Flat Wages or Increased Spending

On Wednesday November 24 the government released the finding which said Americans earned more and spent more in the month of October.

Of course Americans spent more, the price of everything constantly goes up.The price of gas has risen and according to the oil companies it is due to increased demand. A local news station reported the price of a Thanksgiving dinner is up from last year and a local grocery store owned by a company in the Netherlands reported increased profits due to more people shopping. Ha, profits are up because the price of food goes up weekly. Is that due to increased demand as well?

Electricity and heating is on the rise not to mention the impending health insurance hikes in January. Added all together, we continually make less as prices rise.

So who’s making more? From an article by Robert Reich -”The top one percent of Americans, by income, is now taking home almost a quarter of all income and accounting for forty percent of all wealth”. And in early 2010 JP Morgan paid out $27 billion in bonuses to executives, traders and “valued” employees.

People at the top are making more but for the rest of us, corporations have been slashing benefits and wages since the 1980’s. Robert Reich states: “With hefty campaign contributions, and platoons of lobbyists and public relations flacks, the rich helped push through legal changes that enabled them to accumulate even more income and wealth-including tacit permission to bust unions, slash corporate payrolls, and reduce benefits…”

In his book ‘Aftershock” Robert Reich sums it up: “The fundamental problem is that Americans no longer have the purchasing power to buy what the US economy is capable of producing. The reason is that a larger and larger portion of total income has been going to the top.”

Spending has increased at the top while requests from food pantries has increased at the bottom; with one out of four children living in a household which runs out of food.

Poverty has increased and wages remain flat, so who are they kidding saying Americans earned more and spent more?

Certainty for the Few

Representative John Boehner wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent to reduce uncertainty in America saying, “ you can't invest when you don't know what the rules are, when you don't know what the tax rates are going to be next year. And that's why making these permanent would be the most important thing we could do to create jobs in the country.”

While it is admirable that Representative Boehner wants to reduce uncertainty, how many millions of Americans are facing uncertainty when it comes to keeping their homes, their pensions, or are facing the uncertainty of staying alive in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Is Representative Boehner concerned about relieving their uncertainty? Let’s face it, how many Americans make over $200,000 per year? It certainly isn’t the majority, it’s the minority.

A retired member of Congress leaves his job in government and then goes to work as a lobbyist for a bank or corporation with the starting salary of $500,000, and that’s on the low end. How is cutting this person’s taxes going to create jobs?

Since the taxes were enacted in 2001 and over eight million jobs have been lost, how is keeping the tax cuts permanent going to create more jobs? If those tax cuts worked, we’d have those jobs now.

The founders understood a good credit system is necessary to promote prosperity. Our credit system is broken, tilting towards growth for banks only, who have trillions parked at the federal reserve earning interest while refusing to lend. Tax cuts aren’t going to make them lend this money to create jobs.

Reducing uncertainty is a luxury many of us won’t be afforded, but one thing is for certain, those who are able to donate large sums of money end up with the rules in their favor; like tax cuts for lobbyists, politicians and the banking billionaires who pay them.　

Reaping Obamacare Rewards

Republican leader John Boehner said they have to repeal the health care bill or else it’ll bankrupt the country. Meanwhile, on November 3^rd, the Federal Reserve announced they’re going to print 600 billion dollars to buy US Treasury Bonds. They’re doing this to entice banks to lend money by making interest on US Treasuries come down, so investors won’t buy them so much. They call this “quantitative easing”.

The fed stated they are doing this to spur the economy and create jobs. In reality, it helps the banks (the same ones who brought us this depression), more than it helps the economy.

Understand, we owe interest on every dollar the federal reserve, a bank, prints. Therefore, we now owe the interest on 600 billion more dollars. How much debt will these interest payments leave to future generations?

The fed announced this back door bailout the day after the elections; which Republicans won by saying “no more bailouts”. Yeah, right.

The AP reports “stocks indexes reached new highs a day after the Federal Reserve announced a $600 billion plan to boost the economy“, “investors like gridlock”, and a “stalemate between the White House and the new Congress will mean less regulation of business.”

With no one watching, self inflicted gridlock means banks will continue to reap unfettered profits at our expense by printing money, and insurance companies will continue to monopolize health care while raising premiums.

By focusing on repealing Obamacare along with Mitch McConnell’s pledge to insure Obama is a one term president, they’re only focusing on the easy targets, they’re not focusing on tough targets like banks who are ”too big to fail“, or insurance monopolies.

Besides, it’s not like the president’s health bill or the financial bills did anything to address real issues, they only took out some of the most reprehensible business practices, like denying sick kids insurance or reaching a benefit maximum. New credit card laws prevent only a few banking abuses while leaving mechanisms in place to guarantee another recession/depression.

Catchy campaign slogans ring hollow when compared to the reality that in one year banks contributed 88 million to Democrats and 67 million to Republicans. Obamacare isn’t the only monster in the closet.