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

To: TimF who wrote (303612)	9/18/2006 8:45:25 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574882

Bush is great for the Paris Hilton set, but no one else. The Bush tax code favors the rich by far. Since Bush took over, wages have been flat and benefits and job security way down. Poverty is up considerabhly under Bush. So are the numbers of people without health insurance or college educations. Energy and health care costs have doubled despite tame inflation. Manufactureing jobs are hemmoraging away faster than ever. Plus, his tax cuts are all another form of deficits because he can't stop spending, particularly on wasteful pork barrel projects and his senseless war which is a financial black hole. The only people who have benefitted from the Bush economy are the already-very rich. Everyone else gets little or no help. This is why Bush polls so poorly on the economy despite his rosy talk. Apparently he is only listening to the country club set, the only people he cares about anyway. In any case, he is out of touch with ther eality of the overwhelming majority of Americans. And you sound like you are too.

To: TimF who wrote (303612)	9/19/2006 1:21:10 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574882

The state of jobs and wages Lee Price and Jared Bernstein Economy up, wages down The year 2005 was a solid economic year by some indicators, as the economy expanded for the fourth consecutive year. Real hourly wages, however, fell for most workers. Each bar in Figure A and Figure B represents the percent change in the buying power of the wage for different groups of workers. Figure A shows the real wage changes of low-, middle-, and high-wage workers, corresponding to wages at the tenth, fiftieth, and ninety-fifth percentile of the wage scale. Figure B shows the change in average real wages by education level for high-school and college graduates (four-year degrees). For low- and middle-wage workers, as well as those with a high school degree, real wages fell last year by 1%-2%. Those at the top of the wage scale experienced marginal gains, and real wages were essentially unchanged for college graduates. The decline in real wages for these groups of workers was the result of a variety of factors. As shown in an earlier analysis, nominal wage growth slowed over the past few years as the slack in the job market ultimately slowed the momentum coming out of the full-employment job market of the latter 1990s. Inflation was also a factor last year, as energy costs drove prices higher (on average for the year, inflation was up 2.7% in 2004 and 3.4% in 2005). Thus, nominal wages needed to grow that much faster to beat price growth. Other factors contributing to the decline in real wages are those that reduce the bargaining leverage of many in the workforce, including: the erosion of union power, the fall in the real value of the minimum wage, the growing imbalance in international trade, and the offshoring of white-collar jobs. As long as these forces are in play, the headwinds pushing against real wage gains for many in the workforce will remain strong. jobwatch.org