You have to wonder if a tipping point in the media is being reached. While the conventional wisdom is that things must be looking up because the stock market is charging ahead again, they also can't keep from noting unemployment is still up because it lets them warn the Democrats are headed for the dumpster if they don't do anything about it. (That's why they get so excited about teabaggers, CPAC, and the plans of the GOP to return to power - even though none of them have any real answers.)
CBS Sunday Morning just did a show in which the stories all involved money in one way or another: former super model Kathy Ireland's billion dollar a year business; inventors proving entrepreneurship is still alive, using the power of the internet to get High Fashion items at bargain prices, and so on.
And three stories that touch upon the class warfare that must never be officially acknowledged - but is getting too blatant to ignore. (more)
ON THE RIGHT TRACK?
So, how are things going? Anthony Mason asked Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute for an assessment of whether or not the U.S. economy is on the right track. (Video link) Good news, bad news - still things to worry about. Achuthan recites conventional wisdom that deficits are bad - but if you pay attention, he keeps adding "over the long term" which is about as close as you can get the traditional media to admit that over the short term deficits are necessary if we are going to HAVE a long term.
THE SQUEEZING OF AMERICA
Where things got really radical is the with the story "The Great American Paycheck Squeeze" Remember "Morning in America"? Square it with how the 'day' has gone since then.
The reality is, for more and more Americans in these recessionary times, SAS might as well be Disney World. The fact is, most workers feel overworked, under-appreciated and - most of all - under-paid.
"We're living through one of the worst times for wage growth ever," said Larry Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit Washington think tank. "From 2002 to 2007, the hourly compensation of a typical college graduate or a typical high school graduate went up zero - didn't grow at all."
Mishel says for most American workers, wages have been under assault for nearly 40 years.
(SAS is a company with an... enlightened attitude about its work force. But back to the story...)
He [Misehall] points to the fact that from the 1940s until around 1970, as workers became more productive, their salaries grew accordingly. But around 1970, things changed, and for the next four decades, as productivity skyrocketed 70%, hourly wages hardly budged, rising a mere four percent.
So, where did all that extra money go? Mishel points to the very top.
"Between 1989 and 2007, before the Great Recession, of all the income growth that was generated, the bottom 90 percent [of Americans] got only 15 percent of it. The upper one percent got 55 percent. And the upper tenth of the upper one percent, the one out of 1,000 households, got about a third of all the income growth."
"Hang on, hang on - over 18 years, a third of all income growth went to one tenth of one percent?" Axelrod asked.
"Absolutely," Misehal said.
emphasis added
There's a bit of "On the other hand" with a counter from "Georgetown University economist Stephen Rose, who thinks the myth of a middle class squeeze is exactly that, a myth."
"That would imply an economy that we just don't have. The malls wouldn't be filled. The people wouldn't be rushing to spend $14 to go to 'Avatar.' They wouldn't have all the wiis, all of the iPods, the iPhones, etcetera, etcetera."
Rose uses a different set of numbers. He points out that the median income of American workers has been rising steadily, from about $49,000 dollars in 1970 to $62,000 in 2008.
"If you ask people, 'How do you compare to your parents?' about 50 to 60 percent say better," Rose said. "Thirty percent say about the same. And only about 15 percent say worse. So Americans think they're living better. The evidence seems to be overwhelmingly clear they're living better. And so I think it's a tall stretch to argue that 60 to 80 percent of Americans haven't moved forward over the last three decades."
Larry Mishel believes those numbers are misleading.
"It's really a low threshold to say families are a little better off than 30 years ago, when the pie grew by 70%," Mishel said. "They should be far better off."
emphasis added
Read the whole article - and watch the video if you can find a link; it has a few graphics the article doesn't.
MOVE YOUR MONEY
Another even more subversive piece looked at whether or not we really need to give our business to banks too big to fail. (Video link here.) Arianna Huffington has launched a program to make it easy for people to move their money to small, community based banks.
Robert Johnson works with the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think-tank where he helped craft the campaign.
"All of us, collectively, do have money," says Johnson. "And when we move our money, we're voting with a different currency, and that's one that businesses pay attention to."
He adds, "Taking money away from people who pay you zero, charge you 30 percent on your credit cards, hit you with all kinds of overdraft fees, and use that money to do, say, proprietary trading and pay themselves big bonuses and spend $400 million on lobbying - why would you want to empower those people?"
By entering your zip code into the moveyourmoney.info Web site, a list of nearby small banks pops up, all of which have received a rating of "B" or better by independent reviewers.
emphasis added
SAVE YOURSELF
Contributor and financial guru Suze Orman got a few minutes to pass on her own assessment of where we are. (Video link here.)
But here is what I want you to understand.
We are now standing on land that in my opinion has financial faults going all the way through it. And if we have any financial tremors whatsoever, we will find ourselves, in my opinion, right back to where we were in 2008.
So you have got to make sure that you are not dependent on anybody else’s financial plan for you.
The economy cannot save you. The administration cannot save you. You have got to save yourself.
Want to know how? Orman has advice about 401k plans, IRAs and about getting a credit card that won't eat you alive with high interest rates.
Well, the first thing you need to understand is that most of you probably have debt on credit cards. Many of those credit cards are charging you 30% interest, charging fees, doing all these kinds of things, especially if they are with major banks.
What I want all of you to do is go to creditcardconnection.org and find a good credit union near you. Anybody can join a credit union, where you get a credit union credit card.
Do you know by law federally-charted credit unions cannot charge you more than 18% interest rate? Get yourself a credit card at a credit card union.
emphasis added
This was padded with enough 'happy' financial news stories to make it easier to slip past the corporate overlords who own the traditional media, but the messages are pretty radical nonetheless:
• A majority of Americans are getting seriously short changed by the way the economy works - and have been for the last 40 years.
• Move your money out of big banks - why reward them for outrageous behavior? THEY have money but WE have numbers - and we can make it work for US!
• You don't HAVE to put up with high credit card rates - and you'd better not trust anyone else to look after your financial future.
Interesting stuff to hear from a traditional media giant. Better late than never....