What The Media IS NOT Telling You About The Gingrich-Romney Fight

These charts were compiled by the St. Louis Federal Reserve. They have been the most active data collection agency to date, of economic data relative to different income levels…

These charts are most telling because they are all timelined with the Recessions and Depressions….

The Seven Charts That Show the Historical Effects of the Romney-Gingrich Policy…..

1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression (with the exception of a brief blip in the early 1980s).

2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy.

3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.

4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high: The owners of the country’s assets (capital) are winning, everyone else (labor) is losing.

5. CEO pay and corporate profits have skyrocketed in the past 20 years, “production worker” pay has risen 4%.

6, After adjusting for inflation, average earnings haven’t increased in 50 years.

I cannot do better than the Atlantic‘s summation of all these moving parts…

It’s worth noting that the US has been in a similar situation before: At the end of the “Roaring ’20s,” just before the start of the Great Depression. (See some of the charts above).

It took the country 15-20 years to pull out of that slump and fix the imbalances. But by the mid-1950s, employment, corporate profits, wages, and inequality had all returned to more normal levels. And the country enjoyed a couple of decades of relatively well-balanced prosperity. But now, everything’s out of whack again.

Importantly, the inequality that has developed in the economy over the past couple of decades is not just a moral issue. It’s a practical one. It is, as sociologists might say, “de-stabilizing.” It leads directly to the sort of social unrest that we’re seeing right now.

SO, WHY IS NO ONE TAKING REPUBLICANS TO TASK FOR THE RESULTS THEY MADE, INSTEAD, THEY GET TREATED LIKE THEIR PHILOSOPHY COULD BE A VIABLE OPTION?

Isn’t “someone” bending over backwards, NOT to report “All The News That’s Fit To Print?”

What I Want….

The recession has popped a lot of dreams… It has forced a re-evaluation of priorities. It has put reality in the forefront.

So wiping off the table of everything, everything, and sitting down to a blank space, and asking myself, … what do I want, by the time I die.

It is:

A country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home and secure their retirement,”

After watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” you can be sure it can’t happen on a Republican’s watch….. For that dream to happen, we need protection from corporations and Big Money; not giving them more and more of what we make.

We need more money funneled away from big business, to be reinvested into the Middle Class… Since they haven’t done it voluntarily, we’ll have to force it.

Republicans can’t force anyone to do anything. They are putz’s. It will take a government of all Democrats to make Americans who die, at least die happy that they were able to secure:

“A country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home and secure their retirement”.

Legacy of a “W”

Is ex-president Bush hard of hearing?

At a recent SMU sypmposium he had the opportunity to take questions from a number of midwestern students, whose residencies ranged from Fargo to Texas. The moderator, C Span’s Brian Lamb said “we have enough time for one more student question”….

“Their questions aren’t stupid….”

Thinking it was a joke, Brian quickly explained I said….”S T U D E N T” question….

As if nothing was said at all, …. “I think they’re pretty good questions. Not stupid at all…..”

The host stayed silent…..

“In fact, their questions are better than yours …….” …

Things moved on… Those of us watching kinda laughed a little, remembering some episodes along both campaign trails and in front of cameras… Some things never change….

But there are a couple of things to ponder. When asked what he was most proud of, his rapid response was to increase money to help Africa with AIDS.

He did, over the dead body of his party, pursue and get passed, large increases to fight AIDS.

“It was a national security issue, or one that would become one in the next generation. Imagine a child seeing his parents dying from AIDS, and the richest country, with unimaginable wealth relative to him, stood by and offered nothing?”

“We had the capacity to do something, and with little sacrifice to us, .. we did it.”

This, not only is a window into the soul of a man but also illuminates that which makes the soul of this country, great. This nation, which was at the time preparing to unilaterally invade another country while unprovoked, was simultaneously funding the largest amount ever voted, to help impoverished African countries combat a killer disease. In other words, the US is not all bad.

And secondly, the Bush tax cuts made it two more years beyond their expiration. That is a lasting legacy. Even though I argue those cuts are the sole reason this nation’s economy is in the bed it’s lying in, even though the opposite party held all the cards, they still got a buy for two more years. That means something. One can’t say they were a worthless mistake that bankrupted the government, railroaded through both chambers by ignorant Republicans at the expense of our country.. …. because we passed them again.

All one can say now,….. it that our government is economically illiterate. 🙂