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philipuso
01-07-2008, 01:17 PM
This isn't totally up to date but i'm guessing the US economy is still on a downward trend since the '90s.

Qoute of "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky

MAN: A few moments ago, you described the 1990s economy as "slug*gish," with low growth and low wages. Usually we hear that this is a "fairy tale" economy and everything's wonderful. Can you say something more about that?

Answer: Well, there's a very important book that comes out every two years, called The State of Working America. It's kind of the main, standard data*base for what's going on for working people-meaning most everybody in the economy. The latest data goes up through 1997. And it tells you just what the "fairy tale" economy is. It's nothing that everybody doesn't know, they just give all the data.
Since the mid-Seventies, the economy has slowed down: there's been a period of much lower growth than the post-war period. Virtually all the wealth that's been created has gone to the very top part of the income dis*tribution. The typical family is now working about fifteen weeks a year more than they did twenty years ago, at stagnating or declining real in*comes. The United States now has the heaviest workload in the industrial world. It's also the only country in the industrial world that doesn't have legally mandated vacations. And with that, incomes are at best stagnating for the majority of the population.65
Now, it is a "fairy tale" economy-and the reason it's a "fairy tale" economy is because for the top few percent of the population, incomes have gone through the roof. The book points out that essentially the only gains in the past twenty years have been to C.E.O.s, and through asset inflation in the stock market. Well, you take a look at assets on the stock market, they also give figures for that: it turns out that roughly half are owned by the top one percent of the population-and of that, most is owned by the top one-*half percent. So one percent owns roughly half the stock; the top ten per*cent own most of the rest. About 85 percent of the total increase in stock values in this great stock-boom have gone to the top ten percent of the pop*ulation, mostly to the top one-half percent.66 In fact, the second decile*--you know, the 90th to 80th percentiles in income levels-have actually lost net worth during the Clinton recovery (net worth meaning assets minus debt). Below that, it's mostly worse.67 The ones who have been hit hardest are the youngest. So entry-level wages are about 20 to 30 percent lower than they were twenty years ago, which tells you what's going to happen up the road. It's now even true for white-collar workers, even scientists and en*gineers. Unless they're in a very high bracket, their wages and incomes are declining.68 So that's the "fairy tale" economy.
This Clinton recovery-which one kind of wonders about-is the first one certainly in post-war history, maybe in American history, in which most of the population has been left out. I mean, it wasn't until the end of 1997 that median real income reached the level of 1989, which was the
peak of the last business cycle.69 That's unheard of: in every other recovery, median income has been way higher this many years after the peak of the last business cycle.
But for some sectors, it's fantastic. And part of the reason is just intimi*dating working people with job insecurity.
So this is a very good book-it's put out by the Economic Policy Insti*tute. It's out in paperback, and it's not that expensive. I think the data won't surprise you, because I think you sort of know it from your lives and your neighborhoods and so on.70 But it's not what you're reading in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Actually, in the Wall Street Journal you do read it sometimes-but not in the popular press.

a_european
01-07-2008, 01:43 PM
1. Don't confuse State Capitalism with a free market.
2. Never, NEVER argue economy issues with Chomsky.

Are "we the people" really doing better in this SO CALLED free economy?
No

Are "we the people" doing best in a real free economy?
Yes