middle class

Want to know what the outrage is about? Look no further than this:

Fifty percent of U.S. workers earned less than $26,364 last year, and those earning less than $200,000 per year - roughly 99 percent of Americans - saw their earnings fall a collective $4.5 billion.

There were fewer jobs, and overall pay was trending down -- except for the nation's wealthiest, who saw a boost.

While the incomes of the top 1percent of the country rose slightly in 2010 (from $1,909,874 in 2009 to $2,196,124 last year), their collective wage earnings rose dramatically, by about $120 billion.

Those earning at least $1 million a year (93,725 of Americans) reported payroll income totaling $224 billion - a rise of 22 percent above 2009.

And during this time American corporations have seen record profits and not been putting that money back into the economy. And how does the right (and some on the left) respond to this? They want to further decrease the tax burden of this 1% and shift that burden to the 99% who are struggling and watching their wages go down.

Class warfare? Hell yeah there’s a class warfare going on, but it’s not the one Eric Cantor wants you to think – it’s the exact opposite! The top 1% of this country is bilking the middle class for everything they got and the people are finally fed up with it. I just wish the rest of the country would wake up and stop listening to people like Rush Limbaugh (sitting comfortably in that 1%) and instead look at the facts. Limbaugh isn’t looking out for your interests or the interests of the country, he’s looking out for his own!

It certainly isn’t if you have CEO behind your name and you work for a big corporation:

Compensation received by chief executives of the biggest US companies surged 11 percent over the past 12 months -- to $9.3 million on average, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing a study conducted for the newspaper by management consultancy Hay Group, The Journal said the increase was largely due to decisions by company boards to reward CEOs for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants.

The survey covered the 350 biggest companies that filed their statement between May 1, 2010, and April 30, 2011.

So while middle America is struggling, the fat cats are still raking it in. Really – why shouldn’t they? Employment works much like the economy, based on supply and demand. Right now we have an over abundance of workers (supply), so they can hire people for less than normal wages. A lot of companies are even getting rid of the higher paid employees just to bring in lower paid ones. Is it right for this to occur? Nope, but it is what happens.

Of course there is also a real bad side to this. Income disparity will be even greater. Our middle class is being pushed into non-existence and our standing as the industrialized nation with the highest rate of income disparity will remain in tact. Also this increase will point to a growing payroll in America, which is only the case for about 1% of the working population. For the other 99% payroll has either remained flat or sunk, which the cost of living has continued to rise.

Does your paycheck still make you cry? Do you wonder why the bosses are all giddy like high school girls? Well this could be why (via Think Progress):

At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels, a USA TODAY analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International found.Workers in private industry, meanwhile, saw their compensation grow just 2.1% in the 12 months ended December 2010, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So the big bosses saw raises 13x that of their employees. How can we celebrate that? I know! Let’s give them even more tax cuts, and to pay for it, we can raise the taxes on those that saw the very generous 2.1% raises.

And to show just how bad this problem is, Think Progress adds this little tidbit of joy:

Median CEO pay last year was $9 million, the highest since 2007. The median CEO bonus was $2.2 million. Family wealth, meanwhile, is currently down $12.8 trillion from its 2007 peak.

As if this comes as any shocker:

Corporate America finished the second quarter with "near-historic" profits, largely by cutting costs, laying off employees and streamlining operations, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter.

Since 2008, corporate profits increased 10 percent -- but revenue was down 6 percent, the WSJ says. To achieve the impressive quarterly results, companies have had, as the WSJ puts it, to "streamline" their operations. This means firing workers, outsourcing labor and shuttering

This amounts to a Republican Mecca of capitalism ; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And while the poor are eating from hand to mouth, the Tea Partiers want to increase this dangerous economic disparity by doing such things as eliminating the minimum wage.

The thing that drives me crazier than anything though is the minions who by into this “let the corporations rule” meme the right pushes. So many are in the middle class and one down sizing or out sourcing away from hitting hard times. Reality is a myth to these people.

Robert Gibbs has issued a statement trying to walk back his critique of the “professional left” in an interview with The Hill. Here’s Gibbs statement (via The Plum Line)

I watch too much cable, I admit. Day after day it gets frustrating. Yesterday I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout -- but I know that's not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about.

So what I may have said inartfully, let me say this way -- since coming to office in January 2009, this White House and Congress have worked tirelessly to put our country back on the right path. Most importantly, to dig our way out of a huge recession and build an economy that makes America more competitive and our middle class more secure. Some are frustrated that the change we want hasn't come fast enough for many Americans. That we all understand.

But in 17 months, we have seen Wall Street reform, historic health care reform, fair pay for women, a recovery act that pulled us back from a depression and got our economy moving again, record investments in clean energy that are creating jobs, student loan reforms so families can afford college, a weapons system canceled that the Pentagon didn't want, reset our relationship with the world and negotiated a nuclear weapons treaty that gets us closer to a world without fear of these weapons, just to name a few. And at the end of this month, 90,000 troops will have left Iraq and our combat mission will come to an end.

From a Washington Post breaking email alert:

Sales at U.S. retailers rose more strongly than expected in March as consumer stepped up purchases of vehicles and wide range of goods, government data showed on Wednesday, suggesting a broadening of the manufacturing-led economic recovery.

The Commerce Department said total retail sales jumped 1.6 percent, the largest increase since November, from an upwardly revised 0.5 percent rise in February. Sales in February were previously reported to have gained 0.3 percent.

I wonder how much of this is because of people getting back larger tax refunds this year? It would play into the fact that more middle class Americans will be more willing to spend their money than the top 2%. It also would be another indicator that the stimulus is working.

I was watching Morning Joe this morning and in utter amazement at the dialogue going on. For a moment I thought FOX had taken over the show. Here’s a clip caught by Think Progress:

As Think Progress points out:

What’s more, as Center for American Progress Action Fund President John Podesta pointed out to Scarborough minutes later, these tax cuts were something that “Barack Obama campaigned on all year long” — and he encountered the exact same fearmongering accusations of “socialism” from conservatives. If Americans didn’t support Obama’s tax plan, they wouldn’t have voted for him.

Yup – this country voted for Socialism by the Republican’s very definition. If they don’t like it then they can find a new place to call home, but that is what America wants, so Scarborough needs to get over himself.

But the fact is Scarborough and Buchanan both said they didn’t want help for the lower and middle class, but would rather have tax-cuts to the corporations. Again – screw us, but save them.

Ok I am impressed:

Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:

Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...

More like this please?