OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS
in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created
more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also
had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s
terms, 95% of the wealth created went
to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
SOARING
POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These
figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in
America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to
be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human
toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves
and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
*
"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly
three-quarters of all household wealth."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html
*
"While
telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund
social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S.
Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build,
stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
US Census report shows
increasing social inequality
By
Eric London
15 September 2017
US Census data from 2016 released on Tuesday shows increasing
social inequality amid a small gain in household income that is offset by a
massive growth of personal debt and rising living costs.
The data tracks the ongoing redistribution of wealth from the
working class to the wealthy as a result of the pro-Wall Street policies of
both the Republican and Democratic parties. It substantiates the oligarchic
character of the United States.
Social inequality
The Gini index, used to measure social inequality, with higher
figures indicating a wider economic divide, rose slightly from 2015 (.479) to
2016 (.481). The 2016 figure, according to rankings in the CIA World Factbook, makes the
US slightly more equal than Madagascar and less equal than Mexico.
In terms of aggregate income share, the shift from 2015 to 2016 is
as follows:
The growth in inequality is even starker when traced from 2007,
the year before the Wall Street crisis.
The data reflects income and not wealth, thereby providing an
incomplete and conservative indication of the scale of inequality. Even within
the highest quintile, the income share increased only for the top 10 percent,
and, in particular, the top 5 percent.
Household income
The corporate media has portrayed the report as a sign of positive
income growth, since it shows a slight rise in median income of 3.2 percent
from 2015 to 2016.
But according to the Census data, the earnings of “full-time,
year-round workers” remained stagnant. For men in this category, a total of
63.9 million people, earnings declined by 0.4 percent, from $51,859 in 2015 to
$51,640 in 2016. For women in this category, 47.2 million people, there was a
minor increase, 0.7 percent, from $41,257 in 2015 to $41,554 in 2016. In other
words, families with 2 adults working full-time saw a paltry $78 increase in
their yearly earnings from 2015 to 2016.
Claims of rising incomes mask the growth of inequality. The Census
data shows that the household income of the 90th percentile (the 100th being
the highest) was 12.53 times higher than the household income of the 10th
percentile in 2016, up from 12.23 times higher in 2015 and 11.18 times higher
in 2007. The degree to which income is concentrated in the richest 10 percent of
the population is exemplified by the fact that the 5th percentile boasted a
household income 3.82 times higher than the 50th percentile in 2016, up from
3.79 times in 2015 and 3.52 in 2007.
As Bloomberg
News reported Wednesday, “Since 2007, average inflation-adjusted
income has climbed more than 10 percent for households in the highest fifth of
the earnings distribution, and it’s fallen 3.2 percent for the bottom quintile.
Incomes of the top 5 percent jumped 12.8 percent over the period.”
For the working class, any income increase was transferred to the
corporate elite in the form of rising debt payments and increasing living
expenses, especially for health care.
According to figures from eHealth, a large private health
exchange, average deductibles for families rose 5 percent from 2016 to 2017 (a
year after the period covered by the Census report) and average individual
premiums rose 22 percent over the same period.
The rising cost of student debt alone largely erases income
increases seen by some young people. According to the Census, those aged 15 to
24 saw an income increase of 13.9 percent, from $36,564 in 2015 to $41,655 in
2016, while incomes for young people aged 25 to 34 rose 4.9 percent, from
$58,091 to $60,932, nearly double the percentage increase for older age groups.
However, in 2016, student debt rose to an average of $30,000 per
young person, up 4 percent from 2015, eliminating over 80 percent of the income
rise for 25-34 year olds. For 15 to 24 year olds, the $4,000 increase in median
income would hardly cover one sixth of the average debt payment, let alone make
up for the fact that young people face a future in which they are unlikely to
receive a pension, Social Security or Medicare.
Rising debt levels are not a phenomenon limited to young people.
A Bloomberg report
from August 10 notes that credit card defaults increased from the beginning of
2015—when roughly 2.5 percent of debt holders defaulted—to the end of 2016,
when the total hit 3 percent. This figure subsequently climbed in 2017 to reach
3.49 percent.
Bloomberg notes: “After
deleveraging in the aftermath of the last US recession, Americans have once
again taken on record debt loads that risk holding back the world’s largest
economy... Household debt outstanding--everything from mortgages to credit
cards to car loans--reached $12.7 trillion in the first quarter [2017],
surpassing the previous peak in 2008 before the effect of the housing market
collapse took its toll, Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show.”
“For most Americans,” the report continues, “whose median
household income, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was at its peak in
1999, borrowing has been the answer to maintaining their standard of living.
The increase in debt helps explain why the economy’s main source of fuel is
providing less of a boost than in the past. Personal spending growth has
averaged 2.4 percent since the recession ended in 2009, less than the 3 percent
of the previous expansion and 4.3 percent from 1982-90.”
The Bloomberg report
explains that income from wages minus household debt trended downward in 2015,
meaning that debt is rising faster than wages, causing a loss of roughly $500
billion across the US economy in the space of just one year.
Poverty rate
Though the Census report shows that the poverty rate declined from
13.5 percent of households in 2015 to 12.7 percent in 2016, this figure is
substantially higher than the 11.3 percent level that prevailed in 2000. In
reality, individuals and families must make 2.5 to 3 times the official poverty
rate of $12,000 for an individual, $15,500 for a married couple and $25,000 for
a family of four just to make ends meet.
What the data really shows is that the poorest half of the
country--over 150 million people--is in a desperate financial position, with
the next poorest 40 percent facing constant financial strain and a declining
share of the national income. In regard to poverty, the Census Bureau maintains
figures that go up only to 200 percent of the official poverty level. The
latest report shows that 95 million people—29.8 percent of the population—fall
into this category. The share of those under the age of 18 in this category is
much higher--39.1 percent.
This is the context for the drive by the Trump administration and
both big business parties to slash corporate taxes, impose a health care
“reform” that will increase costs for millions of people, and accelerate the
transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy.
Census
Bureau: Mens’ Wages Remain Below 1973 Levels
AP
Photo/David Goldman
Americans’ median pay packets have been flat since 1973, even
though the vastly expanded federal government has justified its own salaries
and its many massive spending and policy programs as a sure-fire way to
boost education, productivity, and wages.
The
colossal 44-year failure of the federal government to help grow American men’s
wages — or even to reduce poverty rates — is laid bare in the latest
report from the Census Bureau, “Income
and Poverty in the United States: 2016.”
The dense report includes
myriad detailed tables of data around one shocking chart, which reveals no
growth in men’s wages for the past 44 years, or since President Richard Nixon
was beginning his second term in office.
The sudden flatline
followed a 31 percent rise in all men’s median wages from 1960 to 1972.
During the 44-year period
since 1973, income among women grew by roughly 30 percent as more skilled and
trained women entered the market, gained experience, and were promoted to
better-paying jobs. Those opportunities and contributions are good news — but
they do not change the reality that men’s income has been flat for 44 years.
In fact, the report notes
that “the real median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1
percent lower in 2016 than in 2007.”
There
are many explanations for the flat income, such as the massive growth in the
labor supply when 30 million additional American women and roughly 30 million
immigrants joined in the marketplace competition for good jobs. For example, a
pro-immigration panel at the prestigious National Academies of Science
estimated in 2016 that the huge government-imposed inflow of immigrants
since 1965 has imposed a hidden 5 percent “immigration tax” on Americans’ pay
packets.
Technology has made many
individuals workers more productive but also sidelined many others, such
as newspaper printers and steelworkers. Peaceful international trade has
allowed men to sell more products overseas but also allowed employers to hire
foreign workers instead of Americans. Whatever the combinations of reasons, the
mid-point for men’s income has been flat for 43 years, according to the Census
Bureau.
The flat-earnings chart
needs some explanation:
It shows only
inflation-adjusted, pre-tax pay packets, so it excludes the impact of
inflation, taxes and government benefits, such as food-stamps and tax-breaks
for children, or of Obamacare’s subsidies and spending obligations.
It shows median income,
which is the midpoint of the income scale. Half the people earn above the line,
half the people earn below the line. Average income would be higher, but less
revealing, because a higher share of income is going to the highest earners,
compared to back in the 1970s.
The chart shows the income
of year-round, full-time workers, excluding part-workers or seasonal workers,
or those who work on-and-off under contracts. The chart does not make
distinctions by race.
The chart shows
individuals’ income, not the income of households, which has fluctuated as
the average number of children or adults has declined.
The chart only shows income,
but not the quality of goods in the stores, such as Starbucks coffee, cheap
products imported from China, high-tech music players, improved autos or better
health-care. That rise in product quality from competing companies — not
claimed policy improvements from federal agencies — has provided the vast
majority of material gains for Americans amid flat incomes.
The median earnings for all
men employed year-round was $51,640 in 2016, which is still far below the
$54,030 earned by full-time men in 1973. It is also below the $51,938 earned in
the 2000 Internet boom, or the $52,222 earned in the 2007 property bubble when
large-scale legal and illegal immigration provided employers with millions of
alternative imported workers.
The post-1973 reality of
flat income is a huge contrast to the rapid growth from 1960 up to the 1973 oil
shock and the reopened inflow of immigrant labor after 1965. During the
twelves years 1960 to 1972, the median average wages for all males — including
minorities, seasonal workers, and contract workers — rose from by 31 percent,
from $31,926 to $41,013.
When the income of all men
is gauged, the Bureau concluded that all men’s median income in 1973 was
$41,935. It dropped after 1973 and rose back up to $43,360 in 1999 as companies
competed for the few unemployed workers during the first Internet boom. Income
crashed in 2008 to a depression-low of $39,636 in 2012 once the federal
government’s real-estate bubble burst. Since then, income has slowly climbed
back to $42,220 in 2016 amid the continuous public protest against the federal
government’s cheap-labor economic strategy, which is exemplified by the
bipartisan 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty legislation.
Other data in the report
shows that the nation’s poverty rates have barely budged since the 1960s,
although many people in the United States are wealthier than many people n
Europe. For example, the percentage of American said to be in poverty was 11.1
percent in 1973 and 12.7 percent in 2016.
That national poverty rate
climbed, in part, because of the population of Latinos spiked from 10.8 million
in 1973 to 57.6 million in 2016. Poverty among Latinos was 19 percent in
2016, little changed from 1973.
The report also noted that:
The official poverty rate
decreased by 0.8 percentage points between 2015 and 2016. At 12.7 percent, the
2016 poverty rate is not statistically different from 2007 (12.5 percent), the
year before the most recent recession.
In real terms, median
earnings of full-time, year-round working women in 2016 were 2.3 percent higher
than their 2007 median, the year before the most recent recession. The real
median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1 percent lower in
2016 than in 2007.
In 2017, the number and
percentage of shared households remained higher than in 2007, the year before
the most recent recession. In 2007, 17.0 percent of all households
were shared households, totaling 19.7 million households. In 2017, 19.4
percent of all households were shared households, totaling 24.6 million
households.Read
it all here.
THE HOUSTON FLOOD -
CRONY CAPITALIST LICK THEIR LIPS OVER REBUILDING.... FIRST, LIKE
KATRINA, CUT WAGES AND INVITE HORDES MORE ILLEGALS IN TO WORK CHEAP!
"Like
Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of
American society, exposing colossal levels of social
inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."
"The reason why these warnings have been
ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by
corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and
Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of both
parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American
people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs
under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy
to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
*
THEY INVADE OVER AND UNDER OUR BORDERS… and do so by invitation of
the Democrat Party.
Lawmen are worried that
the cartel tunnel builders on the Mexican border are now using their engineered
concoctions to smuggle illegals, not merely drugs.
That's what the Daily
Caller has found, describing the new anxiety as
one was discovered over the weekend, catching about 30 illegals coming in from
Mexico and China. MONICA SHOWALTER – AMERICAN THINKER.com
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER
OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing
indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest
country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy.
They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and
all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the
filthy rich
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality,
with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an
extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows reports released over
the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due
to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall
leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy
of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER
OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing
indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest
country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy.
They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and
all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
SOARING
POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These
figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in
America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to
be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human
toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves
and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
*
"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly
three-quarters of all household wealth."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html
*
"While
telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund
social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S.
Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build,
stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
A 'Read-My-Lips' Moment for Trump?
"Having cut a deal with Democrats for help with the debt ceiling, will Trump seek a deal with Democrats on amnesty for the 'Dreamers' in return for funding for border security?"
The answer to that question, raised in my column a week ago, is in. Last night, President Donald Trump cut a deal with "Chuck and Nancy" for amnesty for 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who came here illegally as youngsters, in return for Democratic votes for more money for border security.
According to preening Minority Leader Pelosi, the agreement contains not a dime for Trump's Wall, and the "Dreamers" are to be put on a long glide "path to U.S. citizenship."
Trump denies this is amnesty, and says the Wall comes later.
Fallout? Among the most enthusiastic of
Trump backers, disbelief, disillusionment
and wonderment at where we go from here.
Trump backers, disbelief, disillusionment
and wonderment at where we go from here.
Trump's debt-ceiling deal cut the legs out from under the GOP budget hawks. But amnesty would pull the rug out from under all the folks at those rallies who cheered Trump's promise to preserve the country they grew up in from this endless Third World invasion.
For make no mistake. If amnesty is granted for the 800,000, that will be but the first wave. "There are reasons no country has a rule that if you sneak in as a minor you're a citizen," writes Mickey Kaus, author of "The End of Equality," in The Washington Post.
"We'd be inviting the world. ... (An amnesty) would have a knock-on effect. Under 'chain migration' rules established in 1965 ... new citizens can bring in their siblings and adult children, who can bring in their siblings and in-laws until whole villages have moved to the United States.
"(T)oday's 690,000 dreamers would quickly become millions of newcomers who may well be low-skilled and who would almost certainly include the parents who brought them — the ones who in theory are at fault."
Trump is risking a breach in the dam. If the populists who provided him with decisive margins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania feel betrayed, it's hard to blame them.
Why did Trump do it? Clearly, he relished the cheers he got for the debt ceiling deal and wanted another such victory. And with the rampant accusations of a lack of "compassion" for his cancellation of the temporary Obama administration amnesty, he decided he had had enough heat.
It is not easy to stand up for long to the gale force winds of hostile commentary that blow constantly through this city.
Trump's capitulation, if that is what turns out to be, calls to mind George H. W. Bush's decision in 1990 to raise the Reagan tax rates in a deal engineered for him by a White House-Hill coalition, that made a mockery of his "Read my lips! No new taxes!" pledge of 1988.
For agreeing to feed the beast of Big Government, rather than cut its rations as Reagan sought to do, Bush was called a statesman.
By the fall of '92, the cheering had stopped.
Can Trump not know that those congratulating him for his newfound flexibility will be rejoicing, should Bob Mueller indict his family and his friends, and recommend his impeachment down the road?
What makes pre-emptive amnesty particularly disheartening is that the Trump policy of securing the border and returning illegal immigrants to their home countries appears, from a Census Bureau report this week, to be precisely the prescription America needs.
In 2016, paychecks for U.S. households reached an average of $59,039, up 3.2 percent from 2015, a year when they had surged.
U.S. median household income is now at its highest ever.
Yet there are inequalities. Where the median family income of Asian-Americans is above $81,400, and more than $65,000 for white Americans, the median family income of Hispanic families is $47,675, and that of African-American households far less, $39,490.
Consider. Though black Americans are predominantly native-born, while high percentages of Hispanics and Asians are immigrants, from the Census numbers, Hispanics earn more and Asians enjoy twice the median family income of blacks, which is below where it was in 2000.
Still, black America remains steadfastly loyal to a party that supports the endless importation of workers who compete directly for jobs with them and their families. Writes Kaus, "The median hourly wage (of DACA recipients) is only $15.34, meaning that many are competing with hard-pressed, lower-skilled Americans."
Looking closer at the Census Bureau figures, Trumpian economic nationalism would appear to have its greatest appeal to the American working class, a huge slice of which is native-born, black and Hispanic.
The elements of that policy?
Secure the border. Halt the invasion of low-wage workers, here legally and illegally, from the Third World. Tighten the labor market to force employers to raise wages in our full-employment economy. Provide tax incentives to companies who site factories in the USA. Impose border taxes on the products of companies who move plants abroad.
Put America and American workers first.
Will any amnesty of undocumented workers do that?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
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