Great American Paycheck Squeeze: Third of All Income Growth Went to Top .1% Over Last 2 Decades

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"We're living through one of the worst times for wage growth ever," said Larry Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit Washington think tank. "From 2002 to 2007, the hourly compensation of a typical college graduate or a typical high school graduate went up zero - didn't grow at all."

"We've seen the steepest and longest rise in unemployment since the Great Depression," Mishel said. "This has a tremendous downward pressure on wages. Employers have all the leverage; they don't have to give you more money to get you accept a job.

"Between 1989 and 2007, before the Great Recession, of all the income growth that was generated, the bottom 90 percent got only 15 percent of it. The upper one percent got 55 percent. And the upper tenth of the upper one percent, the one out of 1,000 households, got about a third of all the income growth."

"We know that CEOs in large companies make 270 times that of a typical worker," Mishel said. "It used to be around 20 times, 30 times, back in the '60s and '70s.

Continued: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/28/sunday/main6252373.shtml

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Tough shit." - Republicon Homelander FatCats

"Why don't you American proles just sit down and STFU, while we republicons do NOTHING to fix the economy we flushed down crapper over the last 8 years, and do NOTHING to fix the health care mess that so enriches our insurance and health-care corporate cronies. Sneer."

- Republicon Homelander FatCats

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2. The Republicons want the middle class to borrow infinite amounts of money to make their scheme work

They along with these greedy corporations want us to buy all this stuff, but at the same time they don't want us to earn the wages which would facilitate this sort of consumption.

[cornermouse]

3. So why did Obama bail them out?

When he bailed them out he bought into the mess.

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4. Because us making these crappy wages is better than bread lines?

I think that was the worry, systematic failure of the economy if the banking system collapsed. We'd have even worse unemployment. I don't think this is Obama's fault. This house of cards has engineered and propped up for decades before he arrived. Changing it is proving to be impossible.

[cornermouse]

6. Sorry, but when he bailed them out and left John Q. Public

out in the cold, he bought into a partnership with the repubs.

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7. Well, the fact is we're not totally in the cold

Like I said, a lot of us still have jobs because we still have a functioning economy. So it did "trickle down" in that sense. Of course we will never know what the other reality would have been like if he'd just let everything collapse. I don't think that would have been the good choice for anybody, but I guess you are free to argue that position if you'd like.

[Overseas]

5. K&R to expose the "wisdom of the private sector" for what it is.

Wise for the top 5% of our population.

We need Democrats in power again to turn this around. Sigh...

[laughingliberal]

8. This is one of the huge problems with the economy

As someone who entered the workforce in the early 80's this has characterized my whole work life. Working harder every year just to stay in the same place or fall a little more behind. With the entire working class going through this for over 2 decades, the money to keep the economy going is not there. The top 1% are not spending. They are hoarding and the real economy is not going to recover til they get some of the money back in the hands of the masses.

[NecklyTyler]

9. K&R