“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned
an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned
an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
"For more than three decades the stock market has served as the primary financial mechanism through which the American ruling class has carried out an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the working population to the rich. Under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, the Dow has risen 17-fold since 1985 on the basis of a relentless assault on workers’ jobs and wages and cuts in education, health care and other social services."
THE DEATH OF THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
THE ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER BY
PHONY POPULIST SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP
Companies say they often pay good
wages to their imported H-2B workers, often around $15 per hour. But that price
is below the wages sought by Americans for the seasonal work which leaves them
jobless in the off-season. The lower wages paid to H-2Bs also allows companies
to pay lower wages to their American supervisors. NEIL MUNRO
TRUMP’S TAX BILL:
A massive tax cut
for his plundering Goldman Sachs infested administration.
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE
RICH…. and his parasitic family!
Report:
Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit
After He's Gone
"Trump's
alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
TRUMPERNOMICS:
THE RICH APPLAUD TWITTER’S
TRUMP’S TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the
super-rich, on top
of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1
percent income
bracket."
AS
WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One Million Homeless and Overrun By Mexico’s
Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
MASSIVE TRANSFER OF
WEALTH TO THE RICH: YOUR DEMOCRAT PARTY AT WORK…. for Wall Street, Banksters,
Billionaires and LA RAZA.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-democrat-party-for-billionaires.html
Behind Trump’s clash with the Fed: Looming economic crisis and class conflict
18 April 2019
The repeated calls by President Donald Trump for the US Federal Reserve to loosen its monetary policy and provide a further boost to the stock market expose the economic and political reality behind the mask of official ideology.
In his latest remarks, contained in a tweet last Sunday, Trump said the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be 5,000 or even 10,000 points above its present near-record level if the Fed had not tightened interest rates last year. He demanded that the central bank resume the program of “quantitative easing,” under which it poured trillions into the financial markets in the wake of the 2008 finance crash.
For more than three decades the stock market has served as the primary financial mechanism through which the American ruling class has carried out an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the working population to the rich. Under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, the Dow has risen 17-fold since 1985 on the basis of a relentless assault on workers’ jobs and wages and cuts in education, health care and other social services.
Under Obama, the Dow rose more than
250 percent. Under Trump, it has risen a
further 32 percent.
250 percent. Under Trump, it has risen a
further 32 percent.
The official refrain has been the lie that “there
is no money” for schools, health care, housing
or pensions, while unlimited sums have been
squandered to pay for more yachts, private
islands and Manhattan penthouses for the
modern-day aristocrats, along with new and
more deadly conventional and nuclear
weapons to prepare a new military
Armageddon.
is no money” for schools, health care, housing
or pensions, while unlimited sums have been
squandered to pay for more yachts, private
islands and Manhattan penthouses for the
modern-day aristocrats, along with new and
more deadly conventional and nuclear
weapons to prepare a new military
Armageddon.
Wealth and income inequality have reached record levels, consolidating the rule of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of American social and political life.
Trump is simply declaring openly what the Fed has been doing throughout this period, behind the official pretence of “neutrality” and “independence”—and demanding that it do more of it.
If there are objections to Trump’s comments from the New York
Times and other key sections of the political and media
establishment, on the grounds that they infringe on the Fed’s
“independence,” it is not because of any disagreement with the
fundamental direction of his policies. They are concerned that
Trump is seeking to transform the US central bank from the
instrument of the ruling class as a whole into that of his own
faction. But Trump’s factional opponents within
the ruling elite base themselves on the same
forms of financial parasitism as those sections
for whom the real estate swindler-turned
president speaks.
Times and other key sections of the political and media
establishment, on the grounds that they infringe on the Fed’s
“independence,” it is not because of any disagreement with the
fundamental direction of his policies. They are concerned that
Trump is seeking to transform the US central bank from the
instrument of the ruling class as a whole into that of his own
faction. But Trump’s factional opponents within
the ruling elite base themselves on the same
forms of financial parasitism as those sections
for whom the real estate swindler-turned
president speaks.
The legal mandate of the Fed is to adjust monetary policy so as to ensure stable prices and maximum employment, irrespective of the ups and downs of the stock market. But the Fed has been directly tailoring its policies to prop up the financial markets since the stock market plunge of October 1987, when Wall Street fell more than 22 percent in a single day and the then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan announced that the financial spigots were open.
This led to what became known as the Greenspan put: That when the markets began to falter, the Fed would be ready to step in to boost them with the provision of cheap money. Greenspan did make one attempt to curb what he termed “irrational exuberance” in 1996, but such was the adverse reaction from the financial elites that it was never again attempted.
From then on, the official mantra was that it was impossible to tell if a financial bubble was in formation and the markets had to be given their head, with the Fed intervening to support them when their speculative activities gave rise to a crisis.
This program was intensified after the financial crash of 2008, when the government doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks and the Fed initiated its policy of quantitative easing, providing trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money to ensure that the speculative binge continued and expanded.
At the same time, it was insisted that corporate taxes had to be continually reduced. This has now resulted in a situation where, as a recent analysis revealed, 60 US corporations, appropriating billions of dollars in profits, paid no tax in 2018, with some receiving a tax refund.
Trump’s latest intervention is accompanied by the claim that the US economy is powering ahead and could grow even faster if only the Fed stopped holding it back. But rather than indicating strength, Trump’s ultimatums express a deepening crisis and fear that the financial house of cards will collapse unless still more money is pumped into the system.
Claims of the underlying strength of the US economy are belied by basic facts. The present interest rate of between 2.25 percent and 2.5 percent is one of the lowest in economic history, but the Trump administration wants it cut by at least 0.5 percent.
The stock market, bloated by financial speculation, is like a drug addict who demands more as his underlying health continues to deteriorate. When the US financial markets neared bear market territory earlier this year and Wall Street demanded that the Fed halt its policy of incremental rate increases, the Fed snapped into line and Chairman Jerome Powell announced it would abandon its efforts to “normalize” interest rates, leading to the latest rally, which has pushed the Dow to within a few points of its record high.
At the end of 2017, Trump claimed that the trillions of dollars handed out in corporate tax cuts would cause the economy to roar ahead with expanded investment and the provision of well-paying jobs. This lie has been exposed as the vast bulk of the money the tax cuts provided has gone for share buybacks and other parasitic means of pumping more money into the coffers of the rich.
Now the global economy, upon which the US economy is dependent notwithstanding Trump’s claims of the success of his “America First” program, is experiencing a significant slowdown after a brief upturn in 2017.
In its latest economic outlook, the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for global growth, warning that 70 percent of the world economy was undergoing deceleration, a phenomenon concentrated in the advanced economies, including the US. Those warnings have been underscored by the announcement on Wednesday by the German government that it was halving its forecast for economic growth in 2019 to just 0.5 percent.
The Trump administration is frightened by the
prospect of a recession, or even a significant
slowdown in the economy, fueling the growing
wave of strikes and protests and
transforming it into a social explosion, not
only in the so-called rust belt areas that voted
for his presidency, but across the country.
prospect of a recession, or even a significant
slowdown in the economy, fueling the growing
wave of strikes and protests and
transforming it into a social explosion, not
only in the so-called rust belt areas that voted
for his presidency, but across the country.
These fears extend beyond the White House. In a recent essay, the head of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, the multibillionaire Ray Dalio, warned that when there is a “very big gap” in the economic conditions of people, a downturn can lead to conflict and “revolutions of one sort or another.”
With interest rates already at historic lows, Dalio said he was “worried what the next economic downturn will be like, especially as central banks have limited ability to reverse it.”
It is above all the fear within the ruling elite of growing socialist sentiment in the working class that underlies both Trump’s self-proclaimed war against socialism and the bipartisan attack by the ruling elite on democratic rights.
"At the same
time, the tax cuts for big
business are fueling the federal deficit, which
will be used by both Democratic and
Republican politicians to call for further cuts
in social spending. The February monthly
federal deficit hit an all-time high of $234
billion this year, as a result of a 20 percent
drop in corporate tax revenue. The deficit for
the first half of 2019 is projected at $961
billion, and the deficit for the fiscal year
ending September 30 is expected to reach
$1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted in
the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial
crash."
US Tax Day 2019: Sixty giant corporations pay
zero income tax
Dozens of giant US corporations, including 60 of the Fortune
500, used deductions, credits and other tax loopholes to avoid paying any
federal income tax for 2018, according to an analysis issued by the Institute
on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The report was published April 11, just
in time for the April 15 deadline for most American working people to file
their tax returns.
The 60 companies in the Fortune 500 who paid no federal income
tax had net incomes just from US operations of nearly $80 billion
($79,025,000,000, to be exact). They include such household names as Amazon,
Chevron, Deere, Delta Air Lines, General Motors, Goodyear, Halliburton,
Honeywell, IBM, Eli Lilly, Netflix, Occidental Petroleum, Prudential Financial
and US Steel.
Meanwhile, millions of moderate-income families are finding that
their income taxes have either increased or their expected tax refunds have
evaporated because of restrictions on the itemization of tax deductions, the
imposition of a $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions and a cut in the
mortgage interest deduction.
Nearly all of the 60 companies that paid no taxes qualified to
receive a refund from the US Treasury, although most will not collect a check,
instead using the credit to offset future taxes. But whatever the bookkeeping
process, American taxpayers are effectively paying money to them, despite their vast
profits. The biggest refunds include those going to Prudential, $346 million
(added to its $1.44 billion in profits); Duke Energy, a whopping $647 million
(added to $3.02 billion in profits); and Deere, $268 million (added to $2.15
billion in profits).
Among the report’s most outrageous findings:
Amazon more than zeroed-out its
tax bill on $10.8 billion in profits, making use of accelerated depreciation
deductions on equipment as well as favorable tax treatment of stock-based
compensation for executives like CEO Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the
world. The stock compensation deduction alone was worth $1 billion. Amazon will
actually show a credit of $129 million from the US Treasury, not paying one
cent in federal income taxes.
IBM is another corporate giant
that has gamed the tax system by shifting earnings to its foreign operations to
escape US taxation. The company reported worldwide profits of $8.7 billion, but
only $500 million in the United States. It will reap a $342 million credit from
the Treasury.
Delta Airlines accumulated
$17.1 billion in federal pre-tax net losses as of 2010, partly as a consequence
of a protracted crisis of the airline industry, partly as a result of the 2008
Wall Street crash. It has used these losses as well as the accelerated
depreciation credit for purchase of new planes to “dramatically reduce their
tax rates,” according to the ITEP report, receiving a credit of $187 million in
2018 despite net profits of more than $5 billion. According to Delta’s chief
financial officer, the actual tax rate the company expects to pay going forward
is between 10 and 13 percent, far below what a typical Delta worker pays on his
or her income.
EOG Resources, a renamed
remnant of Enron, perpetrator of the biggest corporate fraud in American
history, can collect $304 million from US taxpayers on top of $4.07 billion in
profits.
For one company, the federal tax refund would actually exceed
net profits. Gannett made a $7 million profit, while showing
an additional $11 million credit from the Treasury, giving the newspaper
publishing giant an effective tax rate of negative 164 percent.
IBM’s tax rate was a negative 68 percent, while software maker
Activision Blizzard and construction company AECOM Technology both posted
effective tax rates of negative 51 percent.
Sixteen of the 60 companies made more than a billion dollars in
net income on their US operations, to say nothing of foreign subsidiaries. Oil
and gas producers and utilities comprised more than one-third of the total, led
by Chevron and Occidental among the oil companies, and DTE Energy, American
Electric Power, Duke Energy and Dominion Resources among the utilities.
The 60 companies profited enormously because the Trump tax cut
bill cut the basic rate for corporations from 35 percent to 21 percent, while
not eliminating the loopholes they had previously used to keep their taxes low.
They had the best of both worlds, paying lower rates while still enjoying
loopholes.
Overall, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, an arm of
Congress, the cut in the corporate tax rate alone will pump $1.35 trillion into
the pockets of the corporations over the next 10 years. For this year alone,
corporate taxes have been cut by 31 percent.
For the 60 companies in the ITEP report, “Instead of paying
$16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires,
these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a
$20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year.”
This figure by itself is an irrefutable answer to all the bogus
claims—made to workers in every part of the United States—that there is “no
money” to pay for needed social programs, for wage and benefit increases, or to
hire additional workers to reduce overwork and understaffing. The $20.7 billion
would pay for a $7,000 bonus to every public school teacher in America.
The bonanza that these 60 corporations are enjoying is three
times the amount that Trump proposes to cut from the budget of the Department
of Education. It is 10 times the total amount budgeted for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, which provides services for more than 2 million Native Americans. It
is nearly 20 times the budget of the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, which conducts workplace safety inspections.
The ITEP report, issued by a group with close ties to the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, warns of the
explosive political consequences of the corporate plundering of the Treasury.
“The specter of big corporations avoiding all income taxes on billions in
profits sends a strong and corrosive signal to Americans: that the tax system
is stacked against them, in favor of corporations and the wealthiest
Americans,” the report says.
At the same time, the tax cuts for big business are fueling the
federal deficit, which will be used by both Democratic and Republican
politicians to call for further cuts in social spending. The February monthly
federal deficit hit an all-time high of $234 billion this year, as a result of
a 20 percent drop in corporate tax revenue. The deficit for the first half of
2019 is projected at $961 billion, and the deficit for the fiscal year ending
September 30 is expected to reach $1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted
in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.
The number of U.S. companies paying zero federal taxes DOUBLED when
Trump's tax plan took effect in 2018
·
60 large companies managed to escape 2018
taxes under Trump's new plan
·
Many of those corporations actually received
tax rebates totaling $4.3 billion
·
The businesses include: Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, JetBlue Airways, IBM, General Motors, Goodyear, Eli
Lilly and United States Steel
·
The result is a $20.7 billion budget hole
that is adding to America's federal debt
President Donald
Trump's tax policy doubled the number of highly profitable
companies that were able to avoid paying any federal taxes in 2018, according
to a new report.
Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, IBM, General Motors and Eli Lilly were among those who
managed to escape taxes for last year, according to the study by the
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
'Instead
of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate
requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion,
blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year,' the report
says.
The
Washington, D.C. think tank analyzed America's 560 largest publicly held
companies, finding that 60 of them paid nothing in taxes for last year – double
the average of roughly 30 companies that got away scot-free each year from
2008-2015.
Republicans
in Congress pushed through the tax law signed by Trump in 2017, and its
policies favoring the richest Americans and most valuable U.S. companies took
effect in 2018.
Scroll down for the full list of companies and rebates
+2
·
This graph illustrates the amount of money that 60 of America's largest
companies were billed for taxes last year - along with the actual money they
ended up getting back instead of having to pay. Source: Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
The
change cut the tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and allowed companies to
take advantage of deductions, tax credits and rebates. That change alone is
projected to save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next decade, according
to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
'We
know that there's this pretty glaring contrast between what the proponents of
this tax law promised back in 2017 and what it's delivering now,' lead
author Matthew Gardner told DailyMail.com.
'The
whole argument was that the reason companies were avoiding taxes is because tax
rates are so high,' he added. 'What we're seeing is that isn't coming to
pass.'
Collectively, the 60 companies that avoided
all taxes last year managed 'to zero out their federal income taxes on $79
billion in U.S. pretax income,' according to the study, which was first
reported on by the Center for Public Integrity and
NBC News.
For
example, the John Deer farm equipment company earned $2.15 billion before
taxes, yet owed no U.S. taxes and used deductions and credits to extract $268
million from the federal government.
Nationally,
corporate tax revenues decreased 31 percent in 2018 to $204 billion.
'This
was a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in
U.S. history,' wrote Gardner, a senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy, in the report.
We know that there's this pretty
glaring contrast between what the proponents of this tax law promised back in
2017 and what it's delivering now.
-Matthew Gardner, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
Trump
had said that the corporate tax cut would pay for itself by sparking a business
boom that would create more jobs, thus generating growing income tax revenues
for the nation.
That
reality hasn't emerged. Instead the nation's budget deficit is higher than it's
ever been in this nation's history.
That's
despite Trump's campaign promise to eliminate the $19.9 trillion national debt
in eight years. So far it has ballooned 41.8 percent in the first four months
of the 2019 fiscal year (which runs October 1 – September 30.
The
Government Accountability Office announced in April that the 'federal
government's current fiscal path … (is) unsustainable.'
Presidential
economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that 'economic growth' has 'paid for a
good chunk' of the tax cuts, and that the budget's outlook is 'not as bad' as
it's perceived.
+2
·
This table lists the amount of money that 60 of America's largest
companies were billed for taxes last year - along with the actual money they
ended up getting back instead of having to pay. Source: Institute on
Taxation and Economic Policy
GET THIS BOOK!
Obamanomics:
How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends,
Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special
interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting
handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small
businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy
P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House
wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering
corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO
SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.
NEW YORK — In the midst of a public relations nightmare, former White
House Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Habib Powell took charge of Goldman
Sachs’s global charitable foundation, helping to resurrect the big bank’s
shattered image after it was implicated in practices that contributed to the
financial crisis of 2007-2008.
GEORGE S OROS
PARTNERS WITH BARACK OBAMA, ERIC HOLDER and now KAMALA HARRIS TO CREATE A GLOBALIST
REGIME FOR THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS and CRONY BANKSTERS…. Open borders and endless
hordes of illegals will make it happen!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/monica-showalter-soros-banksters-and.html
YOU WONDERED WHY OBAMA-HOLDER WORKED SO HARD TO SABOTAGE
AMERICAN VOTING FOR MORE ILLEGALS???
Those are the sub-literate,
low-skill, non-English-speaking indigents whose own societies are unable or
unwilling to usefully educate and employ them. Bring these people here and they
not only need a lot of services, they are putty in the hands of leftist
demagogues as Hugo Chavez demonstrated - and they are very useful as leftist
voters who will support the S oros agenda.
THE
DEVASTATING COST OF MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS
Will Trump’s Amnesty double these figures?
Wages remain
mostly stagnant despite unemployment hitting new lows
Amid “full
employment,” no recovery in US wages
The US jobs report for
November, released Friday, provides further evidence that the much vaunted
economic “recovery” in the United States has overwhelmingly benefited Wall
Street, whose stock bonanza is based above all on stagnant wages and the
destruction of working-class living standards.
Amid “full
employment,” no recovery in US wages
The US jobs report for
November, released Friday, provides further evidence that the much vaunted
economic “recovery” in the United States has overwhelmingly benefited Wall
Street, whose stock bonanza is based above all on stagnant wages and the
destruction of working-class living standards.
The Labor Department
reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 228,000 and the jobless rate
remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, the lowest level since January 2000 at the
height of the “dot.com” bubble. Manufacturing payrolls rose by 31,000;
construction in the aftermath of the hurricanes in Texas and Florida added
24,000 jobs. There was also a boost in the low-wage retail (18,700) and leisure
and hospitality (14,000) sectors.
Despite what economists,
the media and politicians are calling “full employment,” average hourly
earnings rose only 0.2 percent, or five cents, to $26.55 an hour, from a
downwardly revised 0.1 percent drop in wages in October. Year-to-year wage
increases in November were only 64 cents, or 2.5 percent. If wages rise by
another nickel in December, yearly salaries will be up a mere 2.4 percent in
2017, barely above the official projected inflation rate of 2.0 percent.
“President Trump’s bold
economic vision continues to pay off,” White House Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders boasted on Friday. “The economy’s vital signs are stronger
than they have been in years,” the New York Times declared.
“Companies are posting jobs faster than they can find workers to fill them.
Incomes are rising. The stock market sets records seemingly every month.”
Economic analysts have
pointed to anemic wage growth, euphemistically called weak “inflationary
pressure,” as a major factor in the determination of the Federal Reserve to
continue pumping up the stock market with cheap credit. Although most
economists expect a modest interest rate hike at the Fed’s meeting Wednesday,
Jerome Powell, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Reserve,
made clear last month at his Senate confirmation hearing that he would keep
rates at historically low levels. At the same time, he assured the
senators that there was little danger of a wages push because of continuing
“slackness” in the labor market, i.e., an ample supply of workers desperate for
full-time employment.
Other analysts agree.
“Wage growth has been muted thus far,” especially given the “very healthy pace
of job creation,” said Michelle Meyer, head of US economics at Bank of America.
“It’s been the story throughout the course of this year.”
Describing November’s
wage increase as “tepid,” Carl Riccadonna and Yelena Shulyatyeva of Bloomberg
Economics wrote: “Even though job gains are well in excess of the natural
growth rate for the labor market, labor scarcity is not yet driving wage
pressures higher. The moral of the story from this jobs report is that full
employment is indeed much lower in the current cycle relative to history.”
US employers are
exploiting a reserve of unemployed and underemployed workers to keep wages low.
At the same time, corporations are filling positions with young workers who are
paid far lower wages and benefits than the older workers they are replacing.
According to the
government, 6.6 million workers in the US remain unemployed, including 1.6
million, or nearly one out of four jobless people, who have been unemployed for
27 weeks or more. Another 4.8 million were forced to work part-time last month
although they want full-time work, and 1.8 million were “marginally attached”
to the labor force. The latter want to work but did not search for employment
in the four weeks preceding the survey and were therefore not counted as
“unemployed.”
The labor force
participation rate, or share of working-age people in the labor force, remained
at 62.7 percent in November. However, just 79 percent of the prime-age work
force, aged 25 to 54, is actually working—below the rate before the 2008
financial crash.
The situation facing the
young generation is particularly dire. According to the Class of 2017 report
by the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for young high school
graduates is 16.9 percent (compared with 15.9 percent in 2007 and 12.1 percent
in 2000). For young college graduates, the unemployment rate is currently 5.6
percent (compared with 5.5 percent in 2007 and 4.3 percent in 2000), and 7.1
percent for young male college graduates.
The figures are even
higher for “underemployment,” which includes young graduates who are
involuntary part-timers or are only marginally attached to the labor force. For
young high school graduates, the underemployment rate is 30.9 percent (compared
with 26.8 percent in 2007 and 20.8 percent in 2000). For young college graduates,
the underemployment rate is 11.9 percent (compared with 9.6 percent in 2007 and
7.1 percent in 2000).
The share of young
graduates who are “idled” by the economy—neither enrolled in further schooling
nor employed—remains higher in the wake of the Great Recession than in 2007 and
2000, the report noted. This includes 15.1 percent of young high school
graduates and 9.9 percent of young college graduates, many of whom are burdened
with unsustainable debts.
The stagnation of wages
is a long-term tendency. Since the early 1970s, hourly inflation-adjusted wages
have grown by only 0.2 percent annually, and labor’s share of national income
has fallen from nearly 65 percent in the mid-1970s to below 57 percent in 2017.
The deterioration in the
social position of the working class and accompanying explosion of social
inequality are not simply the result of objective economic laws. They are the
intended outcome of the policies of the American ruling class, implemented by
successive Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The transfer of
production to lower-wage countries, deindustrialization and mass layoffs in the
1980s and 1990s were used as a hammer to beat back the resistance of workers to
a historic lowering of their living standards.
This process was aided
and abetted by the trade unions, whose pro-capitalist and nationalist
orientation left workers without any progressive response to globalization. Far
from opposing wage and benefit cuts, the United Auto Workers and other unions
suppressed working-class opposition and collaborated with the corporations to
slash labor costs in the name of boosting competitiveness and “protecting
American jobs.”
This assault was
escalated in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008. In the
course of the eight years of the Obama administration, the unions limited
strikes to the lowest levels since the Labor Department began recording work
stoppages in 1947. They collaborated with the Democratic president to crush a
potential wages push in 2015-16 as workers in auto, steel, oil, telecom,
airlines, rail, health care, retail and other industries, as well as teachers
and other public employees, were coming up for new labor agreements.
While workers were
determined to recoup lost income after corporate profits had fully recovered
from the crash, the unions signed deals that limited pay hikes to the rate of
inflation or barely above it while shifting health care and pension costs onto
the backs of workers. This was key to Obama’s “in-sourcing” strategy for
attracting investment on the basis of low wages, as well as his “quantitative
easing” interest rate policy, which fueled the massive rise in the stock market
that continues to this day. Virtually all of the net increase in new jobs
created under Obama’s “gig economy” were part-time, contingent or
temporary OR ILLEGALS!
Trump claims his $1.5
trillion tax cut—including the slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35
percent to 20 percent—will create more jobs and increase wages. As in the Obama
years, however, this massive windfall for big business and the rich will not be
used to expand production, let alone increase the wages and living standards of
workers. It will go for stock buybacks and dividend increases, which benefit
the richest investors.
Wages are so low now that
7.6 million Americans are forced to work multiple jobs, a number not seen in 20
years. In a recent article titled “China-Like Wages Now Part of US Employment
Boom,” Forbes noted that a forklift operator hired at $12.75
an hour at Amazon’s Fall River, Massachusetts fulfillment center makes $382 for
a 30-hour week, “not much more than the average guy in Beijing,” where the
median weekly wage is $329.53. At 40 hours a week, a higher paid, full-time
Amazon worker in Fall River earns $28,800 a year before taxes, roughly what
Amazon’s billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos pockets every minute.
Fixing America’s
Unemployment Crisis
Trump was elected in part on the promise of creating jobs, but
how about those who stopped looking for work?
What has been called a
“quiet catastrophe” has been unfolding in America: the collapse of work for millions of America’s
men, and, more recently, for America’s women as well.
*
Trump was elected in part on the promise of creating jobs, but
how about those who stopped looking for work?
What has been called a
“quiet catastrophe” has been unfolding in America: the collapse of work for millions of America’s
men, and, more recently, for America’s women as well.
Nicholas Eberstadt, the
Henry Wendt Chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute,
estimates there are 10 million men who are jobless and no longer looking for
work. According to calculations using 2014 data, an estimated 3.6 million women
are in the same situation.
President-elect Donald Trump
has announced a raft of policies meant to spur economic growth and create jobs,
but thought needs to be given to what specific measures might help this urgent
situation.
How to address this crisis
depends on what one understands the problem to be. A graph showing the
prime-age employment rate for men provides a kind of Rorschach test for
possible responses.
Jared Bernstein, senior
fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former economic adviser
to Vice President Joe Biden, and author of, most recently, “The Reconnection
Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity,” focuses on the cyclical upturns in
the jagged line, on those periods of prosperity when workers regain jobs that
had been lost.
Eberstadt focuses on the
straight trend line, which has been going inexorably and disastrously downward
for decades.
Bernstein and Eberstadt
represent two typical and contrasting approaches to the unemployment
problem.
If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers,
they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the great
recession.
— JARED BERNSTEIN
Bernstein published the
graph in a chapter he contributed to Eberstadt’s book “Men Without Work,” in
which he critiques Eberstadt’s diagnosis of the employment crisis.
For Bernstein, the key is a
missing demand for labor.
“If you look at the employment
rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their
losses since the Great Recession,” Bernstein said in an interview. “That
doesn’t sound to me like a group that has given up. It sounds to me like a
group that is not facing ample opportunity.”
For Eberstadt, the problem
is a detachment from work.
Using various government
databases, Eberstadt gives a composite portrait of those men who are out of the
workforce and not looking for work.
They don’t read newspapers,
seem to have few familial responsibilities, and tend not to be involved in a
church or their communities. They spend most of their time entertaining
themselves with TV or hand-held devices; 31 percent admitted to survey takers
that they used illegal drugs.
Bernstein counters this
portrait by noting that the causal connection may go from a lack of employment
opportunities to suffering from depression, which then leads to these men
planting themselves on the couch.
As to the individual motives
of the non-working, Bernstein said, “We just don’t know.” His advice to Trump
is to aggressively pursue full employment, which involves the federal
government using a number of different tools.
An officer waits to escort Harvey Lesser, an unemployed
software developer, from his apartment after serving him with a court order for
eviction in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 11, 2009.
Stimulus and Subsidies
Bernstein believes the key
to the downward trend his graph shows is the disappearance of manufacturing
jobs. He favors trade policies that will reduce America’s chronic trade
imbalances, which will create more demand for domestic manufacturing.
Source: Jared Bernstein’s analysis of Bureau of Labor
statistics in “Men Without Work” by Nicholas Eberstadt
Bernstein believes the key
to the downward trend his graph shows is the disappearance of manufacturing
jobs. He favors trade policies that will reduce America’s chronic trade
imbalances, which will create more demand for domestic manufacturing.
Bernstein also favors an
infrastructure program, with the caveat that “you have to do it right,” he
said.
He would like to see the
federal government get involved in communities that “don’t have enough
businesses, child care slots, supermarkets, and stores—these are a classic
market failure.”
The federal government could
subsidize private employers in these neighborhoods, giving them an incentive to
move their businesses there.
Bernstein also favors
special efforts to help those with a criminal record, and Eberstadt agrees
finding ways to help this population is key to addressing the problem of
non-working adults. He estimates that, by the end of 2016, there will be 20
million with a felony conviction in their past.
Bernstein supports the Ban
the Box initiative, which calls for removing the box on employment applications
that must be ticked by anyone with a criminal record.
He also would like to see
direct job creation. The federal government would offer a heavily subsidized
wage, and at the local level there would be training for specific jobs that
would be available in that area.
He would also like to see
the federal government fund an apprenticeship program, which would involve
recruiting local businesses.
Finally, Bernstein wants to
see the federal government get the macro economic policies right to support
full employment. This means using monetary policy—primarily interest rates set
by the Federal Reserve—and fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. In
Bernstein’s view, we took our foot off the pedal of fiscal stimulus too soon—the
United States should have carried larger deficits in the years following the
Great Recession.
Eric Gilliam, an unemployed coal miner, in his garage at
his home in Lynch, Ky., on Oct. 18, 2014. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Small Business
Eberstadt said it is “small
not big business that employs most Americans.” Over the last eight years, he
said, there has been only marginally more small business births compared to
small business deaths. A healthy labor market will be one with “many, many new
businesses being formed,” he said. Part of the solution? Undo regulatory
strangulation and rationalize the tax code.
*
Eberstadt said it is “small
not big business that employs most Americans.” Over the last eight years, he
said, there has been only marginally more small business births compared to
small business deaths. A healthy labor market will be one with “many, many new
businesses being formed,” he said. Part of the solution? Undo regulatory
strangulation and rationalize the tax code.
While Eberstadt agrees that
manufacturing jobs are important, he would urge the Trump administration not to
“fetishize” manufacturing jobs. The percentage of manufacturing jobs in
developed economies around the world has steadily dropped. “Jobs that employ
people are good,” Eberstadt said, “whether they have the word manufacturing in
them or not.”
In order to protect the
manufacturing jobs we do have, Eberstadt urges that we not get into a trade war
with China, Mexico, or other countries, saying that trade wars lose jobs, they
don’t create jobs.
Clearly there has been a change in the way most people
think about what is decent and appropriate for able-bodied, working-age men to
do with their lives
— NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, economist, American Enterprise Institute
Because our entitlement
programs are administered locally, they tether people to the states in which
they are receiving benefits. Finding a way to cut that tie will give people
mobility, which will open up more job opportunities.
Eberstadt’s book is meant to
initiate “a broad conversation on our ‘men without work’ problem, a
conversation of many voices and differing perspectives.” One important solution
is to bring this mostly invisible problem “into the public spotlight.”
Shortcomings in the data we
have limit the kinds of conversations we have. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
does not count the 13.6 million people who have stopped looking for work as
unemployed. When the American public is given an unemployment rate of 4.9
percent, the crisis of the non-working is hidden from them.
The government surveys that
are conducted do not reveal the mindsets of those men who are disconnected
from work—vital information for anyone who wants to understand this crisis. The
Social Security Disability Insurance program does not have an effective audit
that would tell us whether it is being used as a substitute for employment
insurance.
Butch Youshaw, an unemployed card dealer, with his
girlfriend in Henderson, Nev., in 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Stigma
Eberstadt notes that
relevant context for the crisis of the non-working is a change in our society’s
“mores, and viewpoints, and motivations.”
Eberstadt notes that
relevant context for the crisis of the non-working is a change in our society’s
“mores, and viewpoints, and motivations.”
“Clearly there has been a
change in the way most people think about what is decent and appropriate for
able-bodied, working-age men to do with their lives in their prime working
ages,” Eberstadt said.
Over half of non-working men
in their prime years are getting money from at least one government disability
program, according to Eberstadt. These funds, Eberstadt writes, finance the
non-working’s decision not to work.
He would like to see these
programs have a work requirement, as was done 20 years ago with single mothers
on welfare. Requiring work stigmatizes non-work and so provides a moral
incentive for individuals to move off the couch and back into the workaday
world.
Bernstein writes he
sees “no good for making these programs less generous or further conditioning
them on work.”
Stigma, Eberstadt said, “is
often a kinder and gentler way of achieving social objectives than police
power.”
TRUMP’S CRAP ON BORDERS AND HIS PRETEND WALL IS ONLY ONE MORE TRUMP HOAX!
Only a complete fool would believe that Trump is any more for American Legal workers than the Democrat Party for Billionaires and Banksters!
“Trump Administration Betrays Low-Skilled American Workers.”
The latest ad from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asks Trump to reject the mass illegal and legal immigration policies supported by Wall Street, corporate executives, and most specifically, the GOP mega-donor Koch brothers.
Efforts by the big business lobby, Chamber of Commerce, Koch brothers, and George W. Bush Center include increasing employment-based legal immigration that would likely crush the historic wage gains that Trump has delivered for America’s blue collar and working class citizens.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley investors are uniting with the Koch network’s consumer and industrial investors to demand a huge DACA amnesty
A handful of Republican and Democrat lawmakers are continuing to tout a plan that gives amnesty to nearly a million illegal aliens in exchange for some amount of funding for President Trump’s proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
THE ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER BY PHONY POPULIST SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP
Companies say they often pay good wages to their imported H-2B workers, often around $15 per hour. But that price is below the wages sought by Americans for the seasonal work which leaves them jobless in the off-season. The lower wages paid to H-2Bs also allows companies to pay lower wages to their American supervisors. NEIL MUNRO
THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
THE ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER BY PHONY POPULIST SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP
Companies say they often pay good wages to their imported H-2B workers, often around $15 per hour. But that price is below the wages sought by Americans for the seasonal work which leaves them jobless in the off-season. The lower wages paid to H-2Bs also allows companies to pay lower wages to their American supervisors. NEIL MUNRO
There Is No ‘Labor Shortage’
Washington, D.C. (April 17, 2019) - A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds no empirical evidence of a "labor shortage" whereby employers need immigration to fill jobs because they are unable to find American workers.
Jason Richwine, an independent policy analyst and the author of the report, said, "When employers tell us that they cannot find workers, what they really mean is that they cannot find workers willing to work for the low wage they'd like to pay. The percentage of working-age Americans not in the labor force remains significantly below the level from the year 2000, and employers should try to bring those Americans back first before they look to immigration."
View the full report: https://cis.org/Report/There-No-Labor-Shortage
Key findings in the report:
- Shortages should not occur in a free market
- Tight labor markets benefit marginalized groups
- Wages have been stagnant over the long term
- Labor force participation is down over the long term
- Domestic industries should hire Americans
- Natives participate in all major occupations
- Plenty of STEM workers are available
- Gains to the economy are not the same as gains to natives
- Immigration is not an efficient solution to population aging
Immigration is fundamentally about trade-offs. Unfortunately, advocates have seized on the idea of a "labor shortage" in order to deny those trade-offs, arguing instead that immigration is necessary to fill jobs that cannot be filled by natives. Neither economic theory nor empirical evidence supports the notion of a "labor shortage". It's time to retire this talking point.
|
Feds: 12M Americans Remain Sidelined, Out of the Workforce
More than 12 million Americans have remain sidelined from the U.S. workforce despite their wanting full-time employment, federal data suggests.
Last month, there were more than 12 million Americans who were either unemployed, forced to work part-time jobs, out of the workforce but wanted jobs, or who were unemployed because they were discouraged by their job prospects.
Overall, about 6.2 million Americans were unemployed, about 13 percent of whom were teenagers and 6.7 percent of whom were black Americans. The unemployment rate for black Americans is more than double the unemployment rate of Asian Americans.
Additionally, about 4.5 million Americans are working part-time jobs despite wanting full-time jobs. These are mostly poor, working and lower-middle class Americans who say the job market has kept them in part-time work though they prefer being a full-time employee.
There are also about 1.4 million Americans who are entirely out of the workforce and thus not counted in the unemployment rate. These are working-age residents who have looked for a job over the last 12 months. Among those out of the workforce are 412,000 Americans who are discouraged by the job market and say they do not believe there are any jobs for them in the current economy.
While millions remain on the sidelines of the workforce, Democrats, some Republicans, and the big business lobby have suggested the U.S. bring more foreign workers to take blue collar and many white collar American jobs. Already, about 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants are admitted to the country every year, at the detriment of U.S. wages.
Every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta has found. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), David Perdue (R-GA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO), on the other hand, have reintroduced the RAISE Act which would reduce legal immigration levels to about 500,000 admissions a year and end the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens are able to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.
The plan would immediately tighten the labor market, advocates say, and thus boost wages and open job opportunities for America’s working and middle class that have struggled to re-enter the workforce.
The Washington, DC-imposed mass legal immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation and increased public costs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
ANN COULTER
Last month, there were more than 12 million Americans who were either unemployed, forced to work part-time jobs, out of the workforce but wanted jobs, or who were unemployed because they were discouraged by their job prospects.
Overall, about 6.2 million Americans were unemployed, about 13 percent of whom were teenagers and 6.7 percent of whom were black Americans. The unemployment rate for black Americans is more than double the unemployment rate of Asian Americans.
Additionally, about 4.5 million Americans are working part-time jobs despite wanting full-time jobs. These are mostly poor, working and lower-middle class Americans who say the job market has kept them in part-time work though they prefer being a full-time employee.
There are also about 1.4 million Americans who are entirely out of the workforce and thus not counted in the unemployment rate. These are working-age residents who have looked for a job over the last 12 months. Among those out of the workforce are 412,000 Americans who are discouraged by the job market and say they do not believe there are any jobs for them in the current economy.
While millions remain on the sidelines of the workforce, Democrats, some Republicans, and the big business lobby have suggested the U.S. bring more foreign workers to take blue collar and many white collar American jobs. Already, about 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants are admitted to the country every year, at the detriment of U.S. wages.
Every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta has found. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), David Perdue (R-GA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO), on the other hand, have reintroduced the RAISE Act which would reduce legal immigration levels to about 500,000 admissions a year and end the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens are able to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.
The plan would immediately tighten the labor market, advocates say, and thus boost wages and open job opportunities for America’s working and middle class that have struggled to re-enter the workforce.
The Washington, DC-imposed mass legal immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation and increased public costs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
ANN COULTER
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