Free Republic

For folks too young or too unaware what has happened to our economy the past 30 years, here is an answer. Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and the Republican Party are responsible for what we know as "Reaganomics," an economy that continues today resulting in few "labor unions” and the resulting low wages and lack of worker benefits. Newly elected Reagan’s (1981) first attack on the middle class economy was his dismantling a labor union representing 11,000 striking air traffic controller employees, whom he “fired.” Their PATCO union was destroyed. Reagan and his rich, conservative friends (not one who needed job...

One of the measures I like to follow is the spread between real GDP growth and potential real GDP growth. Potential GDP is the highest level of real Gross Domestic Product output that can be sustained over the long term. As of the end of 2012, the output gap (potential – actual real GDP growth) logged in at $840 billion. And that is just for Q4 2012. Notice that the US has been running almost a trillion dollars in subpar performance per quarter since 2009. Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas from University of Chicago gave a lecture in 2011 where he...

Consumer spending propped up our weak economic numbers long enough to get President Obama through the election – which is one reason that he used to treat his “payroll tax cut” raid on Social Security funding as the most important #60Dollars in every American’s life, before suddenly and silently dropping it during the fiscal cliff showdown.

Americans are a lot better at belt-tightening than the people they send to Washington. As Americans’ income fell by 3.6 percent in January, President Obama and Congressional leaders were warning of the dire consequences of sequester, the budgetary booby trap that forces cuts of as little as a third of that from the mammoth federal spending plan. Working stiffs sucked it up and absorbed the biggest monthly drop in income in 20 years, while the elected officials insisted that the federal budget had no fat to trim. Financial planning experts say if Americans can take such a big bite out...

According to a new study by the George Soros-funded Center for Economic Policy and Research, minimum wage should be $21.72 an hour to keep up with the increase of worker productivity. Highlighting that study, The Huffington Post bemoaned President Barack Obama’s call for a higher minimum wage as a “far cry from what workers really deserve,” in a Feb. 13 blog post.

Watch this 4 Minutes 32 Seconds of Video. The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative Fred Barnes: Yeah, you were in your early years, you were a a Marxist. Thomas Sowell: Yes. Fred Barnes: Uh … What happened? How'd you … uh … get away from that? Thomas Sowell: Ah … I took a job in the government. I was still a Marxists. But uh, one summer of working in the government was enough to uh in turn … start, start, in turn, start turning me around. I went through the University of Chicago as a Marxist. After a year...

Muskegon County wants to build a new jail, and the county's prevailing wage law means local taxpayers could be on the hook for an extra $2 million for the project. Prevailing wage laws mandate that union-scale wages be paid on construction work funded by taxpayer dollars, regardless of the winning bidder. Local governments can do nothing about federal prevailing wage laws, which apply if federal dollars are used for a project. However, local governments only have to pay the prevailing wage on local projects if they have a local ordinance that requires it. Most of Michigan's 83 counties do not...

I post this item not to mock Mika Brzezinski. But her comments this morning were so illustrative of the liberal mindset--in ignoring fundamental principles of economics--that they are worth highlighting here. An entire Morning Joe segment had been devoted to discussing the wage dilemma in America. In the context of analyzing the right-to-work law soon to be signed in Michigan, the panel—apparently excepting Mika—agreed that we face hard choices here. We can artificially preserve high wages for a relative few, or let wages seek their natural level, providing more jobs at lower pay. As Joe Scarborough put it, we have...

Full Zero Hedge Article At This LinkIn the recent past we noted [6] the somewhat startling reality that "the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045." While mathematics is our tool - as opposed to the mathemagics of some of the more politically biased media who did not like our message - the painful reality in America is that: for increasingly more Americans it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Pamela Waldron makes $7.75 an hour as a cashier at the KFC in New York's Penn Station, where she has worked for eight years. That's just 50 cents above the New York state minimum wage. The 26-year old nursing student, and mother of two, says she has asked for a raise but her pleas have gone unheeded for weeks. Finally, on Thursday, around lunchtime she joined a protest of about 40 fast food workers who walked out of their shifts, carrying placards and shouting slogans to bring attention to their cause of fighting for higher wages...

With more than 15 million workers in in the sector, and leverage over workplace standards across the supply chain, retail wields enormous influence on Americans’ standard of living and the nation’s economic outlook. It connects producers and consumers, workers and jobs, and local social and economic development to the larger US economy. And over the next decade, retail will be the second largest source of new jobs in the United States. Given the vital role retail plays in our economy, the question of whether employees in the sector are compensated at a level that promotes American prosperity is of national...

The rise in the consumer confidence rose more than expected. Despite real GDP growth hovering barely above 1% and the crash in durable goods orders, this is indeed a surprise. Or is it another Fed induced bubble? According to University of Michigan, consumer confidence has risen to Bush-era levels of September 2007. Just to put it into context, I put a yellow line through the 100 level. We still have a long way to go to get to 100 from 83.1. Here is a chart of wage income divided by GDP. Why are consumers more confident? Perhaps consumers are reacting...

If you guessed "renewable energy," you'd be wrong ... so wrong. Sure, the green-energy industry may have created some 28,000-odd jobs (a very far cry from the 5 million we were promised, cough cough), but it's important to remember that even those few "successfully" created green jobs are not necessarily productive jobs.The green-energy industry is only as big as it is because it's on the receiving end of a whole heap of different types of subsidies, from tax credits to loan guarantees to direct payments, and subsidies are always and necessarily designed to distort free-market signals. All the money poured...

The latest California community to face bankruptcy is Atwater, just down the Golden State Highway from Modesto and next to Merced. Atwater, like its neighbors Modesto and Merced, are still reeling from the crash of the housing market where prices have fallen about 70% from their peak. And unemployment rates are roughly twice the national average. Since I don’t have the house price indices for Modesto, Merced and Atwater, I will use the Case-Shiller Las Vegas house price index as a proxy. Like many communities during the housing bubble, expenditures were made based on increased property tax revenue. When the...

The U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 10% in October 2009 and has since slowly improved, flirting with 8% earlier this month. Despite the downward trend, the rate is still more than double prerecession levels. As the economy continues to recover and more people return to the workforce, many are trying to find the right career—one that is hiring and pays well. Knowing which jobs will be in high demand and pay the most is a good place to start. To serve as a guide, 24/7 Wall St. identified the best paying jobs of the future. These jobs will grow the...

Unemployment ebbs and flows, but one measure of the nation's economic health, average weekly wages, rarely dips. Until now. In the latest demonstration of the struggling economy that threatens President Obama's reelection, average weekly wages fell in 2011, one of only five declines since the category was created in 1978 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In a just-released review of employment in the nation's largest 322 counties, BLS found that weekly wages dropped over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010. That...

For the first time in four years in Michigan, the gap in compensation between public sector employees and private sector employees declined, according to research by James Hohman, fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The average compensation of public sector employees (state and local government, public schools and universities) dropped from $60,620 in 2010 to $58,400 in 2011. At the same time, private-sector workers had an increase in average compensation from $55,922 in 2010 to $56,234 in 2011. “Throughout the decade, Michigan’s state and local government workers enjoyed robust increases in the value of their wages...

Rep. Joe Graves has been in the Michigan House of Representatives for a week but doesn’t mince words when asked about Michigan’s prevailing wage law. “I absolutely won’t support increasing any fees or taxes (for road improvements) as long as we have prevailing wage in Michigan,” he said recently at an Independent Tea Party Patriots Meeting in Clarkston. The Argentine Township Republican, who won a special election to fill the term of Rep. Paul Scott after he was recalled, vowed to work to eliminate the law that mandates that union-scale wages are paid on state construction projects. Prevailing wage laws...

Is Mitt Romney a Liberal?By: Larry Walker, Jr.As Economist Thomas Sowell relays, in his piece entitled, A Defining Moment, "Mitt Romney has come out in support of indexing the minimum wage law, to have it rise automatically to keep pace with inflation."But according to Dr. Sowell,"We have gotten so used to seeing unemployment rates of 30 or 40 percent for black teenage males that it might come as a shock to many people to learn that the unemployment rate for sixteen- and seventeen-year-old black males was just under 10 percent back in 1948. Moreover, it was slightly lower than the...

Get ready for the next big financial bubble—the growth of America’s homeless population. The biggest boon for the homeless was President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, that appropriated $1.5 billion to the Homeless Prevention and Rapid-Re-Housing Program that temporarily aided homeless and near-homeless households. According to a report issued Wednesday by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the program has helped more than one million impoverished individuals find housing, but it is set to end this fall. “The resources provided by [the program] have run out in many communities … and the debt and deficit at the federal level have already...

During the past 11 months, the Michigan Legislature and Gov. Rick Snyder have gone to great lengths to economize, taking considerable political risks to make tax dollars stretch further at the state level, in counties, municipalities and schools. But a major policy reform that would restore fairness and save taxpayer money has been overlooked. The state's prevailing wage law is ripe for repeal. The prevailing wage law requires that every time state money is used on a construction project (or even when the state guarantees bonds, which frequently happens on school construction projects), all workers must receive a compensation that...

Right-to-work legislation has been introduced in Indiana and may actually win Gov. Mitch Daniels’ signature by the time Super Bowl Sunday arrives on Feb. 5. The Great Lake State may need to follow suit to compete economically. Before it does, however, the people of Michigan should note that one city — Bay City —leapt headlong into the labor fray Monday night. Its city commission voted to amend the city’s prevailing wage ordinance to exempt contracts under $100,000 in value. The previous threshold was only $10,000. It also — quite significantly — eliminates the prevailing wage mandate when Bay City shares...

According to an IBD review of various economic data, while corporations and Wall Street investors have made significant gains under Obama's economic leadership, average Americans have seen their fortunes steadily decline. Since the start of the Obama administration, corporate profits have climbed 68%, and are now 19% above their pre-recession peak, according to the latest Commerce Department data out Tuesday morning.

Lawmakers in several states have vowed to pass undocumented employer sanction laws after the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's this year. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has drummed up some support to pass a federal version in Congress that would require all employers to use the government's E-Verify database to ensure their employees are authorized to work--or risk losing their business license. Arizona provides a case study for the effects of a tough E-Verify law on the labor market. According to a study released this year by the Public Policy Institute of California, about 92,000 or 17 percent of the Hispanic non-citizen...

Over 100 Colleges and Universities Charge $50K or More a YearOctober 28, 2011 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I don't mean to harp on the subject of college tuition, but CNNMoney.com is reporting this: The number of colleges and universities with tuition and fees totaling more than $50,000 for a single year rose to 123 for the 2011-2012 year -- up from 100 institutions in the previous year." So 23 new colleges where it cost 50 grand minimum for a single year. Now, they point out in the story that this is more than the average United States salary. Do you know...

It's not a recession, it just feels like one. Industrial activity keeps rising, but other reports out Thursday showed real wage declines are accelerating and that job woes continue. Industrial output rose 0.2% in August as manufacturing activity expanded amid broad, auto-led gains, the Federal Reserve said. Wall Street expected no change. "It's still consistent with the idea that we're in a period of subpar economic growth," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James.

Real wages are falling sharply, pinching Americans' buying power and raising the risks for a fragile economy and President Obama's re-election hopes. With more than 4 unemployed workers available for every job opening, pressure on wages has been intense. Inflation-adjusted weekly earnings have fallen significantly in recent months, likely falling more than 1.5% vs. a year earlier in August. That would be the biggest drop since the height of the financial crisis in late 2008.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that "the Texas miracle is a myth." He argues that Governor Rick Perry's state is prospering because of high oil prices and population growth, much of this growth from Mexican immigrants and retirees. As for the oil prices, does anybody think that, if Barack Obama were governor of Texas, he wouldn't have messed with the Texas oil industry by now? And those retirees: Wonder if they might be attracted to the Lone Star state because there is no state income tax? Whoever the GOP nominee is, whether Perry or somebody else, his (or...

EW ORLEANS, La. – The American Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, recently released a working paper which finds that federal employees receive a salary premium of 14 percent, a benefits premium of 63 percent, and extra job security worth 17 percent of pay. That makes the total federal compensation premium approximately 61 percent. The study’s authors estimate that if federal employee compensation was reduced to private levels, taxpayers could save $77 billion per year. The BEA website highlights four factors that contribute to the wage disparity. First, private sector employee salaries range from minimum wage workers to the highest...

The Davis–Bacon Act (DBA) requires the government to pay construction wages that average 22 percent above market rates. This shields unions from competition on federal construction projects. It will also add $10.9 billion to the deficit in 2011. Given that the federal government is already running historic and unsustainable deficits, federal policy should not unnecessarily inflate the cost of federal construction projects. Congress should repeal the DBA. Unsustainable Spending . DBA Restrictions Increase Costs . Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act . America can no longer afford such special-interest handouts. If Congress is serious about reducing spending or lowering unemployment, it should...

The Federal Reserve's current round of asset purchases, due to expire June 30, is being bookended by economic soft patches. A logical question is whether the central bank's $600 billion in Treasury buys merely provided a short-term artificial boost. Wild cards from Japan to the Middle East make it impossible to judge with certainty if the Fed's latest aggressive efforts have failed. But the most telling data point — no gain in real private-sector wages —

As part of our ongoing research effort into the smear-campaign conducted against Sodexo, we recently came accross a – sizeable – bit of information that might be of interest to all party in this affair. It so happens that there is an online record of all financial activities at the SEIU. While it would be a laudable step towards transparency if it could be found anywhere else than on a federal website, it does have the merit of telling us a bit more about SEIU than its official communication – for which it spends hefty sums – will let you...

This 8 minute segment was on Fox news around 9 am April 23, The program "The Cost of Freedom, Cashin' In." Discussion of the real inflation vs the government numbers, as well as what is actually happenning with rising prices, particularly on food and energy, which the government ignores. Unfortunately, we the consumer can't ignore them while trying to find a job.Note specially the response by the doofus Stephane Fitch to the statement that the average citizen has less money to spend today after dealing with skyrocketing energy and food costs.Why does the Government exclude basic Universal needs from the...

Day after day the American public is inundated with media stories about surging food and gas prices, but if they want the real inflation story, they should ask a bartender. The rate of change in prices for a beer or cocktail at the local pub—a component of the Consumer Price Index—is actually decelerating from a year ago. In fact, the annual change in prices for data processing, recreation, lodging, medical services and tuition are all showing a downward trend, according to David Rosenberg’s analysis of the government’s CPI data. With all the hubbub about $100 oil, surging food prices, along...

Real earnings fell for a fifth straight month as wages fail to keep up with soaring gasoline prices and other costs. Inflation-adjusted earnings for all private workers dropped 0.5% in March, the worst monthly drop since July 2008, according to Labor Department data. Nominal wages were flat while consumer prices climbed more than 0.5% for a second straight month. Year over year, inflation-adjusted weekly pay sank 0.4% That’s the first drop in a year and down from a 2.2% gain in October. Since October, real weekly wages have dropped at a 3.8% annual rate — matching the decline set in...

ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The United Auto Workers union would be open to expanding a wage structure with lower-paid workers to keep General Motors Co. factories open or reopen closed plants, a top union official said Tuesday. Vice President Joe Ashton, who handles GM bargaining for the UAW, said the union "will look at anything when it comes to negotiations that will retain jobs." He made the comments during a press event at a factory in Orion Township, Mich., near Detroit, where at least 40 percent of the hourly workers will be paid about half the $28 per hour...

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson argues that professional athletes are “modern day slaves.” “People might laugh at me for saying this, but I feel like a slave,” Peterson contended. “Sure, there’s six or seven-figure annual salaries, but what about the working conditions? We have to play outdoors most of the time—in the heat, cold, rain or even snow. Meanwhile, most of our fans are sitting at home with their feet up, snacks and drinks at hand. They’re benefiting from our suffering.” “And how many other jobs are there where 200+ lb. guys get to beat on you and it’s...

Not until the 12th paragraph does it say anything about whether or not these Latinos are legal or not. In that paragraph a woman saying that she wasn't paid declined to give her full name. Why? Because she came to the United States to work illegally and was afraid she would get deported. Iowa has had milk toast legislators when it comes to illegals. Farmers and businesses alike drive the so called "need" to use illegal immigrants.

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

....An estimated 230,000 illegal immigrants were living in Washington state last year — 35 percent more than three years earlier, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center. The total represents one of every 20 workers in the state. ... They found that nationwide, illegal immigrants numbered 11.2 million, virtually unchanged from 2009 and down from a peak 12 million in 2007...While 57 percent are from Mexico, the illegal immigrants hail from across the world...They include people who sneaked across the borders, as well as those who came legally but overstayed employment, student or visitor visas. Continued failure...

Goods-producing industries could achieve high productivity growth as labor-saving automation and supply-chain efficiencies scaled up. But jobs in nursing and teaching required the same number of person-hours with patients or students as they did in years past. In other words, labor-intensive services had far lower rates of productivity growth than did goods-producing industries. And yet salary increases in those service sectors -- education, health care, government, to name a few -- keep pace with those in industries where raises are justified by greater productivity. This difference has a consequence that few had noticed before: As gross domestic product rises due...

Primetime liberal comedians have it made. All they need to do is spend a few hours with a politically correct minority and -- voila! -- they're transformed into instant congressional experts. Democrats invited Stephen Colbert to drape himself in the more-compassionate-than-thou mantle last week on behalf of illegal alien migrant workers. But not all "people of color" are equal. Minority Americans who have suffered the bloody consequences of open borders are out of luck. No Hollywood celeb wants to walk in their shoes. After picking veggies for a day at an upstate New York farm, Colbert descended on Washington to...

What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.(Romans 6:15-18) Paul’s argument so far in this chapter is that since we have been translated from the...

Some observations perfectly at home in economics textbooks can be so beastly in practice that nobody is willing to mention them. Ignoring the facts, though, leads to bad policies, and with the unemployment rate at a stubborn 9.6 percent, we don’t need more of those. The biggest problem with the labor market right now is that wages are too high. As Washington again turns to government spending as a cure for unemployment, some against-the-grain thinking is in order. Economics teaches that full employment would be reached if wages adjust downward, to a level that better reflects current circumstances. At lower...

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession. Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy. “I’ve never seen anything like this,� said Andrew Sum, an economics professor and director of the Center for...

Republican inquiries on whether Elena Kagan is on full pay since relinquishing many of her duties as Solicitor General when President Obama nominated her for the US Supreme Court have been rebuffed by the US Department of Justice. Attorney General Eric Holder asserted that “we will not be held to ‘bean counting’ standards. The old fashion notion of a so-called ‘fair days pay for a fair day’s work’ that the GOP is trying to impose is inappropriate. Ms. Kagan is a loyal member of this Administration’s team. Whether she does any work or no work, for that matter, is at...

Ben S. Bernanke, the federal reserve chairman, worries about deflation. Vincent Hartnett Jr. does not. The president of Penske Logistics in Reading, Pa., he oversees a fleet of 3,000 trucks and drivers, and wherever he looks, Hartnett sees higher costs creeping into the picture. New federal safety regulations kicking in later this year will load expensive recordkeeping tasks on companies like Penske--at the same time as tougher pollution regs require them to replace retiring four- to six-year-old trucks with units that cost 10% to 15% more. The driver pool is also shrinking as the feds crack down on unsafe drivers...

Two months after the Department of Labor launched a special program to assist and protect illegal immigrants in the U.S. the Obama cabinet official who heads the agency is personally encouraging undocumented workers to report employers that don’t pay them fairly. In a Spanish-language public service announcement, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis assures that “every worker in America has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.” Illegal aliens who are not getting fair wages are encouraged to call a new hotline set up by the agency on a new “Podemos Ayudar” (We Can Help) web page designed to...