“Real unemployment is 18%
Real inflation is 10%”
Yep, that’s what i hear, and looking around it is quite believable. Need some wage inflation to kick in too or soon even the people with jobs will be broke.
Unfortunately most companies just can't afford to pay folks more right at the time 0care is going to start increasing the cost of providing medical benefits to employees.
“Need some wage inflation to kick in too or soon even the people with jobs will be broke.”
Unfortunately wage deflation seems to be the trend. Most of the unemployed people I know find jobs 1/3 to 1/2 of what they made before. People who have held on to jobs have not had an increase in several years and have seen an increasing share of escalating health care costs passed on to them by their employer. For exempt white collar workers, working hours also continue to rise as they take on the jobs of their coworkers terminated in waves of downsizings.
The CEO’s and executives of major corporations are playing into Obama’s class warfare game by continuing to award themselves outrageous (by historical standards) compensation while making the working environment more and more oppressive everyday. I’m hearing more and more middle class people who believed in the system and are now crushed by declining personal income and rising inflation, plus the ever present fear of unemployment, complaining about executive greed and Republican policies. What is left of the middle class is losing faith in the capitalist system due to the behavior of the leaders of the private sector.