Here:
The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.
To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.
***What’s going on here? It’s a combination of two trends. One, economic growth in the current decade has been slower than in any decade since before World War II. Two, inequality has risen sharply, so much of the bounty from our growth has gone to a relatively small slice of the population.
I think we are about due for Reason or the Heritage Foundation (or one of the other hundreds of Koch funded enterprises) to squeal that the rich pay more in taxes. Also, too.
*Edited because I misinterpreted a chart.
scav
1. 2. 3… it’s because they’re fat! & we have so many more people than that other country! all the illegals are stealing our money!
The Grand Panjandrum
Most of the pay raise you’ve been waiting for goes to pay for sky rocketing health insurance premiums. IOW most of the increase in labor costs didn’t go into the workers pockets–it went into the insurance companies coffers.
BTW the chart doesn’t mean that 1.4% of 65+ are uninsured, it means they represent 1.4% of the population that is uninsured.
slag
The death of the middle class? Just a small sacrifice made to the free market gods.
What…you thought the economy existed to serve the populace and not the other way around? Blasphemy!
Bubblegum Tate
Yes, but Democrats controlled Congress last year, so this is all their fault. Also.
J.
@scav and @The Grand Panjandrum, sadly, there is much truth in what you two say.
Ten years ago, I was making more per hour than I do now, for doing the same job. Also, my husband started a business just over two years ago and barely draws a salary, and now we pay for our own health insurance, which is expensive and still has considerable out-of-pocket costs. But still we feel fortunate because we personally don’t have debt, are (knock wood) currently healthy, and have six more years before our daughter goes off to college.
slag
Oh. And this never would have happened if government hadn’t intervened in the markets. But, if on the off-chance it would have happened anyway, this is just a rough patch we have to go through on the path to free market nirvana.
Sue
What are you people complaining about? My husband and I are doing better than we were 10 years ago! Of course, we now have three jobs between us and know that we’ll be lucky to retire at 70, but who’s complaining? We have THREE jobs and some people don’t even have one! We’re blessed, I tell you, blessed.
Where’s the sarcasm font button, by the way? I need to turn it on so people don’t freak. Oh, here it is, right next to the irony font button. [tap, tap]… why isn’t it working?
Balconesfault
Wholly consistent with a phenomena that’s been well studied and documented.
That anyone outside of the top 10% votes Republican based on economic grounds just indicates that there are some very stupid people in America.
harlana pepper
oh, the 90’s were good times, it just makes me want to cry, i was young then and i was able to make a living AND have a good health insurance plan from my employer for which i paid not one dime. and i think my deductible was certainly no higher than $500 but probably less. i took it all for granted. in the Bush years, I watched our bounty be squandered for bogus wars and massive tax cuts for the rich. it has been an absolute horror to watch and, in the end, be helpless to do anything about it. dear god, let us have some relief now in the form of affordable health care.
LosGatosCA
But at least all Laugher tax cuts are self-financing!
R-Jud
I’m doing MUCH better than I was ten years ago.
Of course, I was 19 back then, but whatever.
Numberwang
don’t forget the mandatory Heritage report that shows the price of microwaves and air conditioners has come down over the last 50 years, proving that people are materially richer.
Mojotron
Haven’t checked (and not gonna) Reason yet, but here’s Radley Balko on income inequality:
Recession shrinks wealth gap, promotes income equality. Progressive groups expected to promote recession as official economic policy.
If someone could create a Greasemonkey script that changes his posts that don’t deal with cops/civil liberties to loving pie I would be very appreciative.
Zifnab
@R-Jud: My rich parents are doing fantastic.
Bret
But Michael Moore is fat! Your argument is invalid.
b-psycho
Of course.
Jennifer
Perhaps the most interesting statistic related to health care is the one that shows 21% of the uninsured are in the $70,000 + income range.
People with that much to lose don’t simply decide to not have insurance. I’d have to guess that figure pretty closely corresponds with the group of people that private insurers refuse to cover at any cost.
Ailuridae
This is catty but I really wish the NYT had cleaned up those graphs before throwing them on Economix. They are much more soothing in the PDF.
fliegr
@Numberwang: That’s Numberwang!
b-psycho
@Mojotron: It’s a lame joke, but in a way he has a point. The combination of the usual plight of the poor & the cost of living gradually screwing over the not-poor-yet-clearly-not-rich is the real problem.
That said, my preferred method of dealing with that, starting with the re-radicalization of organized labor, would probably make a dent in wealth anyway.
scav
@J.: but none of those facts are inevitably due to there being fat brown people in this country – TGP is closer to reality although TGP ignores the large black hole of bonuses to our lords and masters (we’ll forgive him (?) as they are black holes and thus suck in all light so are sometimes hard to spot) and if you can’t distinguish between the two comments, please adjust the vertical control on your reality filter.
Comrade javafascist
@Numberwang
4!
R-Jud
@Zifnab: Mine are also better off than they were 10 years ago. They can now live on two jobs instead of four. But then, my Dad does work for the socia1ist state university system, and my Mom’s moved into politics. So it’s not so much that they’ve had good luck as it is that they are lazy scum sucking at the taxpayer teat. Also.
Comrade javafascist
Apparently, whining you are Going Galt is more lucrative than actually Going Galt. Whodathunkit?!?!
Brian J
This is a question I’d like supporters of the Bush tax cuts to answer: exactly what have they given us? Private sector job growth has been non-existant. Are we really any safer or more militarily advanced than we would have been? Are we basking in the glory of scientific or environmental advances? Are we a more educated, technically able workforce? Do we have a more secure, advanced infrastructure?
I doubt the answer to any of those questions is yes, so the tax cuts have been worthless. They haven’t gotten us anything, except deeper into a fiscal hole. So why not spend a little money that will make us a better nation, on an intellectual level, a physical level, and on an industrial level?
John Cole
@Mojotron: I’m sure Welch or the Fonzi of Freedom Nick Gillespie will get to this shortly. Right now, Welch is busy calling Obama a liar. I’m not even going to bother linking.
slag
@b-psycho: Nonetheless, post-recession times are when the rich get richer. They have more expendable income to purchase land, goods, and labor made cheaper by the recession. So, when the recession ends, they’re in a better position to capitalize on their newly acquired or improved investments.
Brachiator
@Numberwang:
This is perfectly valid, and should never be under-estimated. The rise or fall of the middle class has to be measured in terms of excess disposable income. And here you look at jobs, wages, and prices of goods and services (including health insurance), and job mobility. And probably credit.
And you have to be able to juggle the variables or consider them as they work together.
Quick Southern California example: in the 70s, a high school or college graduate in my neighborhood could go to work in a supermarket, department store or the local bank, and rise through a number of middle level and middle class jobs with a moderate amount of education. This was the low hanging fruit. There was also of course aerospace, the auto industry, various union jobs, a vibrant public sector. Mergers, consolidations, the rise of big box stores, etc., eliminated the easily obtainable jobs and pushed wages down. The PC age also had a huge impact: the rise of spreadsheets eliminated tons of accounting clerk jobs.
And this is even before we get to outsourcing.
Tax policy also was a factor, but the big butt bottom line is that a decline in jobs and job mobility is the biggest challenge facing the middle class, not income inequality by itself, which is an after-the fact artifact (an economic snapshot) of a dynamic or stagnant economy.
For bonus points: GDP growth during this period has not been as stagnant as wage growth. And some measures of income previously hid wage stagnation by looking at income during this period. So, a laid off aerospace worker who had to sell his or her house and cash in an IRA might appear to have a relatively high income even as his or her wages dropped to zero.
Ain’t economics fun?
Leelee for Obama
@John Cole: Thanks, John. That way I won’t feel like, I coulda read it, and hate myself for doing it.
Brick Oven Bill
1. Wages in Central America are $3/day.
2. ‘Globalization’ means lowering American wages through importing low skill workers and exporting manufacturing.
If the goal is to increase the standard of living for Americans as it should be, the answer is to enforce immigration laws, impose an IQ test for prospective new immigrants, and return tariffs to historical levels.
The current system, fully endorsed by the President, is designed to eliminate the Middle Class and replace it with a more controllable Citizenry.
Punchy
OT:
The Clair Witch Project continue unabated.
Hey, Mizzou Senator — half your fucking state’s poppy doesn’t have a full set of teeth. Peeps in the SW region are happily marrying their cousins, everyone else is making meth, and both your football teams are teh royal suck.
Maybe you should SYFM and vote to give your constitys something to smile about.
Svensker
@Brian J:
Well obviously we are MUCH safer than we were, Bush protected us from Muslim threats many times. Especially ones we don’t know about. Also the economy had grown very big and healthy under Bush and jobs, there were more of them, until the Dims got into Congress and recked the economy with there Marxist tacktics.
Your showing your sociulist sole.
Zifnab
@R-Jud: Agreed. Why are they not working for a large corporation or otherwise operating in a low income service industry? Clearly, their talents are being wasted and they have become a drain on society. Do they perhaps have large sums of money bequeathed to them by their own parents, which are in the care of large financial firms making high powered bets on rapidly-increasing-in-value-for-no-discernible-reason commodities? Then all might be forgiven.
gex
@J.:
I believe you, sir or madam, have just succinctly summed up the Republican health care reform plan.
Eric U.
@Balconesfault: the thing was, under Bush, only a fraction of the top 1% did better. So more than 99% of the country did worse under Bush. I told my wife that we would get our money back if we could give every Democratic presidential candidate $20k (assuming that the Democratic candidate won). With Bush, I was off by a factor of 10.
I do blame the Bush tax cuts for the situation we have been in over the last 8 years. If it weren’t for the massive stimulus represented by the Iraq war, I hate to think what our economy would be like.
KG
@Jennifer: either they can’t get coverage or they’re likely self-employed and it’s extremely cost prohibitive. Of course, the wingnuts argue that “they’re all young and just don’t want health insurance.”
I actually had a rather interesting conversation with a guy last weekend while I was in Vegas (friend of my aunt and uncle, known him for a very long time). His positions were:
1. his mom (who is on medicare) would not have gotten the pace maker she recently got if not for her private insurance, because the government would rather kill her because she’s no longer a productive member of society.
2. Obama hasn’t gotten anything done and has bit off more than he can chew. The fact that he’s been in office for eight months is completely meaningless to him.
3. there are a bunch of people who don’t have insurance because they don’t want it. they are mostly young people.
4. San Francisco values are very bad (I should have pressed him on what they are and which ones are bad, but I knew it for what it was, a Limbaugh talking point).
5. Obama is scary because no one knows anything about him and he’s sealed himself off from all the other players. And because some random guy he met a few years ago who “use to work in the banking industry” told him the parallels to 1932 are striking, Obama’s also a fascist.
6. Oh, and Ted Kennedy got better treatment than anyone else because he was a senator. He wants to know why members of congress won’t go on this plan.
My head was spinning most of the time. Short of calling him crazy for thinking the government wants to kill old people (which, by the way, I did, told him he was fucking nuts if that’s what he really thought)
Egilsson
@Brick Oven Bill:
Heck, let’s impose an IQ test for Americans too. Then we can weed out whackjobs like BOB – and 90% of the republican teabaggers out there.
Or can we start the Death Panels? I’m good with either.
Zifnab
@Egilsson: Intelligence has a well-known liberal bias. And BoB would immediately declare it racist when he got beaten by all those colored people.
slag
@Brachiator: I believe the is that Heritage is highly selective in their chosen variables. Not that they include multiple variables.
R-Jud
@Zifnab:
Afraid not. Dad is descended from school teachers. And in the generation before that, coal miners. But not good salt-of-the-earth type coal miners. Union-supporting coal miners. Who were also Italian Catholics. But not good, death-penalty supporting Scalia Catholics.
I am ashamed to say the rot goes back several generations.
gex
@R-Jud: It’s sad really. Your descriptions show just how close you come to being a real American. I bet you can almost taste it.
Mark S.
Yeah, BOB, I wouldn’t be advocating IQ tests if I were you. You know how the government works: today they are for immigrants, tomorrow for everyday Bubbas like you. When insurance companies see that you aren’t smart enough to plug something in the wall without a good chance of electrocuting yourself, your premiums are going to skyrocket.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Zifnab: To birther, or not to birther: that is the question. However, to Brick Oven Birthers credit he does get the part about tariffs correct. So-called free trade, and its low or no tariff zones is one of the forces at work decimating the middle class.
Ed Drone
I also note that all those machines are made ‘elsewhere’ — and the jobs that used to pay for those things went with them.
Ed
R-Jud
@gex:
It’s everywhere I go, like a scent in the air, blown across the Atlantic to the British West Midlands where I li…
Shit.
Shell
“The death of the middle class? Just a small sacrifice mad”
Well, something has to used to refresh the tree of liberty.
Mnemosyne
@Brick Oven Bill:
Actually, the answer is to start throwing employers in jail if they hire illegal workers. Get a few high-profile convictions at companies like Tyson and the pool of jobs for illegal workers will dry up.
Funny, no one ever seems to give more than lip service to that idea even though it would be more effective by far than trying to stop workers from coming here. I can’t imagine why.
The Populist
Fact: Middle class folks and small business owners such as myself pay the bulk of taxes. The rich are full of shit.
Why is it I have to fund their lifestyle?
Brick Oven Bill
I have a contractor friend. He once built a very nice sign for me. This is a man who brought a bunch of illegal aliens to town to help during the building boom. He now struggles to find work. He tells me wages are back at 1970s levels. Yesterday he was evicted from his apartment.
There is now graffiti in this town. There did not used to be graffiti in this town.
Brachiator
@slag:
It doesn’t matter. The principle is well established and nobody uses the Heritage Foundation in compiling their price indices.
Quick example. VCRs used to be clunky, exclusive, expensive. They very quickly came down in price, and later DVD and DVR players became so cheap that even low income households had multiple units. The same is true of TVs. Now, home theater is relatively so cheap that it threatens theatrical distribution of movies.
On the other hand, not only have food prices risen, but quantity sizes and quality have decreased. This creates a real rise in prices, and an absolute decline in standard of living. I call this the Toilet Tissue Effect among friends and tax students. If the size of the sheet of toilet paper shrinks, and thinner paper is used, what’s left is just a handful of crap (and Charmin Super Strong is currently the best value here).
Another quick example. When the former Soviet Empire collapsed, women in the former Soviet Union and related countries were astounded at the quality, low price, and ease of availability of tampons and similar products. Small things sometimes have a huge impact in terms of perceived quality of life.
The Populist
BOB: “The current system, fully endorsed by the President, is designed to eliminate the Middle Class and replace it with a more controllable Citizenry.”
Bullshit. Your buddy GW Bush set us on this course. It started with Reagan and his union bashing ways.
Guess what maroon? Unions fight for their own BUT those wage increases do wind up seeing an increase in the standard of living for us all.
That is the real trickle down. Union guy fights for xxx salary per hour. Thanks to him, I can go to a prospective employer and ask for a competitive wage. The beauty of a working free market is a thing to behold.
Idiots like your boy Bush destroy unions, ship out high paying jobs to replace them with crappy paying service jobs that almost always go to immigrants, whether legal or not. Idiots like you sit around decrying the regulations that put all businesses on an even playing field and keep the biggest from bullying the little guy. THAT is a free market.
Today we have a “free” market that is run by a mega corporation or two and not much competition from smaller players. How is this a free market?
Idiots like you blame Obama for current messes when it’s your policies that have PUT us dangerously on the edge of financial calamity.
Who deregulated the mortgage broker industry. Clinton did some of it by trying to appease Newtie and the boys and Bush finished it. Look at what happened.
When the regulations were taken down back in the 80s and S&Ls got into trouble, it sure wasn’t Dems who made that happen. It was happily the right and the key players who destroyed those banks were all hardcore “free” marketeers who always support right wing causes.
F-U BOB. You have zero clue of which you speak.
Davis X. Machina
Look at it this way: Those gratuitously chosen by God, through no merit or desert of their own, from before the beginning of all time, have continued to receive even more outward confirmation of their election, and are as a result live even less in fear and trembling over their eventual fate, and provide the rest of us — the preterite damned — with ever more evidence of the just and inscrutable divine will
And you think it’s a bad thing.
We have a state religion, and it’s a bastard form of TULIP Calvinism.
The Populist
This slavery that B O B and other right wing goons talk about is already here. Look at wages and look at job prospects for the real middle class in this country and tell me the “control” wasn’t a goal of GOP idiots? Look at how easy people get riled up by the supposed “left wing media” members at Fox.
Gee, the true slavery is taking away good paying manufacturing jobs and allowing them to go to China and Mexico and telling that laid off worker that it’s their fault and now they must figure out how to make ends meet working part time at Wal Mart.
Yep, the real slavery are the very policies the right loves so dearly. Free market for them is code for mega multinational corps and a big middle finger to small entrepreneurs and businessmen.
The Populist
“I have a contractor friend. He once built a very nice sign for me. This is a man who brought a bunch of illegal aliens to town to help during the building boom. He now struggles to find work. He tells me wages are back at 1970s levels. Yesterday he was evicted from his apartment.”
He reaped what he sowed. Kharma is a bitch right?
The Populist
“Actually, the answer is to start throwing employers in jail if they hire illegal workers. Get a few high-profile convictions at companies like Tyson and the pool of jobs for illegal workers will dry up.”
Under Janet Napolitano Arizona had a program that revoked licenses from businesses caught with undocumented workers. If the business couldn’t prove they used the US labor database to double check IDs, they got fined the first time. If it happened again they lose the right to do business in the state of Arizona.
We need something like this on a national level but I am sure the righties like BOB would cry a river and call it unfair for small business. Yep, unfair? The party who hates small business loves to trot them out and play defender of the small when some common sense regulation pisses off their biggest benefactors.
Brick Oven Bill
You need to understand, The Populist, that it is the responsibility of CEOs to maximize rate of return to shareholders. This is their job description.
Both political parties have become beholden to large multinational corporations. Obama is at least as close to General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and the like as Bush was. He is probably more beholden to these large corporations because I believe that he is compromised via the birth certificate issue.
These corporations maximize rate of return to shareholders by minimizing the cost of labor. Historic tariff rates were in the 30-40% range. Now they are negligible. Illegal aliens are willing to work for very low wages because in the lands from which most come, they earn $3/day with no such thing as benefits.
American levels of wealth cannot be extended throughout the world. In Africa, wages are $1/day.
John T
Lots of my friends are making the same money or less than they were making 10 years ago — WITHOUT adjusting for inflation. Other friends got themselves deep in debt to pay for their college educations, which provided them with the marketable advantage that resulted in, ta-da!, the same wages they were making before they got their degree, WITHOUT adjusting for inflation.
I think the generation gap between the baby boomers and their children is that the boomers grew up expecting everything to improve over time — and it did for them, mostly — whereas the rest of us consider ourselves lucky if we can hold onto what we’ve got.
The Populist
“You need to understand, The Populist, that it is the responsibility of CEOs to maximize rate of return to shareholders. This is their job description.”
Gee, I guess you think I am an idiot? I know this. SO what? They don’t give a rat’s ASS about shareholders so stop it already. They care about the board and they care about stock PRICE so they can pay themselves obscene amounts of bonus.
You can make all the excuses for this nonsense you want but as a small business owner, I refuse to accept it. If I can’t pay a bill, I don’t pay myself, it’s quite simple.
Honor has died in this country.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Populist:
They have instituted a similar program. all federal contractors have to use it. I heard a report about it recently on APM’s “Marketplace.” There’s talk of expanding it to all employers.
Shell
Only caught a few minutes of the Republican rebuttal last night, long enough to think, “They’re using another guy from Louisiana? Do they really want to remind us of the other time…?”
Also, this was the best they could do? Would anyone know who the hell this guy is? So he’s a doctor, big deal. So’s Frist.
Shell
Only caught a few minutes of the Republican rebuttal last night, long enough to think, “They’re using another guy from Louisiana? Do they really want to remind us of the other time…?”
Also, this was the best they could do? Would anyone know who the hell this guy is? So he’s a doctor, big deal. He looked more like an undertaker.
Shell
Curse you, double post!
KG
@Mnemosyne: i don’t think you even need to throw them in prison, just massive fines, like $250,000 per illegal work per year.
KG
CEOs do not care about the return for shareholders. If they did, they wouldn’t do illegal or unlawful things that get them investigated and/or sued and/or prosecuted by state and federal agencies, or members of the general public. The lawsuits that follow, along with the attorney fees, fines, settlement payments, or jury awards is what costs big corporations a shit ton of money.
Don’t get me wrong, as a lawyer, I don’t mind this, people doing illegal and unlawful things is what keeps me in business. If men were angels and all that jazz
Demo Woman
@Shell: The republicans applauded when Obama was willing to discuss malpractice. I’m all for malpractice reform, even though the savings are minimal, but I’m also for three strikes you’re out. Actually doctors would have to go before a board to get re-certified. The doctor who spoke last night had three strikes against him.
How come the Republicans put up folks who sound like Kenneth? I find it very distracting.
Donald G
More psychological projection in action: Those who scream the loudest about Class Warfare are the very ones who’ve been waging class warfare on the middle and lower classes and have gotten rich by doing so.
Mnemosyne
@Brick Oven Bill:
So, your friend brought a bunch of illegal workers to town so he could do the work cheaper than his competitors, and it backfired on him because it meant that wages went down all around town? Gee, there’s a shock.
Tell your friend that if he hadn’t been such a cheap, corner-cutting bastard who was unwilling to pay minimum wage, he’d have someplace to live today.
John S.
Yes, but via what methods, you moron?
There is a world of difference between maximizing profits via scrupulous and legal methods and maximizing profits via unethical and illegal methods. It says a lot about you, BOB, that you are incapable of differentiating between the two.
Mnemosyne
@KG:
Nope. Jail. Tyson has just laughed off massive fines despite being fined multiple times in the past 20 years. What’s a couple of million dollars to a multi-billion-dollar operation?
Let’s compromise and say that the third offense results in jail time. We can call it the “fool me twice” rule.
Leelee for Obama
@Shell: Considering his rrecord, 3 malpractice suits, in his case it may be the same thing?
RSA
Clear evidence of Obama’s failure just two months after his inauguration. Impeach!
Brick Oven Bill
John S. is the moron. The Democratic Party is cheerleading open borders and free trade. They have the opportunity to establish rules to protect American jobs through setting appropriate standards to bring back the manufacturing base, and set the economy back on a solid footing.
But they don’t. “Long term greed.” O Ba Ma, O Ba Ma, O Ba Ma.
Get it?
gex
@John S.: Knocking off banks and stealing the money. Wait, Wall Street already did that. And they managed to tunnel all the way through to the Treasury.
Luthe
I just had a wonderful idea. Raise the taxes on the top 1% and immediately funnel the money into loans for small businesses. Loans which only have to be paid back if the business succeeds.
It is the perfect way to screw the Republicans. There’s a tax hike, which they can’t vote for. There’s a provision for small business, which they can’t vote against, at least not without proving what hypocrites they are. There’s privatizing gain and socializing risk, which is the same deal the big banks got, so it can’t be construed as anti-capitalist.
In short, if you can’t beat ’em, confuse the fuck out of ’em.
Sloth
I like this game.
Let’s help pay for healthcare reform by opening ANWR for drilling.
Brian J
I’m not ready to be consumed by doom and gloom. Granted, I have lots of time on my side, among other things, but still, this past decade has been unusual for the economic changes. Increasing inequality may have started a long time ago, but slowdowns in all of the major indexes only really started to happen all at once since 2000 or so. Perhaps it’s the start of something different and unexpected, but so far, what’s happening is an aberration. Until I see more evidence, I’ll continue to consider it as such.
On a similar note, you have to wonder, using the idea–whatever it is called–that if things are down by a lot right now, they will return in the opposite direction just as strongly, perhaps 2010-2020 will see a reversal of what’s been happening. If this is a completely nutty way to look at the problem, then I’m just wrong, but people seem to think that because the economy is so shitty right now, when growth eventually returns, it will be as good as the economy is now bad, and it doesn’t seem so ridiculous to think the same sort of principle could apply.
Brian J
When you are juxtaposed to a charming, commanding, intelligent speaker like President Obama, you are bound to look inadequate. It’s almost not their fault, at least in that regard.
Brachiator
@Brick Oven Bill:
Why don’t you just stop? Once again, you are clearly out of your depth. Open borders and free trade is the official policy of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and libertarians. Always has been.
When talking “comprehensive immigration reform,” Dubya was always de facto open borders. The fantasy was that business interests would always be able to herd immigrants into the low-paying jobs of their own choice.
In fact, BOB, I challenge you are anyone else here in this thread to find a single statement Bush ever made where he was clearly in favor of restricting the inflow of foreign workers.
Thunderbird
Dubya was always de facto open borders.
Yeah, and the xenophobic wing of his own party shot him down on that one.
Brachiator
@Thunderbird:
RE: Dubya was always de facto open borders.
Very true.
Martin
Bush loved open borders: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107707,00.html
If BOB could think for 15 seconds, he’d realize that open borders and union support are generally in conflict. Reagan was the one that killed INS enforcement in the hopes that cheap labor would undermine unions. It put the GOP in an odd spot pitting the nativists of the party against the anti-union members, but Reagan and the Bush’s were all anti-union folks. They love cheap, illegal labor.
The GOP occupies both extreme ends of the spectrum with the Dems generally somewhere in the middle, also trying to juggle fair immigration policy with union support, but they aim for a moderate road to accomplish both.
Wil Burns
——————————————————————————–
“Mission Accomplished”
When George Bush or his supporters talk about his presidency being a success, this is, at least in part, what they mean:
Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of
U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since
1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and
Emmanuel Saez.
http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, I can’t fathom it myself. /snark
Though honestly, I think fines might be more effective than jail time.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
Nah — companies are being fined now, and they just continue on their merry way. Time for a few examples to be made.
Personally, I’d prefer them to be put into the stocks, maybe at a border crossing, but I’ll settle for jail.
John S.
Sure, BOB.
All the Democrats have to do is manage to get past the obstructionist Republicans who try to block everything that moves. Funny that you would chide Democrats for failure to end policies that YOU embrace.
And what does any of that have to do with CEOs not playing by the rules and breaking the law to maximize profits? Or were you just trying to reinforce my point that you’re a fucking moron?
Mission accomplished.
Brick Oven Bill
Perhaps I stuttered.
“Both political parties have become beholden to large multinational corporations.”
John S. would lose chess games to Ashton Kutcher. Consistently. Checkers too. The Republicans are out of power in Washington dummy.
“Hope.”
Cerberus
I\m totally doing better than 10 years ago and I have to say I love the system I have now. Health care costs have never been lower and I’m earning more per year than even two years ago along with absolutely free college.
Of course that’s in evil socialist Denmark and I was just starting high school 10 years ago. Also, this will all disappear when I return to the smoking crater that is America. But I’m sure Reason will be glad to use my story anyways to celebrate Supply Side Jesus’s miraculous handjob.
J.
@gex (#34): LOL, though it’s true. (And I’m a madam, though not a Madam… yet. Though if the employment situation does not improve…)