Bad Math or Bad Faith?

by Tula Connell, Jul 20, 2006

Can it really be possible that the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers can’t do simple math?
 
As Dean Baker, respected economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., writes in a post on Truthout:

According to an article carried by Dow Jones Newswire, Ed Lazear, the current chief of the Council of Economic Advisors, claimed that wage growth “seems to be taking off right now.” The article reports Mr. Lazear’s view that workers now seem poised to get substantial real wage gains.
If the article presented Mr. Lazear’s comments accurately, then it missed the real news.  Nominal wages are at best just keeping pace with inflation, leaving no room for real wage growth.  From June 2005 to June 2006, the average hourly wage increased by 3.9 percent in nominal terms.

Or maybe Lazear is just carrying out the Bush party line that the economy is growing and Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy are working.

Neither of which is true for the vast majority of working people. In a recent nationwide survey by Peter Hart Research for the AFL-CIO, some 60 percent of those describing themselves as unsure how they will vote in upcoming elections say their incomes are falling behind the cost of living.  That same group points to jobs, the economy and health care costs as the most important issues in determining how they will vote in the 2006 elections.

Unlike Bush’s cronies, America’s workers are living with the following realities:

* For the fourth year in a row, annual pay raises budgeted by U.S. companies for 2005 were below 4 percent—an average 3.5 percent—and were expected to remain at that level in 2007, according to a survey released June 22 by the Conference Board.

* Private-sector employment has grown at an average annual rate of only 0.7 percent since November 2001, compared with an average of 2.4 percent for the comparable periods of other post-World War II recoveries, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

* As workers’ earnings stagnate, they are paying a bigger bill for Bush’s fiscal follies.  The net share of the national debt for 99 percent of Americans has jumped by more than $7,000 per person over the past six years, according to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ). 

* To pay for soaring health care costs and their children’s education, working families are going deeper and deeper into debt.  A typical middle-income family earning around $45,000 a year saw its debt burden grow by 33.1 percent between 2001 and 2004, even after adjusting for inflation, according to a May 2006 report for the Center for American Progress.  Debt has expanded by 30.3 percentage points to 108.4 percent of income—the first time since the Federal Reserve started conducting this survey that debt exceeded income.
 
* The average American savings rate for 2005 was negative 0.5 percent, the lowest since the Great Depression.  The annual savings rate has been negative only twice—in 1932 and 1933, during the Great Depression.  Other economists put the figure at negative 5.2 percent—with Americans spending $472 billion more than they earned after taxes.

Two groups, however, are benefiting big time from Bushonomics: The excessively wealthy and Big Corporations.  CEO pay has risen by 700 percent since World War II, while workers’ wages have stayed flat.  And only those making more than $1.2 million a year are benefiting from Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. For every $1 in Bush tax cuts you have received in the past six years, you were left holding a bill for $3.74, unless you are among the wealthiest 1 percent.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Bush’s overtime pay takeaway in 2004, more workers than ever are filing lawsuits against employers they say are violating fair wage laws covering overtime and minimum pay.  In our fight against the overtime take-away, the union movement predicted that more employers would use the new rules to profit by classifying workers, even janitors or equipment installers, as independent contractors who aren’t covered by federal and state wage laws.

But if the Bush administration has its way, there won’t be any more confusion over job titles. The Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) now is considering a series of cases in which the majority-Republican board could rule that up 8 million workers are considered supervisors and no longer will have the federally protected right to form a union.

Find out more here and see what actions workers are taking around the nation to demand that the NLRB protect the freedom of America’s workers to form unions.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (0)