{"id":5447,"date":"2011-07-24T01:53:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T08:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5447"},"modified":"2011-07-24T01:53:16","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T08:53:16","slug":"who-can-afford-to-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/24\/who-can-afford-to-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Can Afford to Pay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent profit reports tell a clear story.  For giant corporations, the recession is over.  They are making money hand over fist, while Main Street stagnates.  They are sitting on $trillions, but they refuse to hire.  If there were something I could do to help, I would.  Most people would, including the Republican rank and file.  But corporations are NOT people. They are machines with a single purpose: individual profit without individual responsibility.  Still, the Republican leadership insists that they must not pay their fair share.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"24greed\"Strong second-quarter earnings from McDonald’s, General Electric and Caterpillar on Friday are just the latest proof that booming profits have allowed Corporate America to leave the Great Recession far behind\u2026 But millions of ordinary Americans are stranded in a labor market that looks like it’s still in recession. Unemployment is stuck at 9.2 percent, two years into what economists call a recovery. Job growth has been slow and wages stagnant.<\/p>\n

"I’ve never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research," says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.<\/p>\n

\"WealthWages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth<\/strong> in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.<\/p>\n

In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent<\/strong>. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.<\/p>\n

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth<\/strong> during those first 18 months. That’s compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Common Dreams<\/a>><\/p>\n

Look at the pie chart.  I know it\u2019s right, because I made it.  The tiny sliver and the small green wedge represent the share of our national wealth that over half of us (60%) own.  The bottom 40% own 0.2% (that\u2019s 1\/5 of 1%) of the wealth.  Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of that bottom 40%, who can not afford to pay for it, when we all know damn well who can.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent profit reports tell a clear story.  For giant corporations, the recession is over.  They are making money hand over fist, while Main Street stagnates.  They are sitting on $trillions, but they refuse to hire.  If there were something I could do to help, I would.  Most people would, including the Republican rank and file.  […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}