Sunday, July 27, 2014

Average US Household Wealth Down 36% Since 2003

Via Zero Hedge

Does it feel like you're poorer? There is a simple reason why - you are! According to a new study by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36% decline... Welcome to America's Lost Decade.

Simply put, the NY Times notes, it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing, surely something is amiss.


(See link below for chart here.)


As Russell Sage Foundation concludes, through at least 2013, there are very few signs of significant recovery from the loss of wealth experienced by American families during the Great Recession. Declines in net worth from 2007 to 2009 were large, and the declines continued through 2013. These wealth losses, however, were not distributed equally. While large absolute amounts of wealth were destroyed at the top of the wealth distribution, households at the bottom of the wealth distribution lost the largest share of their total wealth. As a result, wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly doubled.

The American economy has experienced rising income and wealth inequality for several decades, and there is little evidence that these trends are likely to reverse in the near-term.

It is possible that the very slow recovery from the Great Recession will continue to generate increased wealth inequality in the coming years as those hardest hit may still be drawing down the assets they have left to cover current consumption.
The inequality-battler-in-chief remains unaware of the greatest irony of this surging rich-getting-richer as poor-get-poorer society:


Inequality in the U.S. today is near its historical highs, largely because the Federal Reserve’s policies have succeeded in achieving their aim: namely, higher asset prices (especially the prices of stocks, bonds and high-end real estate), which are generally owned by taxpayers in the upper-income brackets. The Fed is doing all the work, because the President’s policies are growth-suppressive. In the absence of the Fed’s moneyprinting and ZIRP, the economy would either be softer or actually in a new recession.

The greatest irony is that the President is railing against inequality as one of the most important problems of the day, despite the fact that his policies are squeezing the middle class and causing the Fed – with the President’s encouragement – to engage in the radical monetary policy, which is exacerbating inequality. This simple truth cannot be repeated often enough.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-26/americas-lost-decade-typical-household-wealth-has-plunged-36-2003

Saturday, July 19, 2014

How The Fastest Growing Union Tried To Abuse The Little Guy, And Lost

"The Service Employees International Union likes to present itself as the champion of the little guy. But officials of SEIU Healthcare — “the fastest-growing union of health care, child care, home care and nursing home workers in the Midwest” — aren’t averse to a little high living.

For example, in fiscal 2013, officials of SEIU’s Illinois-Indiana health care division chalked up more than $1.1 million in travel expenses — $13,000 of it on hotel expenses rung up at President Obama’s second inaugural in Washington, D.C.

The union designated all that travel as “representation activity.” Also claimed as a “representation” expense: a $6,000 liquor-store tab for “beverages for a Christmas party.”

Article is here: http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/19/forced-unionization-contradicts-first-amendment/

Thursday, July 03, 2014

The June, 2014 Unemployent Number - They Have No Shame


While the financial press was fawning over the 287,000 jobs the government claimed were created in June, they over looked one interesting nugget in the jobs report, to-wit, the rise in the number of people who worked part-time.

While it’s a number that admitted moves wildly from month to month, it jumped by 799,000 last month, which was the largest one-month gain since January 1994. At the same time, there was a 523,000-person drop in full-time workers, the first decline since October.

This was the good news heralded by government and its PR agency, the mainstream press.