Part of the reason the current credit-crunch is hurting so many supposedly middleclass people is that after a seven year economic expansion, real household incomes have actually declined for the average American. This is very different than what usually happens during economic good times (see chart) and it makes my populist blood boil.
W. has taken care of the rich during his watch but neither he, nor any of his predecessors that I can remember, has done much for regular working people in this country. W. gave them the Medicare drug benefit, but stuck our children with the bill.
This is just one of many indicators that make me fearful for the long-term economic health of the country. We’re drowning in debt, our currency has become the peso of the early 21st Century, we don’t make anything here now except reality TV shows, celebrity blogs and designer water.
The really scary thing about all this is that I don’t think anybody really knows how the economy works. For example, has NAFTA helped or hurt the country? Well, it probably depends on whether you were a United Steel Worker or someone else.
The really scary thing about all this is that I don’t think anybody really knows how the economy works. For example, has NAFTA helped or hurt the country? Well, it probably depends on whether you were a United Steel Worker or someone else.
That said, trillions of dollars of debt and deficit budgets stretching as far as the mind can imagine can’t be good for the country, and there is very little discussion of this in the daily political debates. We argue endlessly about how to cut up the pie, but spend no time at all trying to make a bigger pie.
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I can't imagine why anybody is surprised by this. This administration's tax and fiscal policy is cut from the same cloth as their policies towards industry regulation. Just take a look at what is currently happening in the airline business. Inspectors jobs were threatened if they wrote up airlines for safety violations. As Jon Stewart said, "we're thoroughly searched and screened and the planes are occasionally vacuumed". Chinese-made (here comes a shocker) Heparin is now killing people because of poor or nonexistent government oversight. Mine safety is compromised by industry insiders now posing as government regulators. As a result mine shafts collapse.
The people running our country simply don't care what happens to its citizens when industries are permitted to whatever they like in the pursuit of profit. Can you say "gilded age"? Deaths due to poison drugs and mine collapses are simply market correcting events.
The fact that incomes haven't gone up is of no concern to this bunch. They're mantra is more tax cuts for the wealthy.
For the longest time I was ragging on CNN for presenting Lou Dobbs’s hour of pissed-off populism. I still think it has a truth-in-packaging problem. But I finally got Dobbs’s anger and disgust about an American economic system that seems more and more rigged in favor of the extremely fortunate.
I know a little about capitalism - the pain of globalization must be endured - flexible labor markets are good - inequality is endemic - life is uncertain and unfair, etc.
But during the past two decades (with emphasis on the Bush years)we’ve not only let economic uncertainty and unfairness grow to grotesque extremes, we’ve also inured ourselves to what we're slowly becoming -- a two-class society.
Unfortunately, I don't see anyone with the wherewithal or the discipline coming to the rescue -- least of all the Fed!
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