9 Out Of 10 Americans Don't Expect Raises To Compensate For Rising Price Of Goods, Survey Says

[Amerigo Vespucci]

9 Out Of 10 Americans Don't Expect Raises To Compensate For Rising Price Of Goods, Survey Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/americans-dont-expect-raises_n_882926.html



As the economic gloom settles in, American workers seem to be coming around to the conclusion that they may be facing a permanent midnight.

A new survey from American Pulse, released in June, shows that 9 out of 10 American workers are not expecting salary increases to compensate for the rising cost of basic necessities like fuel and food.

Faced with increasingly expensive purchases and stagnant salaries, 70 percent said they planned on changing their habits by buying only necessities going forward, according to the survey. Only 6.6 percent said they planned on changing nothing in their budgets.

Nearly half of America thinks the U.S. is nearing a second Great Depression, according to a CNN opinion research poll, while a new Gallup poll showed economic confidence plummeting in June. A third poll indicated that workers are more dissatisfied than they were before the recession -- facing low prospects of advancement, nearly one in three of those surveyed said they they were seriously considering leaving their jobs.

[EFerrari]

1. Give us forty years, we can figure anything out. n/t

[LongTomH]

2. How many of us will still be alive in forty more years?

Maybe some of our younger members.

[EFerrari]

4. I meant, the last forty years.

We started working just about the time wages went flat.

[Wilms]

8. I have always thought you are brilliant.

:patriot:

[EFerrari]

11. You just mean, lit, don't you?

lol

[Wilms]

12. That too!

:rofl:

[anarch]

3. I got a pay increase last year for the first time in several years

it was almost as much as my rent increase. Almost.


Don't know what to expect this year, but I haven't exactly got my hopes up.

[Wait Wut]

5. Duh.

I haven't gotten a raise in over 7 years. No health insurance, no benefits, and I work 9 hours a day but get paid for 8.

Right to work state.

[0rganism]

6. Welcome to Friedman's "flat world", USA

Seemed like a good idea for a bit, huh? The boss really sold ya on how all those untapped markets in SA and Asia were going to make everyone rich, right? Hey, he's got himself a new private jet, who could argue? Free trade for the win!

Except now you're discovering the flip side: in order to compete in the "flat world" free-trade unrestrained-capitalistic model, all you workers have to get a lot poorer, real quick, so you can work shamelessly for globally average compensation. It helps that you've let your unions collapse, but you still have some pesky work-place standards and environmental regulations left over from the previous century that have to go before you'll be truly competitive again.

So don't worry about the high unemployment numbers or your dwindling buying power, those problems are self-correcting. After you've really hit rock-bottom, you'll be ready for the new wage model, and the jobs will gradually come back.

[HockeyMom]

7. Guess my husband is very lucky

Sales and profits are down and he has gotten raises for the past 7 years he's been there. Yes, they are getting smaller, but his employers (small business) must think THEY can take more of hit to their incomes than their employees can.

I know the company owners too. They are very nice, down to earth women.:toast:

[kenny blankenship]

9. They came to terms with their exploitation and expected nothing better : the System worked!

They knew that we all benefit from the most efficient and fairest market arrangement in the best country in the history of civilization. If it wasn't so, there would be a political party out of the two available that would be telling them every day of a Very Different Plan for a totally different and much better future - right? Surely there would be stories on the news...stories about how this national pain could all have been avoided, stories about plans for a different world. If this Mondo di Merda wasn't the only one possible, some politician out there would be making a lot of noise, attracting a lot of attention, bringing good news of Hope and Change. But there wasn't any.

So the citizens of the former United States of America let their laws, and their standard of living and their citizenship gradually slip away from them. As they enjoyed life less and less and had less and less security and freedom from want, they became more and more fearful of doing something about it, strangely enough. We are small and helpless, they thought, and the state is great and powerful. Though their stock of wealth continued to shrink year by year, it disappeared gradually, so that at any point in time the constantly shrinking people of the United States thought, we can't take action and risk losing everything we have! In time they became so small they could not be seen individually anymore, even by themselves, and could barely be made out even when gathered together into "demographic" groups.

And if the chains on their wrists and ankles suddenly weren't there anymore, they would have only fallen into a superstitious panic, the greater part of their world having disappeared.

[nichomachus]

10. Well, that's what charities are for.

[MichiganVote]

13. Raises? What are they kidding? All worker in the US get are more hours TO work.

Unless you're a member of Congress that is.