You know, last week I talked about the fact that the u s economy is headed for a massive
crash and the reason it's headed for collapse according to Economist is because the buying
power, the real income of workers in the United States, 80% of them roughly has completely
stagnated for over 10 years. In fact, their buying power today is less than it was when
the recession hit. Inflation has gone up while wages have stagnated, and the few wages that
have increased have not been able to keep pace with inflation. So our buying power has
decreased. Meanwhile, the price of goods and services has been increasing. So that buying
power goes even further. Uh, well, a study has come out that says it's actually even
worse than that because as I pointed out, our buying power is slightly lower than it
was back in 2007. But according to this, our buying power is worse than it's been since
1979.
And actually starting in about 1979 is when things really started to get bad for American
workers. The decline of labor unions, the rise in right wing policies that benefit corporations
and punish American workers, those two things combined along with some other Republican
policies out there have resulted in the complete decimation of the economic power of the bottom
90 percent. The wealth gap since 1979 has exploded. Pay between the average worker in
the CEO has skyrocketed to proportions that we've never seen in this country and it's
all all of it because of the policies that Republicans have put in place. They created
this system, this system that in no way resembles what capitalism is supposed to be. Capitalism
is supposed to be dependent upon supply and demand and the more your product is in demand,
the more you make, the more people you hire, the more you pay them so they can go out and
buy your products.
You as the CEO, you do get a good profit because you're making more products and you're doing
good business. Those days in the United States have been over for decades, even long before
1979. What's happened instead is that we have systems in place that reward ceos by giving
them larger tax breaks when they get those big bonuses. Last year at this time, we went
ahead and just cut all their taxes altogether. We don't penalize them for shipping their
profits overseas so they don't get taxed. We've reduced workplace protections so that
they don't have to provide as many benefits. We've killed the power of labor unions through
right to work laws and other union busting techniques so that there's nobody out there
looking out for the American worker anymore. Now, that's not to say that unions do not
exist. They do still exist, but they're nowhere near what they were. Back at 1979 when almost
half of the labor force was a member of a union. Today, it's less than 10 percent back
then. We had people that would go and fight when our wages stagnated, but the money at
the top increased. They understood that that's not fair. These ceos, the shareholders making
millions of dollars off the backs of the Labor.
It didn't happen or when it did happen, they would go on strike. They could call a strike,
they would send in their expert negotiators and get this figured out and worked out to
where the workers got a share of the benefits, not just those at the top. Unfortunately,
again, those days are over. We do not have enough champions of the working class anymore
and I'm not talking about politicians. I'm talking about people going out there and doing
this. The few labor unions and labor leaders we have left. It's not enough. They do great
work and they're out there protecting American workers and I'm not knocking them at all because
this is not their fault. This is not on them. This is the result of decades of Republican
policies that were designed specifically to harm the American workers and benefit those
at the top and now look at the situation we're in. Our buying power decreases by the week.
As that decreases economic activity in the United States, starts to retract and with
that retraction starts, it's very difficult to stop it because the heart of the US economy
are the workers. The people who go out there and spend their paychecks. Eighty percent
of us living paycheck to paycheck, we're the ones who drive this economy, not the CEO's,
not the shareholders, and it's sure as hell isn't the stock market. It's us and they're
out there at every given opportunity trying to screw us over in the worst ways possible
and the joke is going to backfire on them because we are headed towards a recession.
All the economists say it, all the studies show it history, shows it. We have set up
the same exact conditions. The only people who don't happen to see it coming though are
the Republicans who actually made it happen in the first place.