It's the age of the Great Upward Redistribution.... Harold Meyerson (Washington Post) aptly so names our current economy. And laments on the decline of the laboring middle class. "Labor Day is almost upon us. What a joke."
The joke definitely is on the U.S. worker whose median hourly wage has declined by 2 percent since 2003. Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of GNP since 1947, the first year they were measured, while corporate profits have risen to an 80-year-high.
But to hear the George "I Have Mine" Bush tell it, times have never been rosier.
That's true, if you are a lobbyist in D.C., are in Congress and work barely 80 days a year for obscene retirement and health benefits, a corporation benefiting from millions of illegal immigrants paid slave labor wages (middle-class taxpayers pick up the social cost), tax-exempt churches raking in "faith-based" millions or the tax-relieved very rich.
Labor Day used to be a day to reflect on the benefits offered by our nation to all of its citizens, a spreading of the wealth and a shared prosperity. But, thanks to the globalist, corporate-favoring Bush administration, labor has been devalued, and that is now "the essence of our economy."
But not to worry, as the spawner of our compassionate conservative president, Barbara Bush, said of Hurricane Katrina refugees who had lost everything and were sheltering in the Houston Astrodome..... "so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."
Where's the cake?
1 comment:
It's amazing to think that wages are down, really, given the rising cost of living. It's literally incredible. Just recently, I rewatched an old film called "The Big One" by Michael Moore. It wasn't so much directed at any one sector of the government as it was at corporations that gain a great deal of success and then move overseas leaving destruction in their wake in terms of people's lives. It is certainly worth a watch this Labor Day, I'd think.
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