Saturday, June 30, 2012

Sarah Jaffe — Corporate Profits at All-Time High; Wages at All-Time Low: Can We Call it Class War Yet?

The middle class is being hollowed out; increasingly, there are the super-super-rich, and there are the rest of us....
As Hayes writes, we're ruled by an ever-smaller group of elites who not only control all the resources, but all the power. The same people who are pushing wages downward are the ones paying for politicians' campaigns, and they're the same people on the boards of directors and trustees of our universities, our institutions—like JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, the Harvard Business School, Catalyst, as well as on the Board of Trustees of New York University School of Medicine. 
Meanwhile, for the vast majority of us, the recession that supposedly ended in 2009 looks more like a depression each day, and as long as low wages and high unemployment remain the order of the day, there's no recovery in sight.
Read it at AlterNet | News & Opinion
Corporate Profits at All-Time High; Wages at All-Time Low: Can We Call it Class War Yet?
by Sarah Jaffe

6 comments:

y said...

Bob Diamond of Barclays may be replaced with his deputy Rich Ricci (pronounced Rich Richie) if he resigns.

Where do they get these names from?

Jonf said...

Oh I know how to fix it. We need a bigger deficit. So lets cut taxes again on the wealthy. I also like the idea of cutting the minimum wage and maybe we can lower the hours so more people can work. Is that class warfare or just plain good policy? Disgusting.

John T said...

Eliminating the minimum wage will not help the unemployed. Employers will only hire more workers as a last resort, when demand exceeds their ability to produce. Lower wages mean less demand, it is a vicious circle. The only answer is for the government to be the employer of last resort, so everybody can earn enough to at least live at subsistence level.

Tom Hickey said...

Y: "Bob Diamond of Barclays may be replaced with his deputy Rich Ricci (pronounced Rich Richie) if he resigns. Where do they get these names from?"

Add Jamie Dimon(d), and Lloyd GOLDfein.

It's like they are characters out of a cartoonist's imagination.

y said...

Goldfein?

I thought it was Lloyd Blankcheque.

Jonf said...

Cousin to Jamie Blankfein Dimon.