Originally published at ThinkProgress.Org, I felt this article shared in the belief that the money is out there. The ‘recession’ can be resolved if those at the top shared in the wealth, or another way of putting it, “stop being so damn greedy!”
The original link is at the bottom of this post:
Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages
By Sean Savett
After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:
“Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. …The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented.”
The New York Times adds, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available.”
So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America’s economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives’ salaries increased 27 percent, while workers’ salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it’s been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country’s income.
–Sean Savett
Posted in Politics on August 13, 2010 by gingerfires
Sarah Palin. I vowed to many never to make a single post of her again.
This vow stemmed from the frustration that the only way to make her go away was to ignore her. Alas, she’s still doing her cutesy pie, condescending, non-nonsensical, grammar impaired tour of the U S of A. Instead of completing her job as Governor of Alaska, she decided to cash in and ride the commerce train of free speech. She invents words. She constantly bastardizes grammar like a rapper. You never know if there will ever be a period at the end of any sentence.
In too many American’s minds, they feel as if government has lost touch with the blue collar “everyman” and therefore, this “every woman” who talks from the hip is an extension of them. Having an educated leader is not what they want. These folks want some six-pack, gun loving, let’s get rid of those illegals, leader who helps define their own values and frustrations. Who can blame them? Government and big corporations are filled to the brim with ivy league graduates who can’t govern and need bail out money to survive.
Feeling validated by your leaders is important.
Sarah Palin, to me, is indicative of everything that is wrong in our American society today. My explanation for why characters like her are so prevalent in American society is due to some of the faults of, well, dare I say, capitalism.
Now look, this isn’t going to be a black and white attempt to speak about the flaws of capitalism. This isn’t a pro-socialist or pro-communist opinion. There are gray areas of capitalism. The flaws of capitalism are actually the flaws of man. Morals, ethics, and standards are what we bring to our democracy. Our morals, ethics, and standards are elements in our capitalist country. It’s one thing to work hard, earn your keep, and prosper, but it’s quite another to break federal laws, outsource to countries with various human rights violations, cheat, lie, beg and steal.
In our consumer market of supply and demand and cost efficiency, I feel as if the market has been catering so much to the dumb down mentality, that dare I say, the stupid now control the market.
There is a greater demand more than ever of reality tv, which has much lower production costs and lower salaries for the “reality stars” compared to that of scripted, fictional productions. The reality television world has a more interactive, immediate feel which often does not emulate the world of utter fantasy created by fictional scripts and characters. The reality television world is more reactionary and provoking. It’s a world of eating bugs, losing weight, getting drunk and punching someone in the face. This is what producers are telling us we want by our demands. We want shows about food competitions, where we can neither taste or smell the food, but we are glued to the outcome. The story lines are about the immediate, the now. The shows last a few seasons, if they’re lucky. The networks are cashing in, even if the “real” lives are forever left in shambles. Who cares, right? People want to make asses of themselves, it’s fine, it’s to our enjoyment!
We’ve become oh so cynical…
Many downtown areas in small towns are ghost towns due to the corporate retail giants that build their superstores selling cheap goods made in China. If you call your bank, you’re usually getting India or the Philippines. The signs have all been there all along that former American jobs have been taken overseas in order to save money. Pay people pennies and assemble goods in places where there is no overtime, or livable wages… that’s the way to do it…
Then there’s the “immigrant”. The immigration debate is this elephant created by Americans looking to hire people for pennies for manual labor. Enter the Mexicans. They have been getting invitations for decades to work in the US. They are and have been hired. You cannot blame the illegal who has basically had a job all lined up for him by American employers. Employers are breaking the rules. Employers want to save money because they want to make big money.
Our stupid consumers then help dictate what’s going to be on the news. News organizations want to make money. They want to keep people interested. They reach to our lowest common denominators. To watch a professional news program that mentions Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki and Snooki from the Jersey Shore should be an outrage… but it’s common place now… even, expected.
So our media outlets picked up on the Palin Factor and ran with it. I know people who thought she’s a complete moron but voted for McCain and Palin in the 2008 election because they thought Sarah would eventually become President and they’d like to see that train wreck. They actually voted for her because they think she’s a mess. How our votes matter…
Sarah skipped out on being governor to chase the American dollar. If China is willing to pay her, she’ll even do speaking engagements overseas. She has mobilized her brief thoughts via FaceBook. Whether she is spreading misinformation about “our forefathers” beliefs or dodging questions about what information she reads, it no longer matters. There is a vast American mentality that our world leader doesn’t need to read. They don’t even have to lead, they can just Twitter.
To me, this is all anarchy and nonsense… but alas, this is our flaw.
The greed for saving a dollar, the greed for dumping one’s government position to chase cash, the need to buy the cheapest goods even if this means losing your job, community, and old traditional way of life, is fine up until the crap hits the fan.
The crap has hit the fan.
This is the problem with capitalism. The human flaw. The part of humans that is lazy, mean spirited, uneducated and unaware.
To me, it’s all summed up in this attached video.
An Alaskan woman has put up a banner denouncing Sarah Palin as a good governor. Palin’s perky, condescension beams with the mega-wattage most of us have come to expect. Palin humors herself when the woman chides Palin for giving up being governor to be a celebrity. Palin allows her daughter to defend her by saying her mother is now working not for just Alaska, but apparently for the entire country. When it is revealed the woman putting up her banner is a teacher, Sarah rolls her eyes, scoffs, chuckles, winces, then probably realized what an “everywoman” bitch she was being then tries to smooth the delivery over with “we probably have a lot in common”.
And in the spirit of bipartisanship, I realize, Hillary was alienating millions of women when she announced she didn’t stay home baking cookies.
It can be argued by many a cynic that all politicians are greedy bastards and that Sarah Palin is no different than any other unethical litany of politicians. What she is not is America’s “everywoman” or “everyman”. She is no longer a blue collar, momma grizzly. She is, in fact, a product name and corporation. She is a sales person who is selling to the disenfranchised and making a profit. She is part of the reality, carnival freak show. She knows nothing about geography, philosophy, morals or ethics. She knows very little about our “forefathers”, who most were deists. She doesn’t like to read, otherwise answering such a simple question wouldn’t have been a hassle (my God, she went to school for journalism herself!). She’s a sham.
But she is a Sham-Wow.
Sarah Palin has inspired so many to open that door, step outside, and completely mock intelligence like it was an evil developed by satan.
But people adore her, the media plays her, and hence there is a profit.
So, going back to my original thinking, I can’t give this woman any more attention… but watch the clip, and see a capitalist woman mock a teacher in front of her own daughter… excellent family values on display…
But it can all be justified… she’s doing it FOR THE MONEY!!!
Back when I was acting in student films. Though short, was off beat enough to get praise from my peers. Directed by Jane Kalish… oh how I was so willing to be her muppet.
Yesterday, the world learned that Michael Jackson died at the age of 50 from cardiac arrest. Like many people, I was at work when I learned of his passing. In fact, I learned of his passing while I was attending someone else’s memorial. It was just a matter of time before the memorial shifted from the topic of who the memorial was for to Michael Jackson, who apparently in death became the only topic in the room.
Like many, I immediately started calling family and friends. I then learned of Farrah Fawcett’s death which I was unaware of. Within minutes of learning of her death, actor Jeff Goldbloom apparently fell off a cliff in New Zealand and died while doing a movie shoot… but then minutes later my cousin uncovered that the Goldbloom story turned out to be an internet hoax.
I then heard the Spanish speaking radio stations playing Michael Jackson’s music out of rememberence… and then THAT’S when it hit me… the man is gone.
But walking through the streets of New York, I was quickly jerked back into reality. I saw a few soiled homeless people screaming that Michael was dead, while appearing to look for cigarette butts. I saw some young tourist girls, who appeared to be from some mid-western school trip do an impromptu dance on the sidewalk to a beat box playing a Jackson tune. I then watched the girls quickly disperse when the vagabond street hustlers tried to manuver into their immediate space.
I witnessed CNN live at The Apollo Theater where people started to gather on the theater’s sidewalk singing Jackson’s “P.Y.T”… “pretty young thing”… and that’s when it hit me again… the circus of Michael Jackson.
My personal feelings on Jackson are conflicting. Though I loved his talent and presence on the music scene for four decades, there is apart of his character that I cannot reconcile.
When I was a child, I remember asking my mother what beauty was, physical beauty that is. I remember her referring to a Donna Summer cassette tape cover saying, “if I could look like anyone, I’d want to look like her.” I grew up in rural Minnesota. Girls like this did not seem to exist. Nonetheless, brown was beautiful… or as we characterize via race… black was beautiful.
So it was around the time of the “BAD” album, I had some interesting issues to ask myself. I noticed Michael’s appearence had changed… his skin, hair and nose. “Did Michael hate how he looked? Did he hate being black?” Those questions naturally lead to – “do I like how I look? How much is plastic surgery?”
So, through albums, videos, and costume changes – I stuck by Michael. Through odd stories of exotic animals and bizarre statements in interviews, I stuck by Michael. Through facial reconstruction and reconfiguration – I stuck in there. The constant jokes about his sexuality – I stuck in there. Whatever explanation he came up with for the skin bleaching, strange medical tests, or overly shy behavior – I stuck in there.
But then the allegations of child molestation started. Then the court cases were filed. Now it seemed clear to me that Michael was becoming something I couldn’t feel comfortable about defending and rationalizing anymore.
I, like many, turned to the personal networking sites to see how others were feeling on this day of his passing. I’d read the Twitters and postings: “forward this text that the greatest singer of all time is in our prays”, “the most giving singer on our planet is dead”, “the world mourns for their greatest legend”.
I remember Michael once saying he wished he could be young forever, like Peter Pan. I also remember him saying more people should sleep in bed with children to express our love for one another… even if it’s not our own children. I remember his infamous “Billie Jean” performance at the Motown Special. I remember him arriving to court in his pajamas.
So, I posted a status on my facebook… “His music will live on. As millions Twitter the fairytale, I wonder of the human condition that forgives the celebrity who leaves doubts as to his conduct with innocents.” Poor timing I suppose for many.
For me, it’s rather clear – YES, Michael was a great talent, but he was also a product. “Michael Jackson” was also made up of various writers, musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, lighting people, lawyers, doctors, publicists and a whole array of other artists out to make this guy their cash cow. Many unrecognized to the general public, but for Quincy Jones and a few others. To me, this is part of the fairytale. The rags to riches… part of the fairytale. Michael loves fairytales… whether it’s wanting to be Peter Pan or naming his child Prince, fairytales suit him like a glove.
Now look at our current celebrity climate. It’s a dark, twisted place. Our celebrities are now reality stars, junkies, porn wanna-be’s, and other reckless misfits. We have new manipulators of the medium… Octomom uses babies for celebrity and fortune, Amy Winehouse smokes crack and punches her audience memebers in the face, Ray J and Kim Kardasian ‘accidently’ make a home sex tape which is ultimately used as career launching… and the public eats it up!
It all takes me back to one of the masters, Michael Jackson. The allegations, the out of court settlements, the strange marriages, the sorted details.
Take away the celebrity, the setting… make it a small rural town…
I’m even more perplexed when I read that one Jackson is on public assistance, another works in a grocery store and I think, “who is this generous guy everyone is celebrating?”
I understand one should pay their respects when one passes on… but what does that mean, “pay respect?”
To some, paying respect is playing their favorite Jackson tune and dance up a storm. To others, it’s a time to reflect on memories. For me, the last decade of memories have been that of allegations and out of court settlements on child sexual abuse.
Child sexual abuse left untreated and resolved is emotionally crippling, psychologically damaging. This can lead to drug use, suicide and death. I’ve never personally experienced this, except for the pain of my friends, or others I have known. I have met the entire gambit, from victim to victimizer. It’s pervasive, relentless, and debilitating. Need I say more?
So, if I don’t seem to join in your wake, party, outpouring of gracious condolences, it’s because my value system tells me to be cautious… this stories isn’t over and may have no resolution a majority will be satisfied with. In order for me to have my sense of honesty and integrity, I have to be true to it.
The next few months, if not YEAR, will be dedicated to all the unanswered questions to Michael Jackson. Forgive me if I startled you at the starting gate.
Since Jan 20th is quickly upon us, I thought I’d share Nechesa’s song and video.
Not all of us are going to be in D.C. on the 20th.
Nonetheless, a good majority of us will be awaiting the changing of the guards and the historic moment when Barack Obama’s our President… it’s a new day
Tonight there is a progressive chill over Gotham City. My window is open just a crack, enough keep my air from a stale nose bleed and my senses calm. Stillness threatens me.
In less than 24 hours, chaos will engage the city as drunken crowds usher in the New Year with confetti, verbal nonsense, and vomit. A squabble amongst Murray Hill girls will ensue over a broken heal, the original face-lifts from the East Side will sip bad champagne at the West Side’s Met Opera, and a Meth-Head will lose his Blackberry on the liquor stained floors at a Chelsea boy bump n’ grind. Did I say Blackberry? I meant Iphone.
All in all, this could be argued, a typical night for America’s Metropolis. Alas, it’s the dawn of another odd numbered year.
Obama will become the new matinee idol for the 24 hour news cycle. Palin will probably rear her head to inspire comedy and those who follow the ‘end of days’ handbooks. The corporate sector will utilize the economic meltdown for any ol’ excuse to prey upon their drones, while stuffing the linings of their top dogs’ overcoats stashed in foreign, skeleton filled closets. Believers will be betrayed, blood will pass hands, and a relic will reboot a forgotten career.
As I delve into my mental debris, anxiety chastises my slumber. I can’t shake the prospect that nothing may change. I need things to change… desperately.
2008 was a year of struggle for me. It was a year of love lost, friends gained. It was a year of intense, personal moral debate. It was a year I witnessed the ominous power of drugs destroying the prospects of humble lives. It was a year of compromise and defeat.
When I have discussed my year with family, friends and those who would listen, I am often nudged to write about these experiences… to share the wealth of storytelling.
My mind will race, constructing the dialogue, the venue, the outcome, and the execution of revealing these follies… shall the stories refrain from fiction, deviate from truth?
There is so much to tell. There is so much that cannot be cast aside. My strength to render a plot weakens the prospect for a new day and simpler journey.
But, what of my journey?
Next year, more than any other, I want new life breathed into all my essence. That could be a mess, ‘all my essence’, but I salivate at that hypnotic prospect.
I don’t know how to manifest this new inner destiny’s child. I don’t know if manifesting is just more convoluted bull to rationalize the irrational. What of it?
The obvious contenders for relinquishing past burdens are the smoking, start some physical exercise, and with that some demons may perish or go dormant. The gift is to realize one can craft their future… guide… and tend.
So, for 2008, I thank you for another year of introspection, wonder, resilience and awakening. You aged me. Thanks…
2009, bring me some youth – some much needed bravado and assurance. Allow me to get a step up on whatever wicked underlings that may be in-store. Keep the boat afloat and the sail up high.
I’m not getting any younger… and there’s a whole lot of life I’m gonna live… have to live… want to live…
If you don’t know by now, Joe the Plumber is really Sam Wurzelbacher who is 34, owes $1,261 in back taxes, isn’t a licensed plumber, doesn’t like the ideal of Yankees (not the team), and voted in his first primary last year as a registered Republican. (Check out Bloomberg.com’s article then some blogger follow up at The Zoo or if you STILL don’t trust me, try this Australian article)
Wow… hot darn biscuits… I thought Joe the Plumber was older (I’m 34 too) and wiser, but I guess he’s dumb and dumber.
I feel slightly sad for this guy because ULTIMATELY, before the press or even John McCain ran with this story, they should have researched this guy before thrusting him into the spotlight of lunacy.
But, Joe the Plumber (Sam) is symbolic to me. He symbolizes the McCain Campaign… this notion of just using ignorant scare tactics and doing their best to resemble the common man (Joe) is just a feeble attempt to APPEAR like one is honorable and caring about the masses, thus propelling oneself to APPEAR as the ultimate American.
These sort of emotional outbursts, backed by this notion of personal righteousness is nauseating. This idea that Obama is this secret evil, shady character, untrustworthy should start to dissolve since it seems the ones not to trust these days are those claiming outrage under false pretense.
This addiction to be heard, or famous, or provocative and having no ground to stand on needs to stop.
To think, “Joe the Plumber” was McCain’s big talking piece at his final debate, and “Joe” turned out to be some self-serving douche bag.
Pathetic.
I thank the bloggers for doing the homework that not even McCain’s Intelligence and handlers could properly analyze… God for bid he gets wind of some WMDs somewhere from inaccurate government reporting.
Well, maybe McCain actually knew “Joe” was just a red-herring (kind of like Joe 6-Pack)…
