White House: 2 + 2 = 5
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Friday began with a blast from the White House’s spin department detailing how the latest job numbers showed an unprecedented “50th Consecutive Month of Job Growth” — a sign, the administration says, of a strong economy — noting that “personal income” and “real wages” have risen.
By the end of the evening, news programs were noting the decisive drop in stock prices despite the fact the Federal Reserve has slashed key interest rates twice. And on political summary shows like the McLaughlin Group on PBS, the pundits all round were outdoing one another predicting just when the recession (or ‘puny growth’) will strike.
Anybody that has had to work for a living in America during this administration knows damn well that today’s jobs and benefits are not the same as they used to be — that personal income and savings have suffered because of ever-increasing health care costs, endless food and energy price hikes, and huge college tuition increases. We know, that, in fact, ‘real wages’ have never kept up with inflation and have only risen despite efforts by the Bush White House — because long-sought increases in federal minimum wage laws brought about by a Democratic Congress finally raised the wage floor.
The reality is that a frightening number of Americans (we’ve heard as many as 86 percent) are just a paycheck or two away from being homeless. But not everybody is in such a precarious position. For those at the top, the economy is doing very well. The top 300,000 earners together receive almost as much income as the bottom 150 million.
Meanwhile, the dollar is tanking underneath the weight of debt the fiscally imprudent Bush administration is wracking up. My friends in Europe visit and marvel about their beer-purchasing-power — and likewise my old English professor warns that if I should really visit as I have been threatening, I “will find London expensive.”
That’s because the U.S. dollar has never been worth so few Euros, Yen, or Pounds. Curiously, the rise in any “real wage” income I might have experienced in the last decade seems to be escaping — since my money as a whole simply buys less than it did a few weeks ago.
What kind of bubble are they in over at the White House to be able to paint this economic picture as a rosy one — when in “real” terms, the U.S. is dancing with recession and the “fundamentals” — from the dollar to oil prices to inflation — are obviously not healthy?
November 4th, 2007 at 9:17 am
What kind of bubble?
Simple.
They buy their groceries out of the same place we do.
OUR wallets. Not theirs.
In Bushworld, when it benefits you personally and you don’t have to pay for it personally… it’s free. Cost is not an issue.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Cody, “they” are not in a bubble over at the White House. It seems to me that, from the perspective of the retro-Monarchists and Oligarchs running the Country, “everything’s up to date in Foggy Bottom.” Stop whining about how the policies of the Bush/chi-Chenery cabal are mis-guided and hurting Amercans, and recognize that the policies are just exactly what they have in mind and ARE THEREFORE HURTING AMERICANS. These people want to reduce, if not destroy, the American Middle Class. They are tired of paying living wages, of not having a vast pool of semi-unemployed Americans from which they can hire people at slave wages, and of being taxed. Their program is succeeding, not failing.
November 4th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
For over the last decade the official economic statistics coming out of whatever administration have been cooked. The Bush administration has given up any pretense to reality in their numbers, claiming low unemployment and job growth as the percentage of people employed keeps declining, minimum inflation while food and energy prices are presently going up double-digits, and counting outsourced jobs as improving American productivity. There is now a private source for businesses that need real numbers can subscribe to, created by the demand and the realization that official statistics are now whatever the politicians at the top demand.