during the peak of manufacturing in the U.S. An Economic Policy Institute studyfound this year
that been 2009 and 2015, the top one percent of American families
earned about 26 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent of
Americans.
Record high income in 2017 for top one
percent of wage earners in US
In 2017, the top one
percent of US wage earners received their highest paychecks ever, according to
a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Based on newly released
data from the Social Security Administration, the EPI shows that the top one
percent of the population saw their paychecks increase by 3.7 percent in 2017—a
rate nearly quadruple the bottom 90 percent of the population. The growth was
driven by the top 0.1 percent, which includes many CEOs and corporate executives,
whose pay increased eight percent and averaged $2,757,000 last year.
The EPI report is only
the latest exposure of the gaping inequality between the vast majority of the
population and the modern-day aristocracy that rules over them.
The EPI shows that the
bottom 90 percent of wage earners have increased their pay by 22.2 percent
between 1979 and 2017. Today, this bottom 90 percent makes an average of just
$36,182 a year, which is eaten up by the cost of housing and the growing burden
of education, health care, and retirement.
Meanwhile, the top one
percent has increased its wages by 157 percent during this same period, a rate
seven times faster than the other group. This top segment makes an average of
$718,766 a year. Those in-between, the 90th to 99th percentile, have increased
their wages by 57.4 percent. They now make an average of $152,476 a year—more
than four times the bottom 90 percent.
Decades of decaying
capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate
wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under
increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of
the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
Even more, while the
bottom 90 percent of the population may take in 61 percent of the wages, large
sections of the workforce today barely pull in any income at all. For
example, Social Security Administration data found that the bottom 54
percent of wage earners in the United States, 89.5 million people, make an
average of just $15,100 a year. This 54 percent of the population earns only 17
percent of all wages paid in America.
However unequal, these
wage inequalities still do not fully present the divide between rich and poor.
The ultra-wealthy derive their wealth not primarily from wages, but from assets
and equities—principally from the stock market. While the bottom 90 percent of
the population made 61 percent of the wages in 2017, they owned even less, just
27 percent of the wealth (according to the World Inequality Report
2018 by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman).
The massive increase in
the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population
participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73
percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren
Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined
last year.
Wages are so low in the
United States that roughly half of the population falls deeper into debt every
year. A Reuters report from July found that the pretax net income (that is,
income minus expense) of the bottom 40 percent of the population was an average
of negative $11,660. Even the middle quintile of the
population, the 40th to 60th percentile, breaks even with an average of only
$2,836 a year.
As the Social Security
Administration numbers show, 67.4 percent of the population made less than the
average wage, $48,250 a year in 2017, a sum that is inadequate to support a
family in many cities—especially, with high housing costs, health care,
education, and retirement factored in.
For the ruling class,
though, workers’ wages are already too much. The volatility of the stock market
and the deep fear that the current bull market will collapse has made
politicians and businessmen anxious of any sign of wage increases.
In August, wages in the
US rose just 0.2 percent above the inflation rate, the highest in nine years.
Though the increase was tiny, it was enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to
increase the interest rate past two percent for the first time since 2008.
Raising interest rates helps to depress workers’ wages by lowering borrowing
and spending. As the Financial Times noted, stopping wage
growth was “central” to the Federal Reserve’s move.
Further analysis of the
Social Security Administration data shows that in 2017, 147,754 people reported
wages of 1 million dollars or more—roughly, the top 0.05 percent. Their
combined total income of $372 billion could pay for the US federal education
budget five times over.
These wages, however
large, still pale in comparison to the money the ultra-rich acquire from the
stock market. For example, share buybacks and dividend payments, a way of funneling
money to shareholders, will eclipse $1 trillion this year.
Whatever the immediate
source, the wealth of the rich derives from the great mass of people who do the
actual work. Across the United States and around the world, workers, young
people, and students have entered into struggle this year over pay, education,
health care, immigration, war and democratic rights. This growing movement of
the working class must set as its aim confiscating the wealth and power of this
tiny parasitic oligarchy. Society’s wealth must be democratically controlled by
those who produce it.
THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER
OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.
THE
ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL
COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.
AND IT'S WORKING!
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS
“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great
moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably
expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and
middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million
good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay
equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes
on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A
Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security
benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER
YOU THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED
OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American middle-class?
NOPE!
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic
Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New
Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an
ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO
E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994
Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has
helped create the largest prison population in the world.”
Clinton
Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’
OBAMA: SERVANT
OF THE 1%
Richest one
percent controls nearly half of global wealth
The richest one percent of the
world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46
percent last year.
The report found that the growth of global inequality has
accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial
assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million
(US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global
private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston
Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however,
only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held
through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves
out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial
portion of the rich’s net worth.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41
percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that
collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in
liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
In total, the world added $17.5
trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that
nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth.
In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing
assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.
This trend is the result of the
massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks.
The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the
stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace,
there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards
the very top.
In
2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase
11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion
in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report,
“This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of
households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound
growth on their wealth in the next five years.
Those families with wealth between
$20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent
increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In
five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.
Coming in last in the “high net
worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private
wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent
each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several
percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.
The
gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the
experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation
has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not
even begun to recover from the past recession.
An Oxfam report from
January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s
population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to
having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth
rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.
In
2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median
household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a
drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the
recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95
percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is
the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
As the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between
2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times
more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The
2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all
from income growth.”
Another report by Knight
Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes
that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their
collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8
trillion.
The report also draws attention to
the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the
growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated
global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its
forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”
DICK MORRIS:
On America’s First Family of Crime….. NO! Not
the Bushes again!
Clinton global hucksterism – Selling out America
like they sold out the Lincoln Bedroom.
HILLARY CLINTON: CRONY CLASS’ “Hope
and Change” huckster’s successor!
“I serve Obama’s cronies first, illegals second
and together we will loot the American middle-class to double our figures. It’s
called BAILOUTS! Evita Peron Clinton
At this point, Clinton is
the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White
House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for
Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing
in the 2012 election with the same group.
Sen. Bernie Sanders – America’s answer to Wall
Street’s looting, the war on the American middle-class and jobs for legals!
“At this point, Clinton is the choice of
most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent
CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest
with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012
election with the same group.”
THE CRONY
CLASS:
OBAMACLINTONOMICS
was created by BILLARY CLINTON!
Income inequality grows
FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.
“By the
time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely
repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society
periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap
labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a
growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill,
with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest
prison population in the world.”
*
“Calling
income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time,"
Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer
wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion
public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A
$15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick
leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at
all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health
care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON
EXAMINER
OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the
LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM
The
corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated
$1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in
the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are
using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.
Megan McArdle Discusses How
America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special
correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's
new Mandarin class.
PATRICK
BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS
WHO
REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S CRONY DONORS???
LAST WEEK BARACK OBAMA
CELEBRATED FIVE YEARS OF THE LOOTING BY HIS WALL STREET BANKSTERS… now it’s
back to cutting social programs to pay for all that rape by the 1% he
represents. The following week it will be back to the AMNESTY HOAX to legalize
Mexico’s looting of America and make it legal that Mexicans get our jobs first…
they already do!
As in previous budget
crises under the Obama administration, the events are being stage-managed by
the two corporate-controlled parties to give the illusion of partisan gridlock
and confrontation over principles—in this case, whether to go forward with the
implementation of the Obama health care program—while behind the scenes all
factions within the ruling elite agree that massive cuts must be carried
through in basic federal social programs.
OBAMA’S
CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA
DONORS
GET THIS BOOK
Culture of
Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
In her shocking new
book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff,
revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout
his administration.
PATRICK
BUCHANAN
After Obama
has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to
illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?
OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
By
Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US)
dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private
wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting
Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only
includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through
managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out
businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion
of the rich’s net worth.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households
owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means
that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in
liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.
In total, the world added $17.5 trillion
of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three
quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other
words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets
increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.
This trend is the result of the massive
infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The
policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock
market even while global economic growth has slumped.
While the wealth of the rich is growing at
a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy,
skewed towards the very top.
In 2014, those with over $100 million in
private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone.
Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the
world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected
to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.”
They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next
five years.
Those families with wealth between $20 and
$100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in
their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years
they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.
Coming in last in the “high net worth”
population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth.
These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each
year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage
points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.
The gains in private wealth of the
ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people
around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the
ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from
the past recession.
An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows
that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56
percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014.
Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the
world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found
that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the
United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich
also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that
money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US
went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain
on record.
As the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between
2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times
more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The
2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all
from income growth.”
Another report by Knight Frank,
looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014
these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective
wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.
The report also draws attention to the
disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the
growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated
global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its
forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”
THE CRONY CLASS:
OBAMACLINTONOMICS
was created by BILLARY CLINTON!
Income inequality grows
FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.
“By the
time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely
repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society
periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap
labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a
growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill,
with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest
prison population in the world.”
*
“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great
moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably
expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and
middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million
good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay
equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes
on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A
Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security
benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER
OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the
LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM
The
corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated
$1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in
the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are
using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.
Megan McArdle Discusses How
America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special
correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's
new Mandarin class.
POLL: MOST INCOMPETENT AND
DISHONEST PRESIDENT SINCE…. Well, isn’t Obama merely Bush’s THIRD and FOURTH
TERMS??
OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM
A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL
STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS
PATRICK BUCHANAN
After Obama has completely destroyed
the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of
dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?
OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of
global private wealth by 2019
By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth
are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a
new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money
market funds and listed securities held through managed
investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses,
residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s
net worth.
At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent
of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these
17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about
$4 million per household.
In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth
between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these
gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority
of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the
creation of new material things.
This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit
into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative
easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global
economic growth has slumped.
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there
is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very
top.
In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their
wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households
owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According
to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both
the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent
compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.
Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose
substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve
short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14
trillion according to the report.
Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with
between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are
expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49
trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest
bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.
The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp
contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth
accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of
people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.
An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows
that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56
percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014.
Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the
world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and
2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from
$87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth
drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between
2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1
percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell
on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at
the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that
“low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”
Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with
wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850
ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700
billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.
The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the
rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy
population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During
2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output
from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: the
never end war on the American middle-class. But we still get the tax bills for
the looting of their Wall Street cronies and their bailouts and billions for
Mexico’s welfare state in our borders.
While the wealth of the rich
is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the
super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.
In
2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase
11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion
in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report,
“This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of
households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound
growth on their wealth in the next five years.
In 2014 the Russell Sage
Foundation found that between
2003 and 2013, the median
household net worth of those in
the United States fell from
$87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent. While the rich also saw
their wealth drop during the
recession, they are more than
making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent
of all the income gains in
the US went to the top 1 percent.
This is the most distorted
post-recession income gain on
record.
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND
HIS WALL STREET CRONIES
collapse
of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS…
they already get our jobs and are voting for more!
INCOME
PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to illegals.
AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS
CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS).
GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR
MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?
MORE HERE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html
“The yearly income of a
typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six
years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013
Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents
a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration
of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
"During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job." EVEN AS JEB BUSH, HILLARY CLINTON and BERNIE SANDERS PREACH AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY!
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY
BANKSTERS!
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
Federal
Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy
By Barry Grey
21 July 2015
The
US Federal Reserve Board last week released its semiannual Monetary Policy
Report to Congress, providing an assessment of the state of the American
economy and outlining the central bank’s monetary policy going forward. The
report, along with Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s testimony before both the House of
Representatives and the Senate, as well as a speech by Yellen the previous week
in Cleveland, present a grim picture of the reality behind the official talk of
economic “recovery.”
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”
She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.
This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.
"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."
In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:
* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.
* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.
* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:
* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.
* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.
* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”
* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”
* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:
* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”
* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”
* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”
* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”
The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.
That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years. During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.
The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.
While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”
She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.
This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.
"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."
In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:
* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.
* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.
* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:
* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.
* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.
* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”
* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”
* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:
* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”
* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”
* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”
* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”
The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.
That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years. During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.
The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.
While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.