Free Republic

Another Obama record… AMERICANS GETTING POORER – HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH IN DECLINE.The median household net worth under Obama is one-third what it was during the Bush years. Under Barack Obama American households are worth two-thirds of what they were worth under George W. Bush. The New York Times reported: Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only...

VILLA PARK, Ill. — Comparing their campaign to the civil rights movement, fast food workers from across the country voted today to escalate their efforts for $15-an-hour pay and union membership to include nonviolent civil disobedience. More than 1,300 workers gathered in a convention in center in suburban Chicago to discuss the future of a campaign that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years. Wearing T-shirts that said “Fight for $15” and “We Are Worth More,” the workers cheered loudly and said they would win if they stuck together. “People are just fed up,” said Cindy...

Although there are many signs the economy is improving, average weekly wages in the United States remained stagnant throughout 2013. This was a notable change from a year earlier, when weekly wages rose 4.7% over the same period. Despite flattening nationally, wages posted strong growth in some metro areas. In six of the 10 metro areas, wages grew at least 6%. In Idaho Falls, wages grew by 18.4% between the fourth quarters of 2012 and 2013. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), these are the metro areas where wages are soaring.Click here to see the 10...

The Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding regulations allowing the agency to garnish wages of those it says are delinquent on debts. A notice to be published in Thursday’s Federal Register formally withdraws the rule, issued earlier in the month. “In the direct final rule, EPA stated that if adverse comments were received by August 1, 2014, the direct final rule would be withdrawn and not take effect,” according to the terse notice. “EPA received adverse comments on that direct final rule.” However, the agency did not rule out proceeding with another version of the measure via a more deliberative rulemaking...

1. Historically, when Capacity Utilization is as high as its now (suggesting not much industrial slack) the inflation rate has been much higher. 2. According to survey data from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, more and more companies are saying they can't find qualified applicants for job openings. 3. Survey data shows a big increase in the number of businesses who say they plan to raise wages in the future.

The headline of today’s jobs report, that 288,000 jobs were created in the last month, is positive. At least, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. However, as with most economic reports these days, there is a veneer of good news — but when you look closer, the White House is using the positive headlines to hide the growing deterioration of the American workforce. Last month, 523,000 full-time jobs were lost, while 799,000 part-time jobs were added. Another way of looking at these numbers is that almost all of the 288,000 jobs created last...

With the liability of being forced to finance employees' abortions taken off its back by the recent Supreme Court voiding of the Obamacare mandate, Hobby Lobby announced it is raising the minimum wage of its full-time employees to $14.50 per hour. Aspiring presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dubbed the move "a callous and insensitive slap in the face to American women. This company went to a lot of effort to deny its responsibility to insure the reproductive health of its female employees. Now that they've won a totally unfair verdict in court they're insulting these imperiled women by investing the costs...

The worst kept secret is that employees are making less on average every year. There are millions of reasons for this, but we’re going to focus on one that we can control. Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more. Keep in mind that 50% is a conservative number at the lowest end of the spectrum. This is assuming that your career is only going to last 10 years. The longer you work, the greater the difference will become over your...

One of the most shocking findings from Heidi Shierholz’s, Will Kimball’s, and my research on young graduates is that inflation-adjusted wages for young female college graduates are lower today than they were in 1989. Average real wages for young female college graduates are currently $15.29, whereas 25 years ago they were $16.12 (in 2013 dollars) — a decrease of 5.2%. This is part of a wider trend of wage stagnation and decline since 1989 for both men and women. For all college graduates ages 21-24 (male and female combined), wages today are only 2.4% higher than they were in 1989....

Billionaires buy whatever they want. And not just mansions and Teslas but elections and legislation. The recent Supreme Court decision lifting caps on campaign contributions gives them even more power. The libertarian Koch brothers have already pumped millions into this year’s elections. But Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch and George Soros are no less guilty of buying our political system, and all of them, from libertarian Koch brothers to liberal Soros, are united in one cause: Bring in more foreign workers, increase job competition, and allow “market forces” to drive down wages. Since 2007, political lobbies spent a whopping...

A disgruntled worker hatched an unusual revenge plot against his former boss when he sent more than 1,000 baby ducks to his home. Builder Chiu Xiang arranged for the 1,130 live ducklings to be dropped in the home of his employer, Hung Bin, in a dispute over wages. The 60-year-old, who worked for Bin for three years, said he was owed £300 in unpaid wages after quitting his job in China’s Sichuan province last year, according to the Shanghaiist. ‘It was all he deserved,’ he said. ‘I hope the ducks drove him quackers.’ Xiang organised for a contact who runs...

See a comprehensive takedown of liberals on this issue at Legal Insurrection.

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a...

Obamacare will reduce the earnings of its 300,000 members by up to $5 an hour by requiring them to buy health insurance, according to a report by Unite Here, a union which represents chiefly lower-wage workers in service industries. The union said it “threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage.” Americans who says they’ve been hurt by Obamacare outnumber those who say they’ve benefited from it by more than 2 to 1, according to recent polls by both Rasmussen and Gallup.

MILFORD >> Residents with a collage of questions and suggestions made their way to the microphone held by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman at a town hall event in Milford. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stood at the lectern in City Hall Wednesday to answer as many questions he could in an hour — or directed people to the right staff member to contact to follow up.

Economy: Food and energy prices are rising, wages are flat and the top concern among Americans is unemployment. What was that word coined in the '70s to describe a stagnant economy suffering inflationary pressures? Since the Obama "recovery" started 4-1/2 years ago, inflation appears to have been relatively tame, with core prices climbing just 7% from June 2009 to December 2013. But as CBS News discovered when it looked a little closer, the overall number is deceptive. In fact, it found food prices soaring. The official inflation data confirm this. Overall, food prices are up 9% since June 2009, according...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to “give America a raise.” Well, it turns out that Obama is giving America a $70 billion annual pay cut, courtesy of Obamacare. That is the overlooked nugget in the new Congressional Budget Office report detailing the economic costs of Obamacare. While much attention has been paid to the report’s finding that Obamacare will reduce employment by as much as 2.5 million workers, buried on page 117 (Appendix C) is this bombshell: “CBO estimates that the ACA will cause a reduction of roughly 1 percent in aggregate labor compensation...

President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was the culmination of months of advocacy from Democrats and activists for a higher minimum wage. The President proposed a raise to the minimum wage for federal contractors by executive order to $10.10 per hour and called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage for all workers to the same mark, along with indexing it to inflation. A raise of the national minimum wage was framed as giving low income workers the “living wage” they deserve and fighting perceived growth in income inequality in America. Though the President’s proposal is well...

The Democrats, their union supporters, and liberals in general are making a hard and concerted push for an increase in the minimum wage. President Obama mentioned the subject prominently in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night and even promised to take executive action to increase the minimum wage federal contractors must pay their workers starting in 2015. While Republicans and small business owners are sure to resist this push, it is important that everyone on both sides debates the issue with the correct facts. Much of what you hear about the minimum wage is completely untrue. First,...

Five years after winning control of the White House and Congress, Democrats can’t wait a minute longer for a serious conversation about income inequality, a problem that is considerably worse under President Obama than it was under his much-maligned GOP predecessor. Republicans naturally accuse the president of wanting to double down on anti-poverty measures that haven’t worked, but they too seem eager to engage the issue. This decision to make income inequality the priority issue in 2014 is noteworthy in light of last year’s priority issue: comprehensive immigration reform. Although dormant for the past few months, immigration reform is still...