This Toon says it all: Labor Day Memories

[n2doc]

[daleanime]

1. Sad K&R

[RKP5637]

2. So painfully true, zillions of buildings like this across the US. Some of my friends still don't

get it! Many people see the US from their own backyard, and if they are lucky enough to have a good life, they see everything as all roses. Sometimes I send to them youtube videos and they are shocked, like this can't be the US. MSM is deplorable, absolutely deplorable. Many parts of this country are an absolute disaster, yet MSM never, hardly, airs the real picture of the US.

[mnhtnbb]

3. What can you say?

Are you ready for some football?

[Enthusiast]

4. Those that promoted the free trade deals are entirely to blame.

[Recursion]

8. No, we're manufacturing more now than before NAFTA. It's automation

If the textile mills had stayed in the US, they wouldn't be employing Americans either, except for a few that fix the robots.

[Enthusiast]

9. We might be manufacturing more but the increase has hardly kept up with population growth.

If you lived in the rust belt you would understand what the free trade deals have done us.

[Recursion]

14. Manufacturing has increased rather more than population growth

This one is a bitmap so I can't embed it, but it shows how the problem isn't that we are manufacturing less. We're manufacturing more per capita than in the past, and using many many fewer workers to do it.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SaAbX13BBBI/AAAAAAAAJTo/nGuZsCLoQo0/s400/mfg.bmp

[RunInCircles]

15. Completely Misleading and wrong

I love your irrelevant graph which is not even the one the Fed produces for manufacturing!
This graph does not indicate how much manufacturing is occurring in the US. Citing automation as a cause of lost manufacturing jobs is a false flag claim designed to prevent identification of the real issue "Free Trade"
There are at least 750,000 people assembling iphones in China which only indicates that technology is an excuse only if somebody needs to make more than a bowl of rice a day. Technology does not kill jobs off-shoring for cheap labor kills jobs.

[Enthusiast]

18. Thank you.

I tried to buy a pair of boots the other day. I checked around on line. The prices are very high.

What ever happened to the old "the goods will be cheaper" theory we heard from the proponents of free trade?

We no longer make boots and the ill fitting foreign made boots are just as expensive as when they were made here. Double whammy!

Anyway, I bought a pair of boots. They were so ill fitting and uncomfortable that I had to send them back. Boots that cost over $100 should at least be wearable. I'm easy to fit too.

There is no Good Excuse for intentionally sending your good paying jobs overseas. It amounts to treason. What ever happened to the concept of the good corporate citizen?

Now corporations are the enemy, they are harming the nation and its citizens.

We need tariffs to offset unfair labor standards and horrible working conditions overseas.

[Kermitt Gribble]

20. How much of that percentage is from

parts manufactured overseas to be assembled here for minimum wage?

What is the percentage from "manufacturing" burgers at a fast food restaurant?

[Recursion]

28. This again. The line cook at McDonalds is not considered "manufacturing".

The guy working in the factory where McDonald's "cheeseburgers" are made is. And if you've seen those factories you'll agree there's not much else to call it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

23. That's because they defined putting a burger together as "manufacturing".

[cascadiance]

25. Yep, you hit it on the head... Bush started burger flipping becoming "manufacturing"...

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread34487/pg1

But even that's been hit by automation too...

[Recursion]

27. Have you seen the factories where most of our food is made? What else would you call it?

And, anyways, no: the majority of our manufacturing remains capital equipment. We're building the factories that China is using to make the cheap plastic crap we buy.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

30. Actually, we're using a lot of prison labor.

[Recursion]

31. We are up compared to the 90s, down compared to the 50s, in terms of prison labor use

Though of course back in the 50s it was just that prisoners did a near-majority of agricultural work in the deep south. Now, what percentage of manufacturing today is prison labor? I have no idea.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

32. That's like saying "Home ownership is at an all time high"....

It's ALWAYS at an "all time high" because the population isn't fixed.

[alfredo]

5. Knr

[LittleGirl]

6. Proud daughter

of two union factory workers that raised 5 kids. I don't know how but we never starved.

[SheilaT]

10. Two union factory workers may be the key here.

My father was a union factory worker. I was one of six kids. What he made wasn't nearly enough to support us, and my mother, a nurse, also worked. She made more money than he did.

Not all union jobs were ones that paid enough to raise a family with more than one or two kids back in the 50's.

And for all the bemoaning of lost pensions, a lot of pensions required things like working at the same place for at least twenty years, usually more like thirty, and they weren't always that terrific. The assumption, well into the 1960's, was that an older person probably lived with their kids in the final years of their lives. My grandparents did just that. They weren't starving in the streets, and they were among the very earliest recipients of Social Security, and my grandfather had a tiny pension from a job, but had they not been able to live with family, they would have starved in the streets.

Yes, there were some great union jobs that paid well, often with a lot of overtime, and a family whose primary earner had one of those was very well off, and I don't remotely begrudge that, and they have largely gone away, but it was still a relative minority who had those jobs.

[LittleGirl]

11. Mother went to work

in a factory when the youngest was in kindergarten and about the same time my older brother got 11 cavities (celiac). The healthcare my mother got after a few years was called major medical and that saved us from the poor house when my 40 yr old father had a massive heart attack and was in the hospital for 30 days. He never worked again. He died at 42 and thank god for survivor benefits from social security. Otherwise, we would have been on the street.

[Kermitt Gribble]

22. It was not a minority in the rust belt.

Our rural community had a relatively small steel mill. At it's peak, it employed 12-14,000 people from a community of roughly 50,000. Our area also had a Westinghouse, a couple of tube mills, a rail car plant and many other businesses that supported these factories.

Both of my grandfathers were union steel workers. Each made enough to raise 2 kids, afford modest homes, take 2 vacations per year and buy new cars every 2 years. All on one income. They both lived comfortably all through their retired years and had a decent amount to leave as inheritance. My dad worked for a union trucking company. We were a one income family until the 80's, then my mom had to start working.

[Octafish]

7. Well, the DJIA is over 17,000 and the NASDQ is over 2,000!

Which is good, but what does it do to make things better for those who don't own a trust fund or portfolio "larger than $500,000"? NFM.



The Shocking Redistribution of Wealth in the Past Five Years

by Paul Buchheit
Published on Monday, December 30, 2013 by Common Dreams

Anyone reviewing the data is likely to conclude that there must be some mistake. It doesn't seem possible that one out of twenty American families could each have made a million dollars since Obama became President, while the average American family's net worth has barely recovered. But the evidence comes from numerous reputable sources.

Some conservatives continue to claim that President Obama is unfriendly to business, but the facts show that the richest Americans and the biggest businesses have been the main - perhaps only - beneficiaries of the massive wealth gain over the past five years.

1. $5 Million to Each of the 1%, and $1 Million to Each of the Next 4%

From the end of 2008 to the middle of 2013 total U.S. wealth increased from $47 trillion to $72 trillion. About $16 trillion of that is financial gain (stocks and other financial instruments).

The richest 1% own about 38 percent of stocks, and half of non-stock financial assets. So they've gained at least $6.1 trillion (38 percent of $16 trillion). That's over $5 million for each of 1.2 million households.

The next richest 4%, based on similar calculations, gained about $5.1 trillion. That's over a million dollars for each of their 4.8 million households.

The least wealthy 90% in our country own only 11 percent of all stocks excluding pensions (which are fast disappearing). The frantic recent surge in the stock market has largely bypassed these families.

2. Evidence of Our Growing Wealth Inequality

This first fact is nearly ungraspable: In 2009 the average wealth for almost half of American families was ZERO (their debt exceeded their assets).

In 1983 the families in America's poorer half owned an average of about $15,000. But from 1983 to 1989 median wealth fell from over $70,000 to about $60,000. From 1998 to 2009, fully 80% of American families LOST wealth. They had to borrow to stay afloat.

It seems the disparity couldn't get much worse, but after the recession it did. According to a Pew Research Center study, in the first two years of recovery the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%. And then, from 2011 to 2013, the stock market grew by almost 50 percent, with again the great majority of that gain going to the richest 5%.

Today our wealth gap is worse than that of the third world. Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.

3. Congress' Solution: Take from the Poor

Congress has responded by cutting unemployment benefits and food stamps, along with other 'sequester' targets like Meals on Wheels for seniors and Head Start for preschoolers. The more the super-rich make, the more they seem to believe in the cruel fantasy that the poor are to blame for their own struggles.

President Obama recently proclaimed that inequality "drives everything I do in this office." Indeed it may, but in the wrong direction.

FORUM HOSTS, PLEASE NOTE: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at [email protected].

Original Article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/30-0

[hifiguy]

12. Thanks for the link.

Great little article.

[Octafish]

13. ...'over the past 5 years...$5 Million to Each of the 1%, and $1 Million to Each of the Next 4%'...

Here's a prof trying to track things down to the penny:

Wealth, Income, and Power

by G. William Domhoff at UCSC

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Most importantly: You are most welcome, hifiguy!

[love_katz]

16. Bless you for all the information you share.

[Enthusiast]

19. Plus one a huge amount.

[Sherman A1]

34. Thanks for Posting!

this is a well written piece. Sums it all up very well.

[Little Star]

17. k&r

[madinmaryland]

21. I remember finishing high school and kids going to work

straight out of high school working at the Ford plant and making 3-4 times minimum wage at that time. It was late 70's and minimum wage was $2.65.

It is sad to see these same people stripped of all dignity working for minimum wage today at the local Speedway gas staton. All because of corporate greed to make more money for those at the top.

[cascadiance]

24. It would be an interesting stat to see how many people are working monday percentage-wise...

... and compare it to stats of the past people working on labor day.

I'd bet that more people are working percentage-wise on Monday than they have. Gotta ends meet! And I'm sure that many companies don't mind "not celebrating" this holiday too in this day and age.

[Laelth]

26. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[Brigid]

29. And the kid doesn't believe it.

[Sherman A1]

33. Precisely