IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE BEST STIMULUS PACKAGE
The chickens are coming home to roost again thanks to right wing economics. The economy has slowed almost to a stall and even retailers like Wal-Mart are concerned. People are redeeming gift cards for necessities. Congress has just passed an economic "stimulus" package to pump money into the economy, but the stimulus is likely to be a temporary fix. The best stimulus of all is to get rid of right wing economic policies. Let's do some basic things like raise the minimum wage. Let's get universal health care insurance. Let's stop these insane trade policies that export good paying jobs to other countries. Let's reverse Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Let's have a full throttled move to stop the use of fossil fuels and have a planet-friendly energy policy. This article by the Associated Press is at www.usatoday.com:
While consumers have had to contend with rising gas and food prices and a slumping housing market, there are signs that the job market is becoming a concern as well. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers sliced payrolls by 17,000
"In this environment, simply cutting back on hiring will not be enough for companies to maintain earnings as demand slows; jobs will have to be cut too," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y.
And while investors are hoping the Federal Reserve can avert a recession with a series of rate cuts, some economists say the moves may be too little, too late. Analysts also say that while the government's proposed economic stimulus package, which offers rebate checks for more than 100 million Americans, could help reignite spending, the lift would only be temporary.
As Perkins said, if the job market continues to deteriorate, "all bets are off."
Janet Hoffman, managing partner of the North American retail division of the consulting firm Accenture, agreed, noting she expects "some relief" but nothing "radical."
MIDDLE CLASS NO LONGER COPING
The most prosperous time in American history was from the end of the Second World War to about 1970 Since then, working class Americans have been losing ground. People have tried various coping mechanisms to compensate for the failure of wages to keep up. First, women entered the workforce in droves to provide a second income. In the 1990's people took out home equity loans because housing prices were rising and gave them enough equity to borrow against. Now, with the subprime mortgage disaster that option is no longer available. Then people began using credit to keep up. Credit is drying up now. This article by Robert Reich is at www.truthoutorg:
The fact is, middle-class families have exhausted the coping mechanisms they have used for more than three decades to get by on median wages that are barely higher than they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation. Male wages today are in fact lower than they were then: the income of a young man in his 30s is now 12 per cent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Yet for years now, America's middle class has lived beyond its pay cheque. Middle-class lifestyles have flourished even though median wages have barely budged. That is ending and Americans are beginning to feel the consequences.
The first coping mechanism was moving more women into paid work. The percentage of American working mothers with school-age children has almost doubled since 1970 - from 38 per cent to close to 70 per cent. Some parents are now even doing 24-hour shifts, one on child duty while the other works. These families are known as Dins: double income, no sex.
But we reached the limit to how many mothers could maintain paying jobs. What to do? We turned to a second coping mechanism. When families could not paddle any harder, they started paddling longer. The typical American now works two weeks more each year than 30 years ago. Compared with any other advanced nation we are veritable workaholics, putting in 350 more hours a year than the average European, more even than the notoriously industrious Japanese.
But there is also a limit to how long we can work. As the tide of economic necessity continued to rise, we turned to the third coping mechanism. We began to borrow, big time. With housing prices rising briskly through the 1990s and even faster between 2002 and 2006, we turned our homes into piggy banks through home equity loans. Americans got nearly $250bn worth of home equity every quarter in second mortgages and refinancings. That is nearly 10 per cent of disposable income. With credit cards raining down like manna, we bought plasma television sets, new appliances, vacations.
