Thursday, August 09, 2007

Sinking Middle Class

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » Hiring an Employee’s Stalker, Dissing Disabled Vets—Bad Bosses Have No Shame: "...Michael Moore’s documentary “SICKO” shows a woman who tells George W. Bush that she’s working three jobs. Bush proffers his standard idiotic grin and says something to the effect: “Isn’t that great?”

No, actually. It isn’t.

Needing to work three jobs isn’t a sign that the economy is thriving because jobs are plentiful (Bush’s interpretation). It’s a sign that new jobs being created do not offer sufficient wages, health care and retirement coverage to support an individual or a family.

There is a tie between BAD bosses and an economy that works against working people. Because when people are so desperate for a job that they literally will risk their lives to keep it, there’s something big time wrong with the system.

It used to be, you worked hard, you had a chance to get ahead—or at least, pay the bills. But since 1973, there’s been a big disconnect between worker productivity and wages. From 1979 to 2004, the percentage of households in the “middle class” category—those with incomes between $30,000 and $90,000—fell from 47 percent to 39 percent..."

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