Romney: Out of Touch with Mainstream America
 |
First, multimillionaire Mitt Romney told a group of jobless workers he’s also “unemployed.”
Next, Romney thought there was no problem in stating publicly that he likes to “fire people.”
Now, the Republican presidential wannabee proved yet again how out of touch he is with mainstream Americans by showing the extent to which he’s a member of the elite 1 percent. In South Carolina yesterday, Romney admitted he pays “around” a 15 percent tax rate, while earning $374,000 a year in speaker’s fees alone—an income he described as “not very much.”
While estimates vary on what income or earnings qualifies someone to be part of the elite 1 percent, there’s agreement that the minimal annual income for that aristocratic group is $350,000 a year. Meaning Romney’s speaking fees alone put him in the 1 percent.
Meanwhile, Romney’s low tax rate—people making more than $35,000 a year pay a Read the rest of this entry »
Aim High: A Strategy for Changing Times
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column at L&M Partnership.
It’s no secret that our economy is changing profoundly for millions of workers. But a Dec. 30, 2011, New York Times article, “Factory Jobs Gain, but Wages Retreat,” deserves special attention. Reporter Louis Uchitelle writes, in part:
Manufacturers are hiring again in America, softening a long slide in factory employment. But for a new generation of blue-collar workers, even those protected by unions, the price of employment is likely to be lower wages stretching to retirement.
Time to Ring In…2001?
Maybe a lot has changed in the past decade–back then we didn’t have YouTube to bring us hours of enjoyment of cute babies and kittens–but working men and women today are taking home about the same size paychecks we did back then.
Take a look at the National Employment Law Project’s new video–and have a safe and happy New Year 2001.
As Go Unions, So Goes the Middle Class
This is a cross-post from the Campaign for American Progress. David Madland and Nick Bunker parse the latest figures to show states with weak unions also share another trait—a weak middle class.
New state income data released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows the importance of unions to boosting incomes for all middle-class households—union and nonunion alike. The 2010 income data makes it clear that strong unions are a critical factor in creating a middle-class society. Restoring the strength of unions would go a long way toward rebuilding the middle class.
The states with the lowest percentage of workers in unions—North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas—all have relatively weak middle classes. In each of these states, the share of income going to the middle class (the middle 60 percent of the population by income) is below the national average, according to Census Bureau figures.
CEOs Rake in More than Their Corporations Pay in Taxes
 |
||||
|
||||
Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 25 took home more in CEO pay than their company paid in 2010 federal corporate income taxes, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
As IPS puts it:
Corporations don’t dodge taxes, the people who run corporations do. And these CEOs are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.
“Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging“ shows the 25 tax-dodging CEOs the IPS report spotlights averaged $16.7 million in pay last year, well above the $10.8 million Standard & Poor’s 500 CEO average. Most of their companies registered substantial profits. Yet these same companies actually came out ahead at tax time. They collected, on average, $413 million in refunds from the IRS.
At Verizon, where CEO compensation totaled $18.1 million, the corporation got a federal $705 million federal income tax refund.
First, Michigan Guts Democracy. Now Aims for Workers’ Paychecks
|
|
It’s not enough that Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder took away basic democratic rights of cities and towns by imposing a “financial martial law” that can virtually abolish a local government in favor of an unelected Snyder appointee.
Now, extremists in the state are pushing for passage of a so-called right to work law that would limit the ability of the workers to maintain or attain the middle class. A new study by University of Michigan research scientist Roland Zullo illustrates how such a law would be bad economics for working families. Despite supporters’ claims, “right to work” (RTW) is a misnomer—”it has nothing to do with the right of a person to seek and accept gainful employment,” writes Zullo. Further, the law would not fix Michigan’s economic woes.
Like Michigan, nearly every state in the union has lost manufacturing jobs over the last six to eight years… Our economic problems in Michigan are due primarily to the woes in the auto industry, which RTW would not fix. When making location decisions businesses rate factors such as the quality of the regional workforce, the regulatory environment, and tax incentives before ever considering RTW laws.
U.S. Workers’ Share of National Economy Nosedives into the Lower Depths
This chart, published today at Talking Points Memo, pretty much says it all. Except, of course, that CEO pay has skyrocketed—with CEOs of the largest companies receiving, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation in 2010.
Why are so few in Washington, D.C., listening?
EPI Refutes Budget Cutters’ ‘We’re Broke’ Claim
It goes like this—“We’re going broke we can’t afford it.” It’s almost a mantra from the crowd of lawmakers and policy “experts” who are loudly and continually claiming the nation must make drastic cuts in family-help government programs; cut wages, pension and health care for public-sector workers and who also suggest working families should be satisfied with three decades of stagnant wages.
That’s just not true, writes Economic Policy Institute (EPI) President Larry Mishel, in a new briefing paper, We’re Not Broke, Nor Will We Be.
Nevertheless, while these claims have little in the way of truth, politicians and pundits have successfully used them to promote budget cutbacks and the notion that employers cannot afford decent pay and benefits.
The paper shows the economy has seen steady growth in income and wealth over the past 30 years and will see similar growth in the next 30 years. The caveat is the middle class hasn’t seen much benefit from that growth. Since 1979, the top 10 percent of households have received almost two-third of all the income gains, with the top 1 percent claiming 38.7 percent. Read the rest of this entry »
More Poverty, Lower Wages, Shrinking Health Care. The USA Today
New data out from the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday show a nation on the decline: Millions more Americans are in poverty and hundreds of thousands more are without health insurance compared with a year ago—and our median household income is now the lowest since 1997.
As Time’s Justin Fox puts it:
I don’t know how much of this was bad luck and how much was bad policy (nobody does), but there’s really no getting around the fact that the Bush presidency was an economic debacle. Americans got poorer on his watch.
