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"Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. ...The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented."The New York Times adds,
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available."So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America's economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives' salaries increased 27 percent, while workers' salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it's been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country's income.
I've never really been into bashing the corporate world. After all, we rely on it for many products that we totally depend on. But this pattern of arrogance in corporate America keeps showing up. Though I'm concerned that fingering "corporations" is way too simplistic, this data IS meaningful. It just isn't specific enough.
Is this disparity simply a result of "corporate greed?" Or could we find, if we looked, exact people working these events for personal gain? It could be a corporate board member. Or someone who KNOWS a corporate board member. While the company executives are struggling with how to avoid layoffs, this manipulator, who also owns stock in a company that makes industrial robots, needs to sell the first company on the idea of replacing workers with robots. Economic downturn is the perfect opportunity.
Could that be one reason why war has become increasingly mechanized? Good argument for keeping our boys out of harm's way! Of course, they're unemployed, but at least they're "safe." And governments seem quite willing to pay for technologies that destroy property and kill people, recession or no recession.
These are the mechanisms I suspect are being used to milk the American people of their wealth. But without more specific data, I can't prove it. How convenient for those doing the stealing!