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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCorporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low
1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't).
2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. One reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to.
3) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. This is both cause and effect. One reason companies are so profitable is that they're paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are other companies' revenue
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an-all-time-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6#ixzz1yZnjmfOM

elleng
(137,986 posts)Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
liberalmike27
(2,479 posts)Globalization is good for "us" they say. "Us."
Who is "us" when they say that. They promote the idea that we're all going to benefit. But our governments at all levels are bankrupted of the tax money once collected when 30 million good, union jobs once thrived here in the U.S., so I think you'll have to look to the corporate profits to find the "us" they are talking about.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)How can that be?
elleng
(137,986 posts)NO ONE has what it takes to organize the world to assure labor prospers along with capital.
With transportation/communication, results of industrial revolution etc. its not reasonable to deny all economies are linked. We ALL, around the globe, need to recogiize we can all prosper if/when we were truly linked through agreements between international labor and capital.
DEFINITELY not holding my breath, but if there were real statespeople around, such dreams might be more fruitful.
SoutherDem
(2,307 posts)If it did the two should move in the same direction.
CleanLucre
(284 posts)This was the goal.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)Welcome to DU!
CleanLucre
(284 posts)Thanks!!
ananda
(31,208 posts)nt
CleanLucre
(284 posts)the bloodsuckers feed, the rest suck it up.
liberalmike27
(2,479 posts)But for whom?
inna
(8,809 posts)it's a feature, not a bug.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)and not enough demand. While some corporations will do well internationally unless many workers have income to buy goods the story for the US is in general pretty dismal. Most citizens will not lead a life very high on the standard of living index. The wealth of the nation will grow, but the standard of living will fall, as the wealth is severely skewed to a few percent.
Correction is needed, but in this highly charged political environment and corporate owned government nothing short of another Great Depression will bring this country back on track IMO.
And this is why one sees DHS merging with local police to police the masses if chaos breaks out. All of the handwriting is on the wall if one looks.
CleanLucre
(284 posts)look more like "another Great Depression"? (Fewer $20 cocktail drinkers, in my neighborhood)
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)CleanLucre
(284 posts)held up by credit cards? These pretentious partiers got no money!!!!!
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)there.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)newthinking
(3,982 posts)It always surprises me when that we haven't seemed to figure out the obvious. Because it is such a simple part of economic theory. If people will work for 1/4 of what you get paid they will outcompete you.
That is the problem with the "free trade" ideology. Until we are at parity, it will be disasterous. Add to that darwinian capitalism and the accumulation of prosperity at the top strata and it seems we will *never* get to that parity even this way.
Kablooie
(18,831 posts)and wages will continue to sink and jobs will continue to disappear.
Until the corporate profits start to decline we can't expect anything to change - at all!
Normally taxes correct this kind of thing by eliminating profit from actions that hurt the country but just the opposite is true now.
The only citizens that count today are corporate citizens. Human citizens are not important any more.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)banks interest free. Or I think it's negative interest now. What a deal. And Bernanke I believe just recently said interest rates will not change until in 2014. The only recovery really going on is for the top few percent. Meanwhile, about 50% of this country is in or near poverty.
Stuart G
(38,726 posts)kpete
(72,895 posts)peace,
kp
Huey P. Long
(1,932 posts)Huey Long: Share the Wealth
December 1934. Huey Long speaks passionately about income inequality and the wealthy in the United States.
upi402
(16,854 posts)and not just letting one man take 90% of the food.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
freshwest
(53,661 posts)abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)It's republicans....and I mean the poor people duped into voting for them.......that we need to get the message to. Unfortunately they've been programmed to not believe anything a dem or liberal has to say.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)educating many of the masses to be ignorant. Any with a bit of insight would say WTF, but that does not happen to the majority and to "not believe anything a dem or liberal has to say." Nothing short of a major great depression will reset the US I fear.
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)In fact, he is all you could have wished form in terms of corporatist policies. so what are you attacking him as anti-business?
upi402
(16,854 posts)sheez, are you trying to trouble mah beautiful mind?
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)progressoid
(50,940 posts)
malthaussen
(17,898 posts)Isn't it interesting that, according to the top graph, the all-time lowest profits ever were recorded in the midst of Reagan's rulership? Reagan, the saviour of us all? Even with the huge plunge when the current depression began, profits were higher than under Saint Ronnie.
There's also an interesting correlation of the times of highest profit with times of war, but a couple of peaks are left unaccounted for by that.
-- Mal
jp11
(2,104 posts)greed is good, if you aren't growing you are dying, run leaner, do more with less, increase productivity, anyone is replaceable, unions push out good american jobs.
No one should have it better than I do unless they are rich because I might get rich and if you are rich then you absolutely did it all on your own had no breaks, no luck, and are the only person who can take credit for your amazing success.
Jake2413
(228 posts)at the expense of everything else. That is why they need to be regulated and have STRONG laws that are enforced when they are broken. Government's responsibility is to protect citizens from corporate abuse, something the Republicans have yet to understand.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)way to go Fat Cat MotherFuckers. goddamn you all to forty levels of hell.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)All we need is :
*MORE "Free Trade",
*MORE Privatized (Charter) Schools
*fire some more teachers, cut pay for the rest
*an increase in Military Spending and more Drone attacks
*more drilling & pipelines
*a few more Bank Bailouts
*add a few more countries to the War on Terror
*give all the farms to Monsanto
*make it MORE expensive to go to school
*bust a few more medical marijuana Dispensaries
*get rid of some more Public Employees & their pensions
*grind the Post Office into the dirt
*make everybody buy Health Insurance from For Profit Corporations
*bring in more low wage workers to compete for the increasingly rare Working Class jobs,
*bust a few more unions
*lose a few more Pensions
*foreclose a few more home owners
*make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that dissent WILL be violently suppressed with nationally co-ordinated militarized police forces
....and things will start turning around!
Trust me.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel!
Just wait a few more Friedman Units!
[font size=4]Cherish your memories, SUCKERS!
Cuz we're TAKING everything else!
We WON!
Hahahahahahaha!
[/font]
rudycantfail
(300 posts)to be hit again with that old hammer.
Scout
(8,625 posts)sharing to facebook for my right wing "friends"
Broderick
(4,578 posts)The labor force is down quite a bit (total people working), and the population is up.
None of it is good to be honest.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Initech
(103,448 posts)All companies do now is stack billions, pay zero taxes and get away with flat out thievery - until they start putting that money back into hiring workers - and - gasp - paying them fairly - we're never gonna dig our way out of this shit hole. Fuck Reagan and reagonomics.
tclambert
(11,153 posts)Oh, wait, corporations are people. Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court said so. Anyway, I guess I can quit worrying about the killer robots taking over. The corporations will wipe out humanity. You know what? If human beings won't fight back, they deserve to go extinct.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)what the problem is....too bad there are too many idiots these days.
I think that the last statement in #3 says it all: "Those "wages" are other companies' revenue."
rtracey
(2,062 posts)Looks like the statement, the private sector is doing fine really was true huh.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)If we didn't allow them to keep so much money, maybe they wouldn't be able to buy off our politicians and public airwaves.
Tariffs were the main source of all Federal revenue from 1790 to 1914. At the end of American Civil War in 1865 about 63% of Federal income was generated by the excise taxes which exceeded the 25.4% generated by tariffs. In 1915 during World War I tariffs generated only 30.1% of revenues. Since 1935 tariff income has continued to be a declining percentage of Federal tax income.
year % of Budget Paid by Tariffs
1792 95.0%
1795 91.6%
1800 83.7%
1805 95.4%
1810 91.5%
1815 46.4%
1820 83.9%
1825 97.9%
1830 88.2%
1835 54.1%
1840 64.2%
1845 91.9%
1850 91.0%
1855 81.2%
1863 55.9%
1864 38.7%
1865 25.4%
1870 47.3%
1880 55.3%
1885 56.1%
1890 57.0%
1900 41.1%
1910 34.6%
1913 44.0%
1915 30.1%
1916 27.3%
1917 20.1%
1918 25.8%
1920 13.2%
1925 14.5%
1928 14.0%
1930 14.1%
1935 8.4%
1940 6.1%
1942 2.9%
1944 0.9%
1946 0.9%
1948 0.9%
1950 0.9%
1951 1.1%
1955 0.8%
1960 1.1%
1965 1.2%
1970 1.3%
1975 1.3%
1980 1.4%
1985 1.6%
1990 1.1%
1995 1.4%
2000 1.0%
2005 1.1%
2010 1.2%