The bottom 99% of wage earners in the United States lost 0.4% of their income between 2009 and 2011. The top 1% gained 11.2%. So the one percent grabbed 121% of the income gains from the so-called recovery. Can America afford much more recovery like this?
With Recoveries Like These
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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When we have an economic bubble, they win, when the bobble pops, they win….this isn’t about the economy doing well or doing poorly, it’s about the economy being rigged.
The corporate state translates its economic power into political power, and its political power into economic power. Each type power serves to concentrate more power into the ever fewer who occupy positions in the political economy.
As owners of the language they have successfully severed the political from the economic in the discourse of their admirers in the “Homeland”.
Where does one sign up for the tour ?…
Henri
You keep hearing on the radio about the housing recovery.
My two friends who bought houses got outbid on the first few by cash offers. They finally were able to buy their little houses, but here’s the catch, their parents actually bought them, and their parents are foreigners who own tons of property already. What’s more, one of them has already moved out and rented his parents house out to someone else.
It is an almost homeowner-less recovery.
Just the same few people buying more and more property.
Ted,
You might need to redo the figures. No one can get 121% of a recovery. 100% is the max.
@Alex
121% of $1.00 is $1.21. The rich got all of the recovery, with a 21% bonus that came from the rest of us going even further in the hole. The math is sound.
Yes, a sub-group can get more than 100% of something if the rest of the group gets less than 0% of it, which was the case here.
Put another way, the recovery for non-rich Americans is in negative numbers.
What we have now is pretty much what “our recovery” will look like from now on – the 1% have made their recovery and have moved on with their profits – that’s why the DOW is so high now. There will be no more good paying jobs for what’s left of the devestated middle class – as there are no more good jobs in the USA – we let the corporations offload and move the manufacturing to anywhere else in the world where it was cheaper. The 1% will continue to do fairly well at the expense of the rest of us. I know a 1%’er who laughed and laughed and laughed at the 2008 market debacle, and even told me that the middle class would pay for all of it – that her bank was simply too big to fail, and everything she said has come true. Check out: http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/03/08/wealth-video/ It’s not a conspiracy, it’s simply business as usual. The vast majority of people allowed them to just keep on creating debt and printing money with no clue of what was really going on. So many of us are lost in American Idol, the Kardashians and what Beiber is doing that we can’t see the forest for the trees, huh?
@Alex, Wat Tyleer, and Ted:
Actually Alex is right here, BUT it is mostly a matter of word choice. The math is correct if “the rich grabbed 121% MORE of the income gains…” but with the current wording the numbers should be “the rich grabbed over 96% OF the income gains … .”
It is a subtle point but % can only exceed 100% in a comparative roll, thus the rich can grab 121% MORE of the income gains. However, when not in a comparative roll % cannot exceed 100% so the rich cannot grab more then 100% OF the income gains (and in fact I calculate it to be just over 96%).
Subtle, perhaps anal retentive, distinction but none-the-less true. Not terribly important here either, but just a thing to remember as often the people who try to discredit points will use nit picks like this to claim the whole point is invalid even if it is just a subtle little issue that doesn’t really effect the point at large like here where the point made is still perfectly valid (I.e. you have to be careful or you will get someon like Exokedixian saying something along the lines of “well clearly you don’t understand percent, so obviously your calculations are meaningless and thus the recovery is fine and benefited everyone.”)
Someone (and everyone),
Just for the record, absolutely, someone, you’re right on all points. The only reason I raised the point was, as you point out, because the Internet breeds a whole slew of people who will do exactly as you say: find one relatively trivial point, find an error in it, and then claim the entirety of what was said is invalid. (On “King of the Hill” they call it lawyerballing. Is there a more, um, official term?)