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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (302258)	9/4/2006 9:18:04 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575844

re: Looks to me you guys are thinking wages aren't keeping up with profits. It's census data, idiot. re: Btw, my paycheck has been going up every year since I entered the work force when I graduated college. You are so stupid I'm surprised you are even employed. Few workers have reason to celebrate Labor Day HEALTH BENEFITS DECLINING, INCOME IS STATIC FOR MANY Mercury News Editorial If you're off work today, we hope you're relaxing. You deserve it. For the past five years, most American workers have been working longer and harder, with results to show. Since 2000, productivity of the average American worker has increased an impressive 16 percent. But if you're wary about the future, you're not alone. A number of signs, from a slowdown in housing sales to rising oil prices, indicate the Bush-era recovery, such as it's been, is stalling. And if you're anxious about your finances, you've got company. Except for those who get really fat paychecks, wages and salaries have stagnated across the nation for the past five years. The benefits of that productivity have been skewed toward the top earners and toward the bottom line. Corporate profits, as a percentage of gross domestic product, are at a near 50-year high. The wages of the typical middle-income American worker have risen less than 1 percent since 2000, after adjusting for inflation. Some of what might have gone to take-home pay has been diverted to pay for health care, a costly expense for the declining number of companies still providing it. In the meantime, the average CEO now makes 300 times the average wage. But even after factoring in benefits, the income in the state's typical household was $365 below that of 2001, inflation-adjusted, according to an analysis of census data released last week by the California Budget Project. Rising home values on the East and West coasts and hot spots in between have made families feel richer, but that's because they've been borrowing against equity and spending, not saving. Of course, trying to buy a first home is tougher than ever. A median-income family could afford only one in seven of the houses that sold in the valley in March. Housing that's out of reach undermines the efforts of employers to attract and retain good workers. The private sector and government must work together to ease the shortage: companies, by spreading more of their record profits on paychecks, and governments, by creating wise land-use policies. And both the state and federal governments should be working together on the health care crisis. But the Bush administration has ignored the growing numbers of families without medical coverage. And, at a time when the rich are doing the best, its regressive tax cuts have magnified growing income disparities and saddled future generations of workers with higher debt. The war in Iraq has squandered revenue that should have gone toward expanding health care, investing in scientific research and new energy technologies and expanding college aid for middle-income students. California took a step toward income equality when Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature agreed last month to raise the minimum wage to $8 per hour. Another part of the solution could be raising taxes on the state's wealthiest -- not out of resentment or leveling for leveling's sake. The money could be targeted to health care for every child and really fixing bad schools so that low-income kids have a chance to do better than their parents. Silicon Valley remains the vanguard for America's economy and a place where the smart, ambitious and bold can leap up the income ladder. The latest report from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group confirms that the valley continues to attract the bulk of cutting-edge capital investment. But even in the valley, job creation, particularly in established companies, has been lagging behind profits and stock options. When they expand, companies are creating software, engineering and research jobs in China, Russia and India, where people with doctorates abound, and living is cheaper. No region has benefited more from a global economy than the valley. But along with providing Americans a continuous flow of cheap clothes and flat-screen TVs, globalization is fostering insecurity by squeezing wages of the middle class used to seeing rewards of productivity steered their way.

To: steve harris who wrote (302258)	9/4/2006 9:58:40 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575844

>Looks to me you guys are thinking wages aren't keeping up with profits. Just in the last two days a ton of data has been posted to show just that. >Don't discount the reality of all those outsourcing jobs going overseas. As was also posted this week, the income disparity was growing before the ascent of China and India. >Btw, my paycheck has been going up every year since I entered the work force when I graduated college Which is why you have enough time to post here. Same with me. But are either of us representative of the middle class that's being squeezed? Not really. I have health insurance. I have a (small) retirement fund. I make a good living. I know many people who don't, and that they try very hard to have those things, and can't get them. They might not be as capable, they might not have had the education or the training... doesn't matter why, but I do care more about the future of people like them than I do about people like me. I'm going to be fine. I think you're probably going to be fine. The point is that it's harder to move back up once you've gone down than it is to go back down after you've gone up, and if the economy is bringing more people down than it's bringing up, even if it's bringing those people up a lot and making it all "even out in the wash." A friend of a coworker of mine just died of cancer at 52 because he had no health insurance and couldn't afford to go to the doctor to get it diagnosed. He finally went when he felt really ill and was told he had one week to live. Another coworker of mine never goes to the doctor because she can't work full-time and get health benefits because she's a single mom who's trying to care for her 8 year old daughter. These are the people I worry about, and the reality is that these type of people are becoming more and more common. Is that OK to you? -Z