... In 2010 total wages and salaries came to $6,009,831,055,912.11.
That’s a bit more than $6 trillion. Adjusted for inflation, that is less than each of the previous four years and almost identical to 2005, when the U.S. population was 4.2 percent smaller. ...
The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999. ...
The number of workers making $1 million or more rose to almost 94,000 from 78,000 in 2009. However, that was still below some earlier years, including 2007, when more than 110,000 workers made more than $1 million each. ...
What these figures tell us is that there was a reason voters responded in the fall of 2010 to the Republican promise that if given control of Congress they would focus on one thing: jobs. ...
In the recent past I had lunch with a Wise Old Animator who worked his ass off over a long career and invested wisely. (He is now very comfortably fixed.) Regarding the Current Troubles he said this:
"When Glass-Steagel got repealed, I told everybody I knew that we'd have a new Depression in ten years. I lived through the last one and it wasn't pretty. I wanted to avoid going through another. We had these problems a lot before 1929 ..."
The one constant about humankind is: It never learns a goddamn thing for very long. Holland (and the world) went through the Tulip Bulb Bubble centuries ago. The American economy crashed with frightening regularity all through the nineteenth century (gold standard and all.) And the U.S. congress has been methodically stripping away financial regulations for years ("This time is different!") because as we all know, markets are self-regulating and therefore nothing can go wrong in the Modern Age.
So now people are hurting. And they will continue to hurt, because we still have a ways to go before real estate fully unwinds.
But I don't hold out much hope that this type of debacle won't repeat itself, and it's not because of Barney Frank or George Bush or Barack Hussein Obama. It's because A) Greed is a basic human impulse and B) .... (repeat it with me now) People never learn a goddamn thing.
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People never learn a goddamn thing.
One thing I picked up from A Random Walk Down Wall Street and The Four Pillars of Investing was that financial crises happen at least once every generation. Tulip bubbles, diving bubbles, railroad bubbles, canal-building bubbles, the South Sea bubble, the Nifty Fifty bubble and the Internet bubble all happened about thirty or forty years apart from each other.
It's cold comfort to know that history repeats itself.
PS -- I'm glad the Wise Old Animator knows financial comfort in his retirement. It gives me hope for my own retirement.
"the Republican promise that if given control of Congress they would focus on one thing: jobs. ..."
And yet they've not introduced ONE "jobs" bill, and have done nothing but obstruct our President's jobs bill--just for political posturing. Luckily, American's see thru their lies, and will toss them out.
The bush economic debacle continues, and republikkkans want only to push government control over our private lives further.
last time this country suffered so bad under its non-leadership was the lame Carter term. Here we are again, hang in there for just a little bit more.
"republikkkans"
This drives me crazy. On what basis do you have the right to paint an entire party with this KKK brush? It just shows your ignorance and intolerance. Given that it's clear that you have a lot more in common with the KKK than you might want to let on.
"republikkkans want only to push government control over our private lives further."
Huh? Wait - isn't one of the mainstays of the Rep/T-Party movement that they want the Government out of our lives? Seems to me that the Democrats want to govern everything under the sun cuz they know what's best for us.
First off, despite the GOPs claims and rhetoric they only want to minimize Gov't they just want to eliminate regulations that will make it harder for Banks and corporations to screw the middle class. Gov't has grown more under Republican rule than Democratic - not to mention they want to add additional regulations on your private life.
Secondly, if you buy into their BS you're only making a good case for it being necessary for someone to make decisions for you since you are clearly to immature and too easily led around by the nose to make any big decisions on your own.
isn't one of the mainstays of the Rep/T-Party movement that they want the Government out of our lives?
Acutally, no.
Lots more laws under the GOP governing personal behavior: women's reproductive rights, drug testing for unemployment benefits and state aid, who can marry who, etc.
As Gore Vidal once said: "The Republicans want to get the government off our backs and onto our fronts."
last time this country suffered so bad under its non-leadership was the lame Carter term.
Here's U.S. job growth under President Carter:
Cumulative Total Increase for Pres. Jimmy Carter(D): +10,339,000 jobs
Average Jobs Per Month: +215,396
Percentage increase January 1977 to January 1981: 11.36%
Here's the job growth under President Reagan:
Cumulative Total Increase for Pres. Ronald Reagan (R): +16,102,000 jobs
Average Jobs Per Month: +167,729
Percentage increase January 1981 to January 1985: 5.52%
Percentage increase January 1985 to January 1989: 10.06%
http://mollysmiddleamerica.blogspot.com/2011/10/job-growth-in-carter-years-better-than.html
Job growth wise, the "lame" Carter years out-performed the Reagan years.
You wouldn't know it from a lot of the rhetoric of the last quarter century, but the statistics are what they are.
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