FYI
So what happens when those 50+ homeowners start trying to sell their homes to the younger low-wage workers without capital?
Yes, returns to capital are rising. Perhaps it is not a good idea to rely on wages for all of your income?
Stock dividends taxed at low rates look good to me.
The upper classes and the owners of capital have figured out ways to get a greater piece of the economic pie. Workers and wage slaves get a smaller piece than 10-20-30-40 years ago
Which is better Low wage growth or Inflation.?
Oh, he gets it all right. By avoiding the increases in total compensation he gets to bash the Bush economy and push the left agenda that Business Week has become famous for.
Employers are picking up more and more of the rapidly increasing cost of healthcare. When included, total compensation shows an increase over the rate of inflation.
I get a 3% annual raise---but what my employer shells out for my health care, on an annual basis, has increased about 15%. If you TAXED all health care benefits, you'd see American workers' wages shoot up . . . but their real purchasing power would likely drop some.
I read an article a few years ago that tried to correlate wage rates for U.S. workers with various different factors that might influence it -- including things like basic intelligence, education, race, family background, etc. What they found was pretty interesting. By a wide margin, the factor that correlated most closely to wage rates was a worker's ability to read, write, and speak English.
I suspect that one of the biggest problems today is that a person's formal education is becoming increasingly unreliable as a measure for prospective employers to use when making hiring decisions. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the quality of college graduates has declined considerably over the years.
Well, when my husband gets his yearly compensation report (i.e. what kind of raise he's getting), the compensation package always includes other things that we don't actually see in his paycheck, like insurance coverage (health and life), retirement plan, etc.
IMHO, in some white collar jobs, the actual "pay" has not increased as much because the companies cost of the "perks" has risen, insurance, being the main thing that has eaten away at rising salaries.
As a Carpenter, my job hasn't been outsourced. I took a 14.6% salary increase last year and now inflation, fuel costs and taxes have zeroed that out. :-(
No, he doesn't. Hes just shares your own blinkered, wrong agenda.
Maybe they are stupid.
First thing the factory does is come out with a new piece rate, based on something like 100man hours. They have a few department use it and make sure the departments make good money, After that the rest of the departments will want to get on board, after everybodies on board you add more people(Temp and low wage earners with no benefits) and the wages per hour drops like a rock. You always make sure at least one department is making good money, but in reality you've cut almost everybodies wages big time. The net result is most workers will keep working for you attempting to make that elusive good money, some will quiet, but the main reason the ones that keep working are the ones working for the health insurance. It's basically a big shell game.
US CPI excluding food and energy 2.6% in June.
Wage growth 3.8%.
= Real Wage growth 1.2%
US Productivity Index 1.1%
= No mystery, just sloppy business reporting.
....and competition from workers who sneaked in from Mexico.
Time of the general prosperity in USA was based on mass consumption. Reducing the wages for the average people might lead to the contraction of economy as the demand for the luxury goods and for the servants cannot propel real growth.
Also the cheap labor is an enemy of technological progress as the millenniums of human history has demonstrated.
Cheap labor is an enemy of technological progress as the millenniums of human history has demonstrated.
A.Pole; you know more than anyone that our entire economy has been unbalanced from a production model based on quality to a service-based one dependent on promissory notes (mostly to China). All I hope for is that the Reds find, like Japan during the early 1990s, that they can't collect on what they can ruin.
Hedge, the current environment of wage slaves "benefiting the economy" wouldn't be sustainable without the totally unfair and unasked for onus of our government forcing us to finance their health and welfare needs while putting up with the very real risks of diseases and the criminal culture that follows them.
As the corruption is sinking deep right now I say it's time for outright obnoxious outrage, holding Reps feet to the fire and shouting the enablers down while regarding every accusation of "racism" as a merit badge of patriotism. Our disregard of their smears is the worst thing we can do to them - ridicule back on them is like water on the the Wicked Witch of the West.