|
|
The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily
represent the views of County News Online
|
MSN.com
Sorry, but
Labor Day is a joke
This country has no respect for its workers. Household income is
dropping and shareholders are taking all the gains.
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
Let's just scrap Labor Day, shall we?
After all, if we're not going to treat the working man or woman with
respect in this country, why don't we just stop pretending?
If we're just going to stick it to the working stiff 364 days a year,
we might as well be honest and make it 365.
According to U.S. government data, in the past 12 months the working
people of America have received about the smallest share of national
economic output since at least World War II.
They've been under pressure for decades, but the real free fall has
been since 2000.
When you adjust for inflation, real median household income is down
about 10 percent since the start of the millennium and is now lower
than it was in 1989. No kidding.
For the past 35 years, the American economy has "persistently
redistributed rewards away from workers and toward shareholders," wrote
economists Daniel Greenwald and Sydney Ludvigson, of New York
University, and Martin Lettau, at the University of California at
Berkeley, in a recent paper.
They calculated that this trend, not "rising productivity" or
technology, is the main reason the stock market has done so well over
that time.
Our grandparents would be amazed at how America treats the working man
and woman today. Let us count the ways.
1. Taxes
Back in the Middle Ages, the monarchies of Europe used to rank people
as aristocrats, merchants or peasants. Aristocrats got treated best,
peasants the worst.
Today? Here in America a kid who buses tables pays an effective tax
rate of 25 percent (including the full cost of the payroll tax) on
everything he earns, and the rate quickly goes higher.
Meanwhile a tycoon who makes a few million a year from long-term
capital gains pays a maximum rate of 24 percent.
And the kid who inherits a few million dollars from rich parents? No
tax at all. Peasants, indeed.
2. Language
Say goodbye to Rosie the Riveter. During World War II, Americans took
it for granted that the people who worked were the backbone of the
country and the drivers of the economy...
Read the rest of the article at MSN.com
|
|
|
|
