Monday, April 17, 2006

$13,700 an Hour

$13,700 an Hour:

"Robert Kuttner recently argued in the Boston Globe that while people are blaming undocumented workers for driving down wages, the real villains are 'the people running the government, who have made sure that the lion's share of the productivity gains go to the richest 1 percent of Americans. With different tax, labor, health and housing policies, native-born workers and immigrants alike could get a fairer share of our productive economy...

' Kuttner points to Census data showing that 'median household income fell 3.8 percent, or $1,700, from 1999 to 2004... during a period when average productivity rose 3 percent per year.' And as income is falling, working people are increasingly squeezed. Costs for housing, healthcare, education and childcare rose 46 percent between 1991 and 2002, according to economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute."

1 comment:

SheaNC said...

What burns me up is that I have heard so much right-wing drivel about poor people being poor by choice, they want to be poor, they don't want to better themselves, etc. God, I get fed up with those idiots who think that way.