News & Articles

In the run-up to this Labor Day, I’ve noticed several CEOs, political pundits, and so-called economic experts saying they’re confused as to why Americans are so down. Consumers should be out buying stuff, they say, for the economy is humming again. Just look at the key indicators: GDP is growing, corporate profits are high, the stock market is soaring, jobs are being created, the unemployment rate is steadily dropping, and people’s disposable income is up. Yet, as the CEO of The Container Store recently grumped, consumers are in “a retail funk.”
That’s so cluelessly wrong, sir. Consumers (unlike you platinum-card members of the CEO Club) are in an income funk, meaning we have very little of the green stuff coming in. The bottom line is that Americans are down, because… well, because most of us are down. Yearly income for the typical household is $3,300 lower today than in 2007, when Wall Street barons crashed our economy. Or look at what’s happened to the typical American family’s net worth. It was nearly $88,000 ten years ago, but today it’s down to $56,000 – that’s more than a one-third drop, even though we’re told that America is enjoying “a strong recovery.”
And the picture is not getting any brighter, because a new normal has been imposed on America’s workforce. Señor CEO has been gleefully slashing both jobs and pay, reducing the future of work to a low-wage, no-benefits, part-time, grind. One more number for you: 48. That’s the percentage of adults who now hold full-time jobs – leaving more than half of us trying to make ends meet on part-time work.
The lesson for the Powers That Be on this Labor Day is that there is no species called “consumers.” Rather, that creature is just a worker with a decent-paying job. Eliminate the job or shrivel the pay and – Poof! – consumerism goes away.
“The Typical Household, Now Worth A Third Less,” The New York Times, July 27, 2014.
“Why the Middle Class Isn’t Buying the Talk About a Strong Recovery,” The New York Times, August 22, 2014.
“In Tepid Wage Growth, a Potent Sign of a Far-From-Healthy Economy,” The New York Times, May 5, 2014.
“Many in U.S. still don’t feel economic recovery,” Austin American Statesman, August 1, 2014.
“Growth Without Jobs,” The New York Times, August 2, 2014.

Lifting America up by raising the wage floor

The good news is that it’s not all bad news these days.
Take the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – please! That’s a poverty wage, a shameful stain on our extremely rich nation. But don’t count on Washington to lift our wage floor – indeed, pigheaded Republican congress critters refuse to consider it, even declaring there should be no wage floor to sustain America’s middle-class framework.
So where’s the good news? Probably right where you live. Millions of low-wage workers themselves – from fast food workers to adjunct college professors – have been organizing and mobilizing, pushing local leaders to take action against the immoral inequality that’s ripping our society apart and sinking our economy. Sure enough, local officials are responding – Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Austin, Providence, San Francisco, and even Oklahoma City, as well as other locales, either have raised their wage floors or are battling the corporate lobbyists to get the job done.
And here’s a pleasant surprise: Breaking away from the McDonald’s-Domino-Taco Bell herd of low-wage exploiters, several smaller fast food chains are acting on their own, raising their starting pay levels as high as $15 an hour, plus benefits. The Boloco burrito chain in New England, for example, has raised its minimum to $9 an hour, plus subsidizing its employees’ commuting costs and contributing to their 401(k) fund. A Boloco co-founder says, “If we’re talking about building a business that’s successful, but our employees can’t go home and pay their bills, to me that success is a farce.”
Exactly! If you can’t pay your workers a decent wage, then you don’t have a legitimate business. The multimillion-dollar executives at poverty-pay outfits like McDonald’s aren’t running a business, they’re running a labor extortion racket.

“Push to raise wage floor a state-city fight,” Austin American Statesman, July 6, 2014.
“Paying Employees to Stay, Not to Go,” The New York Times, July 5, 2014.

Perry stands like a rock on border issue

Rick Perry is making a grand stand at the Texas-Mexico border. In fact, on the issue of locking down that border, Perry has been like a rock. Only dumber.
He says he’s protecting right-thinking Americans from a host of horrors that might cross into the US, and he’s flogging the issue hard, intending to ride it all the way to the Republican presidential nomination. Problem is, Gov. Oops can’t figure out what he’s protecting us from. Originally, it was just “them” – the teeming hordes of brown-skin poor people. That wasn’t working for him though, for it wasn’t scary enough, but then – KERSPLAT!
Political opportunity fell right in front of him early this summer in the form of thousands of impoverished and traumatized Central American children suddenly crossing the border. Just as suddenly, Perry was on Fox News howling for federal troops, declaring that “This is a natural disaster,” and putting himself in front of the tea party fear brigade that was screeching about the pandemic diseases these wretched urchins might bring in.
And, of course, the surge of children gave Perry another excuse to whack President Obama. He ranted that Obama should be at the border to oversee this “crisis” – as though the president should personally be loading youngsters onto busses and sending them back to whatever hell they where fleeing. Then, Perry climbed even further up the demagogue pole, actually blaming Obama for fostering the migration!
Here’s Rick explaining his fantasy to Fox TV’s Sean Hannity: “They’re in on this somehow. I hate to be conspiratorial,” Perry said conspiratorially, “but how do you move that many people from Central America across Mexico and into the United States without there being a fairly coordinated effort?”
Good grief! And Perry thinks he’s presidential material? As I said: Like a rock.

“Gov. Perry calls southern border surge a ‘national disaster,’” www.foxnews.com, June 17, 2014.