Real income fell 2.2% last year...from $51,190 to $50,046.

[Engineer]

No one is guaranteed a job. You don't have the right to one. If I have the means to employ people, it is at MY DISCRETION. You're such an authoritarian asshole. Yes corporations and big businesses have hurt us, but we aren't entitled to shit. If we don't want to work and compete for it, someone else will get it. You sound like a soccer mom bitching that score was kept and your sons team lost so you don't want his self esteem hurt. WAAAH. There are jobs, people don't want to work them. People hire day laborers, mostly illegal aliens, at 10-15 bucks an hour and those guys get work damn near every fucking day. Sure it's labor, but so? It's fucking work and someone has to do it. Instead Americans would rather say "fuck that, I'm to good for that" and go collect unemployment while bitching there's no jobs*.

* in which they would want to do or feel ashamed to do.

LOLOLOLOL @ Bolded part.

As for no jobs...14 million unemployed and 3.5 million available jobs.

 

[Doppel]

No one is guaranteed a job. You don't have the right to one. If I have the means to employ people, it is at MY DISCRETION. You're such an authoritarian asshole. Yes corporations and big businesses have hurt us, but we aren't entitled to shit. If we don't want to work and compete for it, someone else will get it. You sound like a soccer mom bitching that score was kept and your sons team lost so you don't want his self esteem hurt. WAAAH. There are jobs, people don't want to work them. People hire day laborers, mostly illegal aliens, at 10-15 bucks an hour and those guys get work damn near every fucking day. Sure it's labor, but so? It's fucking work and someone has to do it. Instead Americans would rather say "fuck that, I'm to good for that" and go collect unemployment while bitching there's no jobs*.

* in which they would want to do or feel ashamed to do.

I'm white collar. Why? SUCKS ASS to work blue, you work harder and get much less pay. Can you really blame the average American who's embittered at the idea that the middle and lower classes are being squeezed by corporations make record profits and the pie is ever more seized by the small tier at the top?

 

[Engineer]

I'm white collar. Why? SUCKS ASS to work blue, you work harder and get much less pay. Can you really blame the average American who's embittered at the idea that the middle and lower classes are being squeezed by corporations make record profits and the pie is ever more seized by the small tier at the top?

Ah, can't be.

 

[charrison]

Just to be clear, the number I saw a week back indicated most reduction of debt was via default in housing. Real consumer debt levels are basically the same. And things are not meaningfully better, nor worse than a year ago. Economy is totally stagnant being held together by strings of debt only.

Debt housing or otherwise has to be unwound.

 

[Engineer]

Debt housing or otherwise has to be unwound.

It's being unwound ever increasingly by foreclosure or bankruptcy (or simply walking away from the debt). Although I'm sure that those with the ability to pay it off are indeed doing so (or at least taking on much less debt and saving more).

 

[Doppel]

Ah, can't be.

Hey, what right do they have to complain, though? After all, there are plenty of jobs. Why just the other day I saw a help wanted on a gas station. Now, gas station attendee, that's good honest pay a guy can raise a family on. Or recycling plant sorter, throw the cans in one bin bottles in the other. Lots of jobs out there, just take one!

 

[charrison]

It's being unwound ever increasingly by foreclosure or bankruptcy (or simply walking away from the debt). Although I'm sure that those with the ability to pay it off are indeed doing so (or at least taking on much less debt and saving more).

Whatever the method maybe. it still has to be done. People, companies and govt that have unsustainable debts have to make them sustainable.

 

[Engineer]

Whatever the method maybe. it still has to be done. People, companies and govt that have unsustainable debts have to make them sustainable.

LOL...we just bail those out! :biggrin:

 

[bfdd]

LOLOLOLOL @ Bolded part.

As for no jobs...14 million unemployed and 3.5 million available jobs.

Have you ever been picked up off a labor line with some illegals? I bet you haven't. How many have you worked shoulder to shoulder with and had the boss come around and pay all of you your cash for the day? Bet you haven't done that at all have you? 10 bucks an hour? lols that's low end for a day laborer now.

Doppel, how much blue collar work have you done? I made far more turning a wrench for a union than I do sitting behind a desk for some company all day. Working with your hands, using your muscles, it's great and only if you're an unskilled moron do you get anything resembling shit pay.

 

[charrison]

LOL...we just bail those out! :biggrin:

We dont have to, but we seem to keep rewarding failure ....

 

[Jhhnn]

No one is guaranteed a job. You don't have the right to one. If I have the means to employ people, it is at MY DISCRETION. You're such an authoritarian asshole. Yes corporations and big businesses have hurt us, but we aren't entitled to shit. If we don't want to work and compete for it, someone else will get it. You sound like a soccer mom bitching that score was kept and your sons team lost so you don't want his self esteem hurt. WAAAH. There are jobs, people don't want to work them. People hire day laborers, mostly illegal aliens, at 10-15 bucks an hour and those guys get work damn near every fucking day. Sure it's labor, but so? It's fucking work and someone has to do it. Instead Americans would rather say "fuck that, I'm to good for that" and go collect unemployment while bitching there's no jobs*.

* in which they would want to do or feel ashamed to do.

Straight to obfuscation & denial- totally unsurprising.

First off, this isn't about me, personally, at all. I'm lucky enough to be in a job where the vicissitudes of the economy don't really intrude.

Second, there simply aren't enough of the kind of jobs you mention to make a dent in the unemployment picture, and they sure as hell don't pay well enough to support the vast expanse of Suburbia that is America. It's like I offered- we need jobs to support the economy, but there aren't enough of them to go around, due to the factors under discussion- offshoring, automation, & a lack of money circulation from the top down. That shows no sign of changing, other than for the worse.

Rather than raving in a manner that defends what you believe, perhaps you'd care to offer alternatives to what I've said, other than chest puffing & moralizing. "If we don't want to work and compete for it, somebody else will get it" is total bullshit in the context of systemic and persistent high unemployment & unprecedented ever expanding wealth at the top of the heap. We have the right, as a society, to determine how rewards are distributed, and generally accept huge disparities when there's enough to go around, or the illusion of there being enough. And therein lies the problem, the illusion of Reaganomics/ Bushonomics as a mechanism of benefit to us all. It's not. It never was. It was and remains deception.

If it weren't, we wouldn't be where we are today.

If we can't take a fresh look at it all now, then we'll see increasing problems and greater social unrest until we're forced to do so. The headset you and entirely too many other Americans are wearing may put us there, force collapse and an ensuing epiphany, but it won't be pretty in the meanwhile.

 

[Ronstang]

I find Yahoo painful to read so I won't. Is this a reduction of wages? If so does it also talk about how our lovely President and his administration have also lowered the buying power of what dollars you get to bring home? People are getting reamed from both sides.

 

[bfdd]

Jhhnn, I'm saying there are jobs out there that pay more than minimum wage, people won't do them. They don't want a physical labor job. IMO everyones pay in the USA needs to come down, especially those closer to the top. I honestly don't see why so many people need to make over 100k a year in the USA. I honestly don't see why the cost of living is so high in some places, especially considering the amount of social services those places have to cover for their surrounding areas(this is especially true in California).

 

[Jhhnn]

Jhhnn, I'm saying there are jobs out there that pay more than minimum wage, people won't do them. They don't want a physical labor job. IMO everyones pay in the USA needs to come down, especially those closer to the top. I honestly don't see why so many people need to make over 100k a year in the USA. I honestly don't see why the cost of living is so high in some places, especially considering the amount of social services those places have to cover for their surrounding areas(this is especially true in California).

You're blind. The biggest hit landed on construction workers, guys who did physical labor, and who'll be glad to do it today. Except we're over built relative to real demand, so they don't have jobs. The Ownership Society saw to that.

And it's not people making $100K/yr that are the problem, anyway- it's the people making a helluva lot more than that, the investor class, people making millions per year, even billions. They used to be the captains of industry, now they're the captains of finance. The average member of the Forbes 400 makes more in two days than the average worker will make in a lifetime, and that's not a one time deal, but rather year after year.

CEO pay relative to worker pay has increased roughly by a factor of 10 over the last 30 years, as well. I'm pretty sure they're not 10 times as smart as they were, or that they work 10 times harder, either.

http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/

 

[bfdd]

Jhhnn, it hit guys who were asking for to much money. I was doing tile 3 years ago when between real jobs and we had work every single day. Anecdotal, but whatever most of you don't even have that much just some numbers from an article. All I'm saying is there are jobs out there for some people, not everyone can do those jobs obviously, but there are able bodied people in my state and in this country which just refuse to work because they're lazy assholes. To deny that is to admit having blinders on to the idiocy of humanity.

I wasn't specifically targeting people making 100k, I was just using it as an example. I completely agree with you that there are some people out there with very ridiculous salaries which tip the scales in weird ways. I thought I got that across with the "especially closer to the top", but I guess not.

 

[Patranus]

Blame both parties in congress.

Last year the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and you want to blame the GOP? LOL.

 

[senseamp]

This is great news for "job creators." They are now getting a nice discount on labor, I am sure they are going to start creating those jobs. Any time now...

 

[dmcowen674]

Sectors of the economy are improving, for instance IT unemployment is back to 4%. This time a year ago I was getting no return calls for interviews. Since then I found a new job and i am now getting calls from recruiters offering placements bonuses.

Debt is being unwound, housing is finding its bottom and savings rate has gone up(around 5% now). There is has been much pain, but it is getting better.

In what country are you talking about? India?

 

[Engineer]

Last year the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and you want to blame the GOP? LOL.

So you think that the income drop comes from only one year of congress? LOL indeed.

 

[rchiu]

You're still thinking in highly conventional terms that are bound by outdated notions of the relationships between employment & the ability to participate in the economy in a capitalist system. We offshored "work", automated it, too, actually reducing the need for it in this country, but we haven't changed the way we think about how the rewards of capitalism should be distributed. We still think it should be done with "work", 40+ hours per week, even when capitalism doesn't want or need all of it we can offer.

The mechanisms that promoted a healthy circulation of money in the economy have simply started to break down- wages and benefits don't need to be paid out nearly as much as they once were for capitalists to take their cut off the top, so they don't do it. Nor will they voluntarily- they'll only expand hiring when there's increased demand, which there won't be in the context of lower aggregate take home pay among the middle and working class. Catch-22, but the purposes of those at the top are nonetheless served handsomely.

So we need to employ other means to circulate money from the top down to the middle & bottom, and the only way to accomplish that is with much higher taxes at the top and more social welfare spending, like funding universal healthcare, which would free up enormous middle class spending power, more spending on infrastructure to create jobs and maintain what we have, greater funding for the IRS so they can collect every dime owed, greater funding for the SEC so they can better accomplish the tasks they're assigned, so forth and so on. We need to redefine full time work as something less than 40 hours, as well, and to promote mechanisms that increase wages, like unions.

It's not like I'm really keen on such measures, but rather that I see little choice if we're to maintain a vibrant middle class. The direction that modern financial capitalism has taken offers no real alternatives, given that the semi mythical Job Creators aren't creating jobs at all, but rather stuffing their profits into their figurative mattresses & pushing them offshore as fast as possible.

Nice ideology but in reality every country that adopted socialists policies and depended on middle class to boost economy lags the United States in overall economy. United States and the capitalism helped created this economy, that even the poorest quintile or people living in poverty defined by American living standard, still enjoys income way above that of the other developing/developed countries.

4 Category as defined by World Bank:
-Low income countries had GNI per capita of US$995 or less.
-Lower middle income countries had GNI per capita between US$996 and US$3,945.
-Upper middle income countries had GNI per capita between US$3,946 and US$12,195.
-High income countries had GNI above US$11,906.

US lowest quintile $0~$18.5k
US definition of poverty -> 1/household @$10,890

Compared to the richest people in the US yeah sure they don't make much, but starving wage, heck no. No opportunities to move out of their income class? heck no.

We see all the liberals complained about job losses, lower salaries. Hey don't they know there is a world wide recession going on? You are going to totally disregard this formula that created the most top successful companies, entrepreneurs, and the successful economy? To follow a formula that only worked in a handful of highly conformed European countries?

 

[Doppel]

Doppel, how much blue collar work have you done? I made far more turning a wrench for a union than I do sitting behind a desk for some company all day. Working with your hands, using your muscles, it's great and only if you're an unskilled moron do you get anything resembling shit pay.

I've done some remodeling around the house, some landscaping (e.g. digging ditches), and enough other physical activities to know that sitting in a chair with air conditioning for more money is a lot nicer! Also "safer", not just from an injury perspective but if I ended up with a major back or shoulder issue I can still talk on the phone and move a mouse. For a laborer that could be the end. Some can't even labor if they wanted to due to various physical issues.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Yet in some areas of the country wages actually increased.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/26/news/economy/middle_class_income/index.htm?iid=HP_LN

 

[Ausm]

Shut the fuck up you self centered prick.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

I would classify him as a MAJOR Douchebag

 

[Genx87]

Wages fell during bad times in the economy when there was a surplus of labor? Unpossible!

 

[IBMer]

Wages fell during bad times in the economy when there was a surplus of labor? Unpossible!

Someone should tell that to the Koch Brothers who went from 30 billion to 50 billion in net worth.