"Trickle Down" Redux. CNN yesterday hilited a New York Times report that 90% of Americans have seen their income fall behind the rate of inflation. The CNN.com summary is headed, "Most not seeing real wage gains".

Most workers have not seen wage gains keep pace with inflation during the current economic expansion, the first time that has happened since World War II, according to a published report.

The New York Times reports that the median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. Median wages are the point at which equal numbers of workers earn more and less. * * *

The paper says that about nine out of 10 workers have seen inflation that has outpaced their pay increases over the last three years, according to the Labor Department. That includes workers earning up to $80,000 a year, a level that puts them in the 90th percentile of wage earners.

So who, exactly, is benefiting from the economy that Dubya keeps telling us is so wonderful?

the top 1 percent of earners — a group that includes many chief executives — received 11.2 percent of all wage income, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than 6 percent three decades ago.

In addition, corporate profits are growing more quickly than wages and salaries. Employee pay now makes up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, according to the paper, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s.

The broadcast version of the report added that not only are top executives getting increases in compensation that do outpace inflation, but top executive pay now averages 821X what a minimum-wage worker gets! 821 times. That's obscene.
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Even more disgraceful is that these obscenely rich executives will consent to raise the minimum wage only if the estate tax is ended, so they can inherit even more wealth without paying government any part of it.
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Meanwhile, iWon.com's daily Internet poll the same day, yesterday, asked "How many hours do you work in a typical week?" Here are the results midday:

18% - Less than 40
35% - 40-49
9% - 50-59
6% - 60 or more
30% - I am currently unemployed
1% - I'm not sure

Of iWon's visitors, then, 30% are unemployed, and 18% work either a standard office workweek of 35 hours, or are underemployed. You can't tell which, from the form of that option's answer. I ask again, whom is this great economy that Bush keeps bragging about, benefiting?
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If the Republican Party wants to ask the electorate to return them to office on the strength of the economy, let them. Let Democrats run on the fact that 9 out of 10 working Americans are falling farther and farther behind every year that Republicans remain in power.
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Will the poor people of the South finally wake up to how viciously they are being abused by the Republican Party that they put in charge of the Nation? Or are they so blinded by their Radical Right religion that they will vote to continue their own exploitation? Are elections even contested in their districts, or has the Democratic Party just rolled over and conceded scores of "safe" districts to Republicans?
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It is an ugly secret that partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts has produced an almost immovable division between the parties.

"Right now it's pretty easy to predict who will win about 400 of the nation's 435 districts," [Steve Hill, who works on political reform programs for the non-partisan New America Foundation in San Francisco] said.

Congressional Quarterly reported that in 2004 there were 64 uncontested House 'races', 36 Republicans and 28 Democrats. 64 means that 15% of all House seats are uncontested. That means that not even a nominal opponent, badly funded and scarcely advertised, is set up for defeat. It means the party doesn't even bother to put a challenger on the ballot!
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The present party breakdown in the House of Representatives is 231 Republicans, 201 Democrats, 1 Independent, and two seats vacant. So the difference between Democrats and Republicans is 30 seats. The Democrats don't even contest 36 Republican seats, and the bulk of the others are almost a foregone conclusion: they almost certainly will go to the party that now holds them. I wonder how this election will turn out.
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How, exactly, are disaffected voters in those 36 uncontested Republican districts to express their dissatisfaction? How are we to get change in Congress if elections are little more than formalities, and we know the results beforehand?

38 of the 64 [uncontested seats] are in the 13 states CQ classifies as Southern.

Leading the nation in free riders with 11 out of 25 seats is Florida, where allowing large numbers of House incumbents to run unopposed has become something of a bipartisan tradition.

That's democracy? How are we supposed to have change at the polls when there is only one candidate? A host of our "elections" are no more elections than were those for Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro. That is a disgrace.
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If the Democrats want to be taken seriously as caring about changing the Nation, they have to contest every damned election in Congress. Every damned one.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,632 — for Israel.)





- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:07 PM