10/30/2006

Driving Wages Down - It's Good For Business






This is the only war the Bush Administration is waging successfully:


The War on Wages: What's not in YOUR Wallet?
"So what’s keeping paychecks down? Major employers like Wal-Mart have decided that their interests are best served by treating workers as a disposable commodity, paid as little as possible and encouraged to leave after a year or two. And these employers don’t worry that angry workers will respond to their war on wages by forming unions, because they know that government officials, who are supposed to protect workers’ rights, will do everything they can to come down on the side of the wage-cutters."

But wages are only one front on the Republican battle against the middle class. The other is TAXES.

"Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families......"



















"The CBO study, ......... found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent."

Enjoying all that extra money from YOUR tax cut?????


"Over tht same period, taxpayers with incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments increase. Households earning around $75,600 saw their tax burden jump the most, from 18.7 percent of all taxes to 19.5 percent.

The analysis, requested in May by congressional Democrats, echoes similar studies by think tanks and Democratic activist groups. But the conclusions have heightened significance because of their source, a nonpartisan government agency headed by a former senior economist from the Bush White House, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. The study will likely stoke an already burning debate about the fairness and efficacy of $1.7 trillion in tax cuts that the president pushed through Congress."

If you should accidently find your finger straying toward pushing the botton for a Republican candidate in the coming election, just think of your own wallet, and all the prosperity YOU'VE
gained in the last six years. Then Vote.....accordingly!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you really think that the middle class is doing better under Bush and the Republicans?
I don't know about you, but my take-home pay has been flat for the last 6 years and everything else is goin up.

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should answer the question.
If you're a salaried employee you can work you arse of till it's chapped and you're not going to see more money.
Don't come back with the "get another job" crap either. With commuting and taking care of families 12 hrs a day is enough to devote to work. You're just an apologist for the neuvo Riche American Gentry.

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should read the articles on how labor laws are going unenforced!
If you think wages aren't intentionally being driven down you're living in some self induced delusion.
The evidence is everywhere. Every labor policy of this administraton is supporting this trend. You think Republicans REALLY want to stop illegal immigration. Who else will they get to work for next to nothing with no benefits. It all drives down the cost of labor. The same with the N.W. workers. It's one big concerted effort.
Keep wages and benefits down, make education unattainable, out source jobs to foreign sweatshops. This country is down the toilet for the middle class.
There's no sense talking to someone who has blinders on.

Anonymous said...

You can't even connect dot A. Cheap labor,
with Dot B. Stagnant Wages. Every labor statistic bears this out, yet you deny it.
Read the damn article about how Wal-Mart values loyalty and how it wants to double it's part time vs. full time staff.
The Taxes article cites a report from the Congressional Budget Office
of the very administration has a blind eye to worker expoitation.
If you can't see this you in the State of De Nile.
Has your salary gone up? Is your health insurance cheaper, do you bike to work so gas prices don't effect you? Are you on a Ramen diet? Do you even have a family? I thought so!

Anonymous said...

Republicans say they are the party of business and business is good. Need proof? Look at the stock market. It broke through the 12,000 mark and is climbing higher. Record business profits are popping the champagne corks of celebration up on Wall Street.

What’s in your wallet? Wages have stagnated. Since President Bush took office in January 2001, factoring in inflation, hourly wages are less than one percent higher and weekly wages are basically unchanged. If the working people down on Main Street are drinking champagne, it’s lukewarm, flat and from a brown paper bag.

What’s in your savings book? The second quarter of 2006 saw a negative personal savings rate -- second lowest quarterly savings rate since the Great Depression. Last June, household debt rose to over 129 percent of disposable income. As paychecks are flat-lining, the blood pressure of uncertainly quickens with declining individual savings and increasing personal debt.

Aren’t the Republicans the party of “family values?” While your family fortunes are being devalued, Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature is busy cooking up amendments to ban civil unions and legislation to allow loaded guns to be carried on Main Street. These are the “guns, gays and God” crumbs the Republicans use to lure their single-issue pigeons in to the voting booths. The pocketbook issues of the working families won’t be found on the Republican agenda.

Is your financial security feeling a little insecure? Republicans still want to play Texas Hold’em on the stock market with your Social Security. In 2000, more than 50 percent of American workers had a pension. In 2005, the number dropped to 45 percent. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of workers with employer-provided health insurance coverage dropped from 63 percent to 59 percent. Pending bankruptcies in western Wisconsin increased by 22 percent between 2004 and 2005. Know anyone who has been downsized or outsourced out of a job lately?

With one hand, the Republican carnival hucksters of “free-market” capitalism distract us by dangling a bright, shiny object called the “stock market.” With the other hand, they are taking away our living-wage jobs, health benefits, retirement security and affordable education. If Republicans are the party of business, the business is selling snake-oil.

Anonymous said...

If your salary's up. Health Insurance is Down and you're still happy to pay $3/gal even with you 30 mpg. You are one rare fellow.
I see at least JPN has his blinders off.
As for the quality of my work..
I always received above expectations in my evaluations and I'd list the international recognition my work has earned but I don't want lose my anonymity.

Anonymous said...

This was fun... Let's do it again some time!

Anonymous said...

Cato refflects the view point of indidviduals selfishness. He's doesn't muddy his views with bleeding-heart Christian socialism. He reflects the opinion that doesn't believe in throwing a life perserver to a drowning man. I you can swim, great. If you can tread water till water till help arrives, good. If you can't swim or tread water and must drown, so be it. We can decrease the surplus population.

Globalization will level the ecnomic playing field and the pay checks of those that are commodities in the work force. The Chinese can snap togehter plastic and put in screws just as well as the Americans or the Mexicans. Marketing people know that letting your product turn into a commodity means you can only compete on cost. That means lower wages. If I can assemble a radio in China for $3 plus $3 shipping to the US, only a bleeding heart would opt to pay $10 to assemble the radio in the US. If I can sell the radio for $12, I make $2 by producing the radio in the US and $6 by producing it in China.

As Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying, "Corporations are in business to give people jobs, they are in business to make money."

Cato is only express the view of commonsense ecomonics that has no heart or soul or redeeming Christian values. In other words, you can never make too much.
---
Can somebody provide any evidence where taxes have decrease for the middle and lower income brackets under Bush? I can't say that I've seen it of my taxes.

Andy Rand said...

Ethics: Objectivists Style.

If you see someone drowning throw him an anchor.
Or a more practical illustration.
If someone is drowning in debt. Entice him to take out a loan at 25% interest. That's what a real capitalist would do.

Andy Rand said...

Way to go Cato:

Not only do you own the only interpretation of the Constitution, now you redifine words in the English language. Great Job!

1. the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest.
2. an exorbitant amount or rate of interest, esp. in excess of the legal rate.
3. Obsolete. interest paid for the use of money.

Andy Rand said...

I think it's the rate that makes it usary. Maybe lending money that you don't have is just plain fraud.