Simplesimon8 Scourges Wall Street!

The great Facebook debacle Part 2 #mugs #muppets « simplesimon8

So what’s changed since the demise of Lehmans and the financial crisis of the last few years. Not much by the look of things. Seems that the rich are getting richer, the middle classes are still a great target and the poor, well nobody gives a damn about them anyway!

Common sense, don’t partake in an IPO without it!

The great Facebook debacle Part 2 #mugs #muppets « simplesimon8

Another of my comrades on WordPress weighs in on the Facebook Investment Debacle. I recommend you read the article and put this web site in your favorites.

To my colleague at Simplesimon8, “Keep fighting the good fight.”

James Pilant

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Income Inequality Squeezes the Middle Class [via Beat the Press]

Image via Wikipedia

I couldn’t agree more. There is less of the pie for the poor and middle class. No matter what your talents and your willingness to work, how do you compete with a system that distributes income upward toward those who already have the money? Income inequality continues to squeeze the middle class perhaps eventually into its disappearance.

James Pilant

This brief comment is from a posting on Beat the Press entitled -

If Millennials Do Worse Than Their Parents, It Will Be Because Bill Gates‘ Kids Have All the Money

The Washington Post had a column by a millennial columnist complaining about the lack of opportunity. It is striking that the column never once mentioned income inequality.

There is no doubt that millennials will on average be far wealthier than their parents. Output per hour has roughly doubled over the last three decades, meaning that the real wage could be almost twice as high today as it was in 1980. Insofar as the typical millennial is not seeing the benefits of this productivity growth it is due to the fact that so much income has been redistributed upwards, not the result of any generational dynamics.

 

Here’s some more from Mother Jones, the New York Times, and Slate.

Related articles

• The Causes of Poverty (23): The Structure of Income Inequality (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Youth Research Roundup: Millennial Culture, Affluent Families, New Ypulse Report & More (ypulse.com)
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• Lila Kalick: The Fleecing of Generation Y (huffingtonpost.com)
• Income inequality is increasing (elkrapidslive.com)
• The Connection Between Union Density and Income Inequality (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
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Support Growing for Verizon Strikers (via The North Carolina Letter Carrier Activist)

It’s the work climate in this country. Work hard and produce significant profit and there will be no gratitude only demands for more cuts. The disconnect between a hard working middle class and the treatment they receive is stark. Over the last forty years, the economy has been re-designed to convey benefits from the middle class to the upper class particularly the financial industry.

Many in the middle class still don’t get it. Their intrinsic worthiness is pointless. Worthiness is worthless and intangible. The middle class is a source of money that is gotten through fees, tax increases, and off shoring. They can be squeezed and squeezed. It’s never going to end.

So, the Verizon workers made the company hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions, they need to be squeezed. Squeezing be it justified by Ayn Rand, or squeezing be it justified by Milton Friedman, is here to stay. It’s a civic religion among the monied elites.

James Pilant

By James Parks (This is a crosspost from blog.aflcio.org) The strike by some 45,000 Verizon workers, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Electrical Workers (IBEW), continues as workers across the country offer support to the strikers, whose struggle reflects the situation for millions of workers. Rather than reward the hard work of Verizon employees who have provided the quality service that earned the company more than … Read More

via The North Carolina Letter Carrier Activist

The Biggest Middle Class Tax Increase In History Will Come In Five Months (via 1 Nation Blog)

Best comment from the post -

Is our government functioning properly?

Absolutely not! We may have just made the same (similar) mistakes that were made in 1937. I think all of Washington has folded on their responsibilities.

The attached essay explains better than I could the nature of the tax increase about to hit almost all of us in a few months.

James Pilant

| Aug. 2, 2011, 12:33 PM | Image: ChuckHolton via Flikr Bruce Krasting URL Bruce Krasting is a former hedge fund manager There is one aspect of the final debt deal from DC that took me by surprise. I was convinced the 2% reduction in payroll taxes would be extended through 2012. On July 12th I wrote about this and  got it completely wrong. Not only did I think there would be a one year extension of the existing holiday; I forecast that the subsid … Read More

via 1 Nation Blog

How The Rich Are Winning The Class War (via Blogadoccio’s Blog)

I think that the No Child Left Behind law had severely damaged character education, critical thinking and issue awareness among the young. An ability to take multiple choice tests, true false, or completion tests is not a useful employment skill. Yet that has become almost our sole measurement of educational achievement.

But the inaction of the middle class, whatever it’s cause, is critical to the success of the rich in shifting the tax burden.

James Pilant

The rich won the class war by depriving the middle and lower classes of education: history, civics, political education, and training in how to think critically. As a result, their mouthpieces can spout nonsense and the relatively uneducated voters now swallow it clean. The antidote, until we get a real education system back again, is for those of use whose eyes are open to educate those around us who cannot see what is going on. We need to devel … Read More

via Blogadoccio's Blog

What is middle class? (via jumpstone)

There is certainly a disconnect between what your average beltway expert (including congressmen) believe average incomes are and what the actual data says. One writer I enjoy argues that the average congressman doesn’t actually know anybody who makes less than 250,000 a year and they think those people are either average Americans or the ones that count.

Personally, I don’t get it. If I were a politician I would never let the basic income numbers depart from my regular reading, they are too important to policy making.

James Pilant

According to the 2010 Wall Street Journal, Gregory B. Maffei was the highest paid CEO at $87 million. If you take the highest paid person and the lowest paid (earning the $6.25 minimum wage) and average the two, "middle" would be roughly $43.5 million. But extremely few people earn that. Also according to 2010 statistics, the typical wage of the top 1% of earners is $380,354. In this case, "middle" should be $183,677. However, only the top 5% of … Read More

via jumpstone

Middle Class And Poor To Feel The Pain After Deal Is Passed (via Sky’s Universal Predications)

Yes, as always, this is the case. The beltway bloviators, the “villagers,” the 24 hour news networks, the opinion makers, etc. long ago decided that the great mass of Americans were a bunch of lazy, unmotivated, whiny, and fat hogs who need the discipline of the market in their pointless lives. I am reminded of the condemnation in the Bible for those who load the poor with burdens while being unwilling to bear any burden of their own.

James Pilant

(As always, the middle class and the poor will feel the pain the most, while the wealthy get another tax break. And when we hit the debt ceiling again in a few years, they'll be asked to do it all over again–by taking it up the ass for the rich.) Debt hope: Obama praises 'Gang of Six' plan WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and a startling number of Republican senators lauded a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that includes $1 tri … Read More

via Sky's Universal Predications

PROOF that tax cuts do not create jobs: Bush’s decade was a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers (via Under the Mountain Bunker)

I always thought that once supply side economics failed in the 1980′s, the idea would be dead. That was a major miscalculation on my part. The idea that cutting taxes raises revenue is so much fun for some people, that facts do not inconvenience them.

James Pilant

From the Washington Post: There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well. Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade … Read More

via Under the Mountain Bunker

Are Things As Bad As They Seem? (via Info Ink)

Yes, they are every bit that bad.

James Pilant

The partisanship…..the extremism……lack of respect…….the out right lies…….the misinformation (and yes, it is different from lies)…….and it all comes down to the American voter….YOU voted for morons and now you are paying the price for that vote…..I know, what could be so bad we might get lower taxes and balanced budget and spending controls….what could be so bad? Glad you asked!  While you were bobbing and weaving through t … Read More

via Info Ink

An Economic Wake Up Call (via Here’s What Nancy Thinks)

Income inequality in the developed nations is almost exclusively an American phenomenon. As you can see from the graph, we are more equivalent to African nations with limited economic development in terms of income

Another interesting article is the graph on the origins of our budget problems. Please pay attention to the enormous role played by the Bush tax cuts in destroying revenue.

James Pilant

I don't want a "share the wealth" society in the sense that Republicans like to threaten the people with… You have to admit, though, that there used to be a time when money made it to the top, the top would keep a little and spend the rest to grow their business by hiring new people and so forth. When the money trickled down, there was more money to trickle back up. Now, the mighty dollar is harder to come by because the money makes it to the t … Read More

via Here's What Nancy Thinks