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Real 1982 goods producing wage earner hourly wage
What happens if there's a class war and only one side bothers to show up and fight it? That's what happened over the last thirty years. There was a class war, and the rich won. Period. It's over, they kicked our knees out from under us, put on their steel toed boots and spent the last thirty years telling us that they were going to trickle on us and we're going to like it and beg for more.
Seems like hyperbole? It's just the numbers. The top left shows the manufacturing wage earner's hourly wages. Not "family income" which includes both of you going to work, but hourly wages. The only reason it's goods producing is they go back longer, but other charts show the same pattern.
So, if you're an ordinary slob, you haven't had a raise in over 30 years. In fact, your real wage peaked over 30 years ago and it's never recovered.
This would be ok if the US hadn't been getting richer, getting more productive, ever since then, but I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that, well, actually, productivity and whatnot has kept going up. Yet somehow wages didn't.
Damon Silvers, whom we can thank for the wages and productivity chart, thinks it has a lot to do with a hostile anti-union environment and with the simultaneous decline of progressive taxation. I'd say he's got a big part of the picture though not all. The key part that he has right is simply that deliberate government policy meant an end to wage increases. Those deliberate government policies benefited the rich greatly, and the people in Washington and New York who made most of the decisions were very close to the people who benefited the most.
The main problem was this: real consumption of stuff that requires energy, specifically oil, could not be allowed to increase faster than the combination of oil supply increases and efficiency increases (we now produce twice the real GDP/barrel of oil we did in the 70s). If it did, not only do you get real widespread inflation, but you risk losing control over the price of oil.
We are now, of course, seeing what happens when you lose control over the price of oil.
The second big problem was that the oilarchies who were getting a lot of money with the new, higher price of oil, were not consumer societies and the money they were gaining was not being spread around. Rather it was pooling in the hands of a few nobles, chiefs and robbers and those folks needed something to spend that money on. Despite what some might think, trashing hotel rooms, doing blow and buying hookers can only use up a small amount of money, at least when you're really really stinking rich.
In short, rich oilarchs were sitting on a pile of money and they wanted to buy things with it. Western things. Western... companies. There were two obvious ways to deal with that. You could put on some form of ownership controls, whether formal or informal, or you could make your rich rich enough to compete with their rich by inflating the value of the paper assets that they were competing over. In Europe they mostly chose to just say "no, you can't buy that." American elites were smarter though, they realized that this was a chance to become stinking rich. If our rich people were rich enough, they could bid up the price of companies and assets so the oilarchs couldn't snap them up.
So they made themselves rich. They reduced taxation on themselves in a number of ways, they broke union power, they got rid of old New Deal laws that had stopped speculation from getting too bubblicious and they went on a bubble spree - shoving money into various different asset classes, driving them into the stratosphere, taking the profits and then letting the taxpayer eat the loss. They took as much public infrastructure private as they could and they did so for cents on the dollar. They imported manufactured goods from the east to keep goods inflation down and they exported jobs to low cost domiciles to keep wage push inflation down.
They also ran, in most periods, very tight dollar policies, so that there were fewer dollars around than the rest of the world needed. Needing dollars badly, people had to sell to the US cheap. And since everyone from outside the US wanted in on whatever the bubble of the day was, they kept giving the US real stuff (oil, goods) for pieces of paper. Those pieces of paper represented something real, at the end of the day: they represented the future. But the future always seems a long way off until suddenly it's today.
It was a death bet. And back in the late 70's and late 80's it was a good bet. Heck, it was even a good bet for many over the last ten years. If you expect to be dead before the bill arrives, who cares how big the bill is? Tim Russert just won that bet. Reagan won that bet. Jesse Helms won that bet. It was a good bet for a lot of powerful men (and a few powerful women) in their late forties or older.
But some people lose death bets, and most people reading this today will lose this bet. You had your chance to die, now you're going to get to live and pay. I suppose it's better than the alternative, but I don't imagine you're going to enjoy it much.
So look at the last chart and remember: there was a class war. Most Americans never even showed up for it. And the rich won. Now they're going to try and keep and expand their gains. As Naomi Klein has pointed out at great length, when things go wrong, it's very easy to sell people snake oil, to take advantage of their fear and their despair.
Roosevelt told the American people not to fear. That there was nothing to fear but fear. Elsewhere other leaders whipped their people into fear and after fear, into fear driven aggression and hatred.
Even in lesser crises leaders will appear who offer to solve the problem without telling you how. In the eighties Americans turned from Jimmy Carter, with his negativity and his call to solve fundamental problems in fundamental ways to Reagan, promising "morning in America". And let's be honest: Reagan sort of fixed the problems. His fix, in one form or another, lasted almost twenty years, till kid Bush broke it. Sure it wasn't a permanent fix, and sure it was fixed on the back of the middle and working classes and the cost was not having things like healthcare, the offshoring of huge numbers of jobs and so on. But gas prices went down. Interest rates went down. Inflation was tamed. Suburbs sprouted like weeds. Reagan delivered.
And the rich won their class war.
Reagan was working with a strong America. A fundamentally healthy America. He could afford to run the place down, because it was still in good repair, the baby Boomers were still young and so on. The cost of Reagan's fix was that for over 30 years ordinary people haven't had a raise.
The next such "fix" won't leave wages even, it will, in real terms, halve them.
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Hi Ian. Another good, if depressing, post.
Depressing.
One thing that always amazes me is how short people’s memories seem to be. The S&L bailout? What did that cost us (the average taxpayers)? Most of the perpetrators of these disasters get away will millions if not billions, and we are stuck with the tab time after time. When do we wake up and put an end to this? More to the point, how?
Hey Ian
Doan worry The Magic Dude will fix it.
And pigs will fly.
Iteresting article by E.J. ‘The Hack’ Dionne today: ‘The Death of Reaganomics.’
Looks like it might be ‘too little and too late..’ but hey be thankful for the little things.
The Rich always win. See Dos Passos USA, especially vol. III, The Big Money.
Gee…sure hope this thread is not gonna be full of whiners. Big changes are happening in our understanding of how economics really works. Computational methods offer tools we can use to ‘adjust’ things and the ‘conservatives’ economists are now exposed as a bunch of pasty faces white dudes, pants down around their ankles, pulling on their Johnson’s all this time.
Now is the time for some real pushback on what needs to be and must be done to fix things and…..
Things are eminently fixable.
If you got the stones for it.
The alternative is….
Well, we do not want to go there. So quit whinin’ and get to work on educating folks.
Yet another of your posts that I’m bookmarking for permanent reference.
Somebody at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is drawing comparisons to the 70’s … is it too much to hope that if we have to go through all that crap again, we’ll at least have the modern-day equivalent of the Watergate hearings as someone (Anyone, please!!!) digs through the criminality of the Bush administration?
Nationalize the oil companies.
Implement food and energy price rollbacks and controls.
Double wages.
Make usury illegal.
Return to pre-Reagan taxrates.
Seize estates over one hundred million dollars.
Prohibit capital flight.
Then, let the market sort it out. *g*
The next sentence should be
“I’m King of the World”
Nice ideas - let’s get started.
Great post Ian.
BTW: http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.....e-and.html
CR says the Times is predicting a bailout announcement before the markets open Monday.
I’m afraid our nominee is Obama, not FDR II. We really need an FDR now, and we’ve got a milquetoast instead. It’s better than having an evil dwarf, like the Republicans, but not up to the issue.
As Grover would say,
shrink the middle class until it’s small enough to drown in the bathtub.
FDR ran on a very vague “change” platform and then realized, upon being elected, that the only way to save America from a third-party takeover or even, perhaps, revolution, was his 100 Days upon being inaugurated. There was a real reason he was called a traitor to his class: no one expect him to govern as he did. He had four months to assess how bad things were between his election and his swearing-in. Things got worse in the interim, and he learned much more about what was wrong — and might go wrong.
Imagine the mess Obama will have revealed to him upon winning: an utterly empty treasury, a completely broken army, a bankrupt and corrupt economy, a rotten and hollowed-out financial system, a discredited intelligence service, a hungry, angry, impatient and aspirational world — and much, much more we cannot even imagine (!) today.
We can only hope that Obama’s imagination is up to the task. McCain’s certainly isn’t.
Not to mention the judiciary, Teddy.
Thanks Ian. You’ve put into words and squiggly charts all the reasons I’ve found the words “class warfare” so dreadfully ironic when the rich bastards who sold us out for profit have used it.
History has a habit of NOT repeating itself exactly.
We can move on some of this. Out in CA we have a perfect opportunity with dumb-as-shit Ahnuld and his, well they’re not really ‘his’ but no matter, gang of anti-tax trolls called the ‘Republican Party’ really putting the state in the toilet for nothing other than ideological reasons.
With Calitics on the march, the Courage Campaign active and say, Gavin Newsome, articulating what’s wrong and what needs to be done we have a great shot at ‘change’.
What we don’t need is any warmed over crap from Obambi and is idiot economic ‘advisors’.
I think it’s becoming clear, even to Obots, that the only way we gonna git us some ‘change’ is by taking it at the ballot box.
The more money the Federal Reserve prints the less our paychecks can be spread. the simple economics of inflation. This news headline from the London Sunday Times:
US Treasury Plan to Inject $15 Billion Into Ailing Freddie and Fannie for Special Shares Class
That’s 15 billion more reasons your paycheck like the markets opening on Monday will be a dead cat bounce.
It’s funny Teddy, I was just up at the FDR presidential library at Hyde Park. I think that’s a nice summary–things went to shit in between the election and the March inauguration. 35 states with all banks closed. People hoarding cash.
I agree that Obama is our only hope–but there is no indication that he gets that fear-mongering needs to be stood up to, not enabled.
That “class warfare” business is directed at the Russerts and Matthewses. It’s a real problem when the most visible members of the media are among the comfortable who are supposed to afflicted by the press.
The only graph that could add to this excellent post would show what happened to executive pay over the same years as hourly wages.
If you’re going to shift wealth upward, you have to take it from somewhere, and obviously it’s employees who lost out.
It’s easy to think that way when you live in a bubble where everyone around you is doing fine, I suspect. For all their talk about being interested in the common working stiffs, the plain fact is that most of our federal politicians and their news sycophants would have to go out of their way to get to know any.
I refer to most financial reporters as Cheerleaders for the Wealthy.
The Econ Bogs usually have the correct information months before the Cheerleaders start looking for a excuse as to why the bad news, is not really bad news.
Just a shift back to the pre-Bush tax rate and the withdrawal from Iraq would keep the ship of state from sinking. But we need a bunch of new Dems, not Blue Dogs, to make the changes and end the class warfare.
But if we can win this November and not yet have a war on Iran, imagine what evildoing BushCheney might accomplish in order to lay more booby-traps for a Democratic successor. The world can get much much worse very very quickly — and with BushCheney still in charge, that’s entirely possible.
Reading Ryan Lizza’s article this morning makes me think Obama is more adaptable to new situations than I had previously thought - not necessarily a good thing for those who seek consistency, but refreshing if a completely new perspective is required, I suppose. New situations (the upcoming worldwide depression won’t be like the last one, that’s for sure!) will require new thinking. It appears that new thinking is something Obama may be good at, in that he isn’t terribly tied to old –or even his current! — thinking.
His flexibility, while making him unpredictable, is probably exactly what we’ll need, although where it’ll take it is anybody’s guess.
I’m really wondering what’s gonna happen when the “other” banks go kaput…soon. I think Citi is in major trouble. Who is going to bail out all those banks?
Senator idiot Kyl said it’s no big deal, because you’ll get yer 100,000. Heh…there are plenty of older people with life savings amounting to a lot more than 100,000 in the banks…but it’s okay if the old folks lose everything above 100,000…
Speaking of Rich, Mark that is…check out this piece if you haven’t:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07.....38;ei=5087
I am hoping for a third party takeover AND a revolution… a decent, in the streets, revolution.
I’m arguing that a lot of people who think they have FDIC insured accounts do not. Banks have wooed a lot of people out of the FDIC accounts by promising a higher rate on a “perfectly safe account.”
Here’s how you can tell, if you are getting next to no interest on your bank account, that’s probably a real, FDIC insured one. If you are getting more than about 3% interest you might be out there without a life vest in an uninsured account. Checking soon with your bank is highly advisable.
No mystery here. Productivity increases because capital is substituted for labor, and the economic reward therefore accrues to capital. The misperception that labor productivity accrues to labor occurred because both rose together in the 1960s. But here was the causality back then:
1. Labor became really really scarce. The unemployment rate dropped below 4%.
2. That is what caused real waged to rise.
3. Rising real wages, coupled with cheap capital (low interest rates, for example), caused the substitution of capital for labor.
4. Thus labor productivity rose.
That is, in the 1960s, labor productivity was a consequence of rising real wages, not a cause.
In the 1990s, labor became expensive owing to high medical benefits costs, not scarce labor. Capital had once again become cheap. Thus capital was substituted for labor and labor prouctivity rose, with the predictable benefits to the owners of capital, ie. corporate profits. This chart sez it all.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c.....014039.php
The only time that real wages showed a small uptick in the 1990s was a brief period when the unemployment rate dropped below 5%, iirc.
They shouldn’t have it all in one bank. Anything over 100k needs to be in a separate bank, not just a different account.
NYT 2 FDH: SFTU
Nationalize energy/oil and shipping of goods…and nationalize medicine.
onset-adult dyslexia
Good info!
LOL
Every money center bank and brokerage house in the US is technically bankrupt. The fact that the Fed is accessing all toxic financial instruments from these gamblers, er banker, er Ponzi schemers, is the only reason their doors are still open.
The biggest news from last weeks testimony was the Fed stating that those who use the fed window will have to lower their leverage profile. In simple words, look for 5 to 10% returns on investment not 300% in the future.
I would hate be be a Lamborghini salesman in NYC, no more big bonuses from the guys rolling dice with taxpayer or investor dollars.
And finding out how to protect multiple accounts from being covered by the 100k provision is important, too. Not that I have this problem — (ha! I wish!) — but I’ve read about it, and there are ways, using multiple names on different accounts, to ensure all your money’s insured. Talk to a banker you trust or talk to your financial adviser.
I think that’s the point; the only truly legal way to cover your bases is to have accounts in every bank and credit union and savings and loan that you can with no more than $100k per.
I would be awfully surprised if there wasn’t some sort of bailout.
That’s right. Also, I think the FDIC insurance limit on retirement accounts (IRA’s) is higher, $250,000. Not that I need it right now.
True enough. Through FDR had surrounded himself with a brain trust that was pretty radical. OTOH most of them didn’t last in Washington, they weren’t suited. Still, there’s hope for Obama. FDR was an ideologue, he was a pragmatist who was willing to try many different things, and he was compassionate enough to do relief while he waited for other things to work.
Check.
Meant that to mean “Affirmative.” But now, I realize, “Check please” is just as good a gloss.
“wasn’t an ideologue”
The exhibits at Hyde Park argued that polio created empathy.
Fifteen billion is a joke, purely psychological. If it works, I’ll be thrilled, because Fannie and Freddie need way way more than that.
Yes, FDR was a lot like that. FDR also loved a good fight, though. But then he knew when not to fight. He was an odd guy, his management and leadership style was very very unusual and strange. No management manual or leadership book would tell you to do what he did, but it worked. People worked their guts out for him, he discarded people who failed pretty readily (to be fair he tried to remain friends, but it’s hard when you’ve tossed someone curbside, even if you were justified) and he deliberately set people at each other in a somewhat controlled fashion sometimes.
And he’d give you a couple years to make something work and if it failed, he’d try something else. Sometimes also someone else, though not always.
Nationalize the oil companies.
no shit
oil = natinal treasure
national
$100,000 ain’t what it used to be. Folks really should be spreading their money around. People used to do that automatically at one time, but the folks who remember mass bank failures aren’t around.
Which is why they’re happening again. Funny really.
Well, it’ll have to be tonight, then, because another week of flight from FMac stock to FMac bonds, and both of them will be gone.
Currently it is believed 10% of all FM loans are late or in default this gives us a nice ’round’ number around what? I’ve seen $250 Billion; not a big deal.
Remember it’s ‘your money…Karl Rove and the ReThugs been tellin’ Goober in GA and Joe Sixpack, or is it Joe ‘Artisan Beer’ now, for decades that that there money the gummint is throwin’ around is YOURS!
Maybe, jes maybe we ought to be askin’ our Congresscritters if they do anything, ANYTHING AT ALL TO EARN THEIR FAT PAYCHECKS AND THAT HEALTHCARE SECOND TO NONE!
Doe anyone agree with that?
It is apparent that Adam Smith’s invisible hand is shoved up Larry Kudlow’s ass.
They all make me ill.
-G
Accurate post title wise Ian but I think everyone has to look at themselves as well as the oligarchs. An engaged citizenry would have -at least- mitigated the current circumstances. The saying ‘the prioce of liberty is eternal vigilance’ I don’t think is taught is school any longer and sure as hell hasn’t been mentioned by the mass media for a very long time.
I would also mention that we can’t forget that Chavez offered oil to the U.S at $50 a barrel back in 2005.
http://www.stratfor.com/geopol.....oil_dreams
All this Doris Kearns Goodwin “Team of Rivals” stuff about Lincoln overlooks the much more accessible rivalries FDR set up and nurtured throughout his presidency, in my view. Folks wouldn’t know they were leading only one of four teams working on a particular problem until it came time to present their recommendation to FDR –in a meeting with the other three team leaders, who they found out about just then!
He also had spent quite a bit of time in the Executive prior to being President and he knew where all the bodies were buried. Something Obambi don’t but the Hill does.
The one really stand out thing was his willingness to change course if some plan was not working. He’d drop it like a hot rock and try something new. He felt the pressure of time.
No, we won’t be seeing his like again. Not wearing a suit anyway. The only person on the national scene who resembles him is Sister Beezlebub.
Hmmmm…….
Indeed.
We progressives have a ways to go but at least we are taking an interest. Of course when yer bank fails….lookout Wachovia…
You kinda get a little more interested.
Did y’all hear Dodd this morning….he kept saying everythings fine, they are in good shape, nothing to worry about and when pressed, he said “well, this is a national program”…He’s really worried about freaking the people out and having more runs on the banks. Tomorrow and the next couple of days should be interesting…after that Indy bank failure..
Excellent post Mr Welsh. Of course it looks even worse from poor little Britain which forgot either to make its companies too rich or to say “You can’t have them”, so we lose twice over.
I’m sure Dodd’s being very circumspect, with Bloomberg publishing articles like this about Friday’s failure:
Pretty clear that Democrats are going to be blamed for the Bush failures here, too.
Last time we discussed this, as I recall, someone came in and came up with an almost opposite conclusion based on a decomposition of types of productivity. The match between overall productivity and employees wages existed before the 60s and somehow more of the gains went to European workers than American workers despite nominally higher numbers (yes, they went because of the infamous labor market rigidities, but that’s a policy choice, same as offshorting, “free” trade, bubbles and free capital flows were policy choices in the US.) What a tight labor market is depends on other features of the market, and those features have a lot to do with government policy choices (for example, H1B visas making portions of the job market a lot less tight and undercutting wages.)
The chart you link to speaks to the last 7 years only and indicates higher profits driven by lower taxation - a policy choice. We can make labor or capital more or less productive instantly, when we make changes in how we tax them.
In any case, I have never believed that productivity increases automatically go to anyone or that they cause rises. I believe that such determinations are made based on who has the power to appropriate the gains in productivity. And to that extent I agree entirely, tight labor markets mean increasing wages. Labor markets that aren’t tight mean stagnant wages. It’s not the only factor and you can even overcome it with deliberate policy choices, but all other things being equal, certainly I’d rather see tight labor markets.
I note also that the break didn’t occur in the 90’s, it very clearly started before that.
However, we’re always told my mainstream economists that productivity is what matters over the long run. As long as productivity increases so will standards of living. This is only true in the very long run (obligatory ‘we’re all dead’ reference). In the real (30+ years) long run it isn’t. Who gets the gains depends on who has the power. And who has the power depends on who makes the rules. And governments are the folks who make the rules.
Really? Our cooperative apartment corp maintains 200K in the capital reserve, plus another 150K in a special purpose reserve. This is held in CDs in 50K segments, at different institutions. I can’t believe that people who are going to accept the awful low returns offered by banks would not spread it.
Now, I was looking at a 401K at Vanguard and was surprised to see an account described as low risk to consist largely of Fannie and Freddy bonds. That I could see happening. And I still think those are safe.
I believe that such determinations are made based on who has the power to appropriate the gains in productivity. And to that extent I agree entirely, tight labor markets mean increasing wages.
yes, it is entirely about the terms of trade labor markets, and that is set by a combination of government action and collective worker action. Terms of trade, from blue to pink to middle level white collar is terrible for labor right now. Hell, there is no pink anymore. The midlevel white collar do the pink collar jobs as well for no comp.
Schumer is hardly a guy who I would listen to. He can’t even nail the Bushists on THIS. Mumble…mutter…regulatory process…mumble…what miserable excuse for a politician he is. Guy is a poster boy for the rot and corruption that riddles the ‘Democrat’ Party.
Bah….
The folks at calculated risk noted that Schumer was essentially guaranteeing a run…..
It’s entirely up to the government how safe Freddie and Fannie’s bonds are. If think if allowed to go bankrupt in a couple years you’d lose some money on them. If unwound properly, over 20 years, probably you’d be ok.
shareholders should lose everything. they knew the risks.
bond holders and other creditors should lose whatever it takes to balance the books. They knew the risks and if they didn’t, tough. There is no explicit government guarantee. Take your risks.
I would differentiate between the bonds and the stocks there. You couldn’t give me the stock but the bonds should hold up.
Yep….thas Chucky!
Stupid git.
Just so.
”This weekend’s events will be a fresh shock to global financial markets. Analysts were hoping that the worst of the credit crunch, which has seen a massive reduction in lending to home buyers and businesses, was over.
But with the US housing market collapsing and repossessions rising, fears that they are facing huge losses meant that shares in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped in value by almost half at one point on Friday.
The two companies have become increasingly important to the ailing US housing market, as more and more banks which previously financed mortgages have stopped lending after racking up huge losses on sub-prime mortgage loans.
With London markets opening before Wall Street tomorrow, investors here will want some sign today from the US administration that it has averted another crisis in its mortgage market.
UK banks’ share prices have collapsed in value during the past year and many have gone cap in hand to shareholders to ask for money to prop up their businesses, with Bradford & Bingley due to ask investors to back a £400million fundraising rights issue this week.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....banks.html
and so summing up……. are we better off now after 30 years of “enlightened conservative rule”? hmmmmmmmm i know NOT!! americans bought that snake oil and are now paying heavily for it in many ways..
Book Salon upstairs
Well,
this is some meaty post, and it is hard for me to wrap my head around it, except to say this:
If I did my job as poorly as “the suits that run the store” can you imagine how many traffic fatalities would occur?
To heighten your point Ian, I made an application for a computer position -subcontracted by the Census Dept.-supporting the upcoming census. It was advertised at $18-20 an hour. Contractor for the Census Bureau filled the positions at $14 an hour, the reason being the ‘availability of talent’.
FDR danced the dance, but things didn’t get better until WWII. When you see capitalism as self-destructive manic depression, you see a war usually comes along creating oh so many jobs. Until the next crisis, we are doomed to difficult economic times. If Martians attacked, the sub prime mess evaporates.
I said several times capitalism is the problem, not the solution. Some say Obama hasn’t the imagination, but neither would FDR today. We’re tapped out with nothing to do but print money. What would you do were you Obama on being elected and finding things are ever so much worse than reported? How much imagination do you expect that man, or any man, has. What happens if the government holds a bond auction and no one bids? That scenario was considered impossible for auction notes from pretty good borrowers, but it happened. What was guaranteed liquid froze solid. No one’s taken me up on my anti-capitalist rants because it sounds like I tout communism and we know where that leads.
The real problem is hierarchy or class. Capitalism is simply our way of deciding who gets to tell others what to do. People who strive for those positions simply hate humanity more than the rest of us. That’s why they’re so crazy. We’re self destructive for the same reason individuals commit suicide. We think we’re shit and act accordingly. Self advertising is frowned on, but if you click on my name my site deals with the theory in great detail.
Nobama is advised by Chicago Boyz. His prescription will include MORE privatization of government/selling off of public properties and services.
If Krugman or Rob Reich were his econ advisor, you could expect something pretty good but instead, we have more voodoo economics on the horizon. The problem is that the horizon is an event horizon around a black hole.
Good article. This is the kind of material that needs to be widely disseminated and published in the Corporate Media; while it’s enlightening to many of us, it’s also just speaking to the choir.
Once the average American understands all this, then change can be effected.
Great comment on the event horizon.
The problem is that the new deal and the dem. solutions worked so well after 29 and ww2 that everyone thought is was their right to have a great paying union job. They listened to the GOP about well they would be paying you this way even if there was not union. Why are you paying union dues to get what the great corp. would give you anyway.
Now they are just starting to see what happens when the good old corp. really has control.
They all forget that it was luck that we came out of the big depression as a country of capatilist, not something else. Someone noted in a much earlier thread that the communist were mad at FDR cause he saved cap. from itself. Well we may not be so lucky this time, if we don’t get off our assess.
This is the perfect exact post, we had class war, the rich won. Now how do we take back the playing field and start the fight all over again.
In a nutshell, this is how the new system will work after the Freddie and Fannie bailout. Actually, nothing has changed except that we’re printing more and more worthless paper Get used to our “new” economy. Print paper. Loan paper to paper loaners. Paper loaners loan $6mil worth of paper to Raoul, my illegal alien 7-Eleven clerk who makes $6 of paper/hr. at 7-11, but has a 12 bedroom/4 bathroom house and a Hemi. Raoul goes belly up when the interests rate resets due to the paper being worthless. Raoul goes to “Just walk away.com”, and just walks away. Raouls neighbor gets Raouls weeds and blight from abandoned bigfoot. “Bank of Dumb Ass” that loaned Raoul 6mil goes under because Raoul walked away. Government prints more paper to bail out “Bank of Dumb Ass”. My taxes go up to bail out government. Everything costs more, because paper is more worthless than the day before. Beautiful.
That’s all we need to know. We are without a doubt, the largest debtor nation on the face of the earth. Bread and soup lines won’t be far behind.