Here's something that won't be a talking point in tonight's SOTU address:
Wages Up by Smallest Amount in Nine Years
And you wondered why you were finding it harder to make ends meet? Not only was the increase the lowest in 9 years, it was not even enough to keep pace with inflation.
When inflation is considered, overall compensation fell by 0.3 percent, the first time there has been a decline since 1996,...
More below.
Yet our
(what do you call a leader who was appointed and not elected? Somehow "president" doesn't seem suitable.) top official is going to suggest health insurance savings plans for people who increasingly have more and more month left over at the end of the money. His capacity for being out of touch with reality is seemingly boundless.
There is a quote from this article that simply stunned me:
The Labor Department said that employee compensation was up 3.1 percent in 2005, an increase that was slower than the 3.7 percent rise in 2004. The slowdown reflected a big drop in benefit costs -- items such as health insurance and pensions -- which rose by 4.5 percent last year after jumping by 6.9 percent in 2004.
The new Employment Compensation Index should ease concerns at the Federal Reserve that improving labor markets could be starting to push up wage pressures.
Emphasis added.
So, the Federal Reserve wants us to make less money? At a time when CEO salaries are 400 times that of an average worker's check -- they think that keeping the average worker's pay from rising to at least keep up with inflation could be a bad thing??!!
Just 10 years ago, the average CEO salary was 40 times that of the average worker; today it is 400 times that of the average worker. The disparity has increased 1000% in 10 years! Why isn't the Fed concerned about that? Why isn't the Fed concerned about Exxon's unprecedented profits -- on the backs of all those working folks whose wages provide them with less buying power this year than they did last year?
The repugs and their budget cuts to programs that benefit the poor, the elderly, the children -- so that people whose salaries are 400% higher than the average worker's can grow even richer -- are simply immoral.
Sorry if I'm rambling -- I'm stunned to see the numbers. For all their insistance that we -- the liberals . . . the Democrats -- are falsely crying class warfare, it is the repugs who have thrown down the gauntlet for that war. I say -- bring it on! Besides outnumbering them, we have everything to win and not much more to lose.
Stay strong!