Republicans who own businesses HATE it when someone has the freedom to move from one employer to another, Republicans HATE it when anyone other than they can decide how much you get, what you get, etc.

WHEN we are tired enough of the war against us by these people, started by Reagan, we will react, until then, shut up, work real hard, dont be late and dont expect to ever get ahead, the system is now designed so you cant.

Before Reagan the system was designed so auto mechanics and store clerks could actually do pretty well, not anymore.


https://twitter.com/DidTheyLetUVote

8: Most people can’t even afford to get their teeth fixed: 7 things the middle class can’t afford anymore, USA Today

USA Today:

“A vacation is an extra expense that many middle-earners cannot afford without sacrificing something else. A Statista survey found that this year 54% of people gave up purchasing big ticket items like TVs or electronics so they can go on a vacation. Others made sacrifices like reducing or eliminating their trips to the movies (47%), reducing or eliminating trips out to restaurants (43%), or avoiding purchasing small ticket items like new clothing (43%).

2–New vehicles…
3–To pay off debt…
4–Emergency savings…
5–Retirement savings…
6–Medical care…
7–Dental work…

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “the U.S. spends about $64 billion each year on oral health care — just 4% is paid by Government programs.” About 108 million people in the U.S. have no dental coverage and even those who are covered may have trouble getting the care they need, the department reports.”

Eventually mine will all just break off at the gumline. Some already have. It's one of the worst parts about being poor. The pain makes you want to put an icepick through your ears.

That is what their paychecks -- or, in some cases, the lack thereof -- are telling them. It's that simple. They don't care what some economist says. In other words, who are you going to believe -- them or your lying eyes?

..... but nobody but the delusional thinks we are in a "recovery".

To "recover" means to get back to where you were. That is not going to happen, everyone might as well get used to it.

Your number one easy peasy metric/yardstick is interest rates. As long as they are forced near zero by the Fed, we are no where near any kind of historical "normal".

Wonder what happens if/when it blows up? We create our own fiat money for a reason, but here it is being used to create a huge balloon to cover the bad acts of the banksters. Is there really no point at which this tool, being used for a purpose it was never intended, breaks?

I think they believe there is enough cushion now with all those bad assets under a blanket at the Fed, so they ended this QE (for now), but the people are going to be paying that back for years. If they are right it means servitude. If not, all this will blow up, and...

I wonder if everyone will be too busy searching for the new emperor to care that the old ones have been naked and bending them over all this time? Would tell us, perhaps, one reason why people in power think they can do what they want without recrimination, except for being called vile or inept in history books?

Interesting times...

.... that the Japanese central bank has announced that it is going to create a zillion yen out of thin air, it's starting to look like this is a globallly coordinated strategy.

First we print then Japan prints then the EU prints and then rinse, lather repeat until money is practically worthless.

The problem is that 99.9% of people don't understand any of this, hell I barely understand it so this is what is going to happen. They rely on the fact that the machinations of currencies are beyond the ken of just about everyone.

And while it does, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, that much I do know.

So like I said, everyone might as well get used to it because there is no one to stop it.

symptom, though, because they don't know they need to, and most have been trained not to look, just follow. The life we knew is over. Even if one is doing ok, at some point in time, precisely because there are many more people who are not, and that number is increasing with our population, something has to give. I can't imagine trying to keep a secure, prosperous country together with such a group.

Harriet Tubman opined that she could only save half of her targets, that the other half didn't know they were slaves. Seems that percentage has tilted in the wrong direction.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

People looking at the gas pump, or the price of a gallon of milk, and looking at their paychecks, don't see anything like a recovery.


It's been attributed to many people, and I don't know who actually originated it, but the phrase holds true here: "if your next-door neighbor loses his job, it's a recession; if you lose your job, it's a depression."

They aren't "centrists." They are murderous sociopaths.

Corporate money out of Washington. We don't even have a functioning opposition party anymore.

We the people (real people) have lost much of our representation due to the overwhelming corruption of corporate money and power. I resist but it feels futile much of the time.

That's not a sign of...anything.

they are hurting, they become more than just the one who bagged your groceries.

That's when you see the light. And the sign.

The Greatest Retirement Crisis In American History Here

Here's a comment from a post - I could post IRS stats, but this is the same thing...

It's not just another "high school kid or older 'retiree' ". It's your neighbor, who has been and is suffering.


Faced with the choice between changing one's mind
and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

that'll teach old people to grift along on welfare, the lucky ducks...

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― John Steinbeck

the hedgefund managers?

shrinks. So if the macroeconomy is growing or even bouncing from growth one month to shrinkage the next, it will not qualify as a 'recession' as economists define the term.

But (and this is a huge 'but') such a definition says nothing about how that economic growth is distributed or, conversely, concentrated. While I don't have the source for this immediately at hand, it turns out the 95% of the gains during the so-called recovery have gone . . . where else? . . . to the top 1%. So the overall economy has been 'growing,' but the fruits of that growth are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

This was all eminently predicatable and, indeed, predicted by Marx and Engels 150-some years ago.

Because a lot of us grew up with Alan Greenspan and his decades of destruction to the economy.

Because that's the one that grabbed me, too.

We need to redefine our terms. These aren't Republicans and corporate Democrats operating as usual within a constitutional, representative government. They are antidemocratic, even fascistic predators subverting democracy and using governments to exploit and ruin millions of human lives for profit.

[font size=5]CORPORATE MONEY OUT OF GOVERNMENT. CORPORATE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS[/font size]

If you want on board it's time to start swimming, kids, 'cause that ship ain't comin' in.

cost of living gets higher, wages never go up. The only people doing well are the rich.

The only thing in my life that is better is that I can get medicaid now.

I can never retire. I'll just work until I can't and then wander off into the woods.

My wife has retired and I will be retired soon also. We both have defined pensions and thru mine we can still have insurance, free till 65.

Basically our sick leave accrues and we can trade it for free insurance coverage at retirement and being there 30 years I have a LOT saved.

However those who started at my work after 1991 can only trade the same amount for 50% of the premium and those there after 2000 can't trade it in at all.

I know people, came to my job late in life and they will never have enough to retire. Plus my job requires a LOT of concentration and attention and a lot of my friends who got old were disciplined or even suspended because they could not keep the production up prior to them finally retiring (when they could get medicare) for a lot it was a struggle to keep up.

Also a lot of people even though they are 60 or so are still paying on their house which at our retirement pay would be hard to do.

I can see things my wife and I did, like not going into debt, saving my sick leave instead of using it as vacation, saving money, paying off our house in 15 years that for sure helped. But if we had done the same thing starting out now we would not be in as good shape.

The same job starting out now pays 3500 less in real terms than it did when I started out. Housing and college is way more. Raises are WAY less frequent and lower. Production requirements are higher. Management more punitive.

I'm glad I'm getting out of it and I feel sorry for those who are just starting out.

I feel like eventually we will see violence in the US unless the part that was taken by the 1% - the part that used to fund the health care and pensions is returned- I wonder if we will see a renewed union movement and maybe a nationwide strike to raise the min wage? Or are people too apathetic, has the game been rigged so much that the labor movement does not have the ability to regain power like it did before?

7: Working people are getting poorer: The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third, New York Times

NYT:

“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 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially….“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.

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.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Looks like class warfare to me and us working folks are losing bad.

To say the recession has ended is misleading.

because almost all of the economic recovery benefits are going to the top, not to the rest of us.

Or top 0.1%.

Because most of us ARE still in a recession. There's been no recovery for many of us.