So, Progressives Are the “Friends of the Little Guy”, Eh?
The Communist Socialist Leftist “Progressive” end of the political spectrum likes to advertise itself as being the champions of the “little guy”. Progressive politicians love to make a big deal of their “regular guy” roots, and how much their policies supposedly “help” the middle class and below.
So, the recent Administration ‘s policies – nothing if not “Progressive” – must have really helped the “little guy” over the past 5+ years, right? I mean, that’s what they’re supposedly all about: helping the little guy get a “fair deal”.
Turns out that simply doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, hard data shows that the policies of the current “Progressive” regime has benefited the wealthy to the exclusion of most others – as has been documented by a study conducted by the University of Michigan.
In 2007, the top 5% averaged 16.5 times the wealth of the US median household. So after 5 years of our current regime’s “Progressive” policies, that gap should have narrowed somewhat.
Well, not exactly. Today, the top 5% now have on average 24 times the wealth of the US median household.
It’s even better. Home ownership is down by nearly 6.4%. Over one third of homeowners now cannot afford to sell their home if they want to – either because they owe more than it’s worth, or because they have so little equity it won’t cover closing and a down payment on another home.
The “Great Recession” hurt all Americans. But under the current Progressive Regime, only the wealthy have really recovered. Everyone else is still sucking wind today – bigtime.
So much for “Progressive” claims that the other party is the “party of the rich”. The “Progressives” have finally embraced the theory of “trickle down”.
Except today they’re doing it on our legs, and what’s “trickling down” to our shoes and socks isn’t rain.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Economy, Politics
But, but, but-we have the best of intentions!
That’s the problem with the left, they don’t seem to understand that wanting to do well is not the same thing as actually doing well.
Hondo…Well thanks my man. If I didn’t feel low class before I do now. 😀 I watch our retirement accounts to make sure they at least stay above inflation and leave us their intended use at the end. I am fortunate to have a good financial adviser who is young, way younger than me. That is good in my opinion because unlike my friends in the same boat they chose financial guys, even in the same company who were their age. Guess what, their guys have retired now and their accounts have been passed off to other advisers. Now they can change if they don’t like them but they usually don’t find out until an uh-oh happens in the market that the new guy didn’t react to, costing big losses. All this is rather off point I understand but for all you old guys out there like me, who don’t have a good trusted adviser, pick one with a great record who is younger than you and will be around and pick one who values our perhaps smaller accounts as much as the ones with several million in them. That is what I like about mine. He updates me constantly and values my business and guards my small account, relatively speaking, as much as his largest. Advice is much like a butt hole, every one has one and it is worth really as much as one. But a little research can pay off down the road. Just my humble opinion and experience.
not to mention keep an eye on their career… when our formerly good adviser became a VP with her own branch, she left the day-to-day account management to a very junior person who virtually ignored it. Got a new adviser and new company.
Don’t forget that the rollout of Obama care has had more than a little to do with the revised GDP numbers, now down 2.7 percent in Q1. Yay!
“And through it all, we’ve refocused our investments in what has always been a key source of American strength: a growing economy that can provide opportunity for everybody who’s willing to work hard and take responsibility here at home.” B. Hussein Obama, from his speech at West Point, not quite a month ago. It is the speech that keeps on giving.
I don’t think that “growing economy” means the same thing to Barrycade that it does to thinking people.
That said, two of the foremost “Progressives”, and icons of the feminist movement are worth a hundred Million $$$ or so. Fauxcahontas lives in a $5 million house, Hitlery and BJ are worth $100 mill, and they claim to represent the “little people”?
But remember, according to Hillary having $100 million doesn’t make one wealthy. Unless of course the administration wants to rape you for taxes, then it’s around $250G. There’s lies, damned lies, and Progressives.
Kinda like unstoppable diarrhea!
If by little guy you mean short men and women with lots of money then yes….
Leftists– the folk who’ve raised the Big Lie to an art form (for “social justice,” you know… ).
The economy shrank 2.9%. Jobs growth has topped out at 200,000 and unemployment remains 6.3%.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/US-economy-contracts-huge-2-9-in-first-quarter/articleshow/37202201.cms
So, what was that again about a ‘growing economy’?
Oh, there are jobs, and many of them pay quite well, but they are things like OTR trucking, hauling cargo city-to-city in those big old semitrucks. No glamor in it, and you might have to move to a state some place like Utah, but it pays well and the companies are hiring.
About that unemployment figure, from the BLS. It’s 6.3% if you don’t count the people no longer looking for a job, and those who are “underemployed”, the U-6 unemployment rate is 12.2%. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
Yes, and I didn’t have the other figure you quoted, so I used what I did have – the one that gets into the news.
But note that the 6.3% rate has NOT gone down, period, but has remained the same for many, many months now.
UpNorth: even U6 doesn’t give the true picture. “Marginally connected” workers only are counted if they’ve looked for work in the past 12 months. Those who have not looked in 12 months but who are able and willing to work are not counted in U6.
A better measure is the labor participation rate, which measures the fraction of those in the 16-64 age bracket who are actually working.
The labor participation rate is at 62.8% – a 36+ year low. It was last that low in March 1978.
The labor participation rate has declined effectively steadily throughout the current Administration. It is now 2.9% lower than it was at the low point of the Bush(43) Administration, Jan 2009 – which happens to coincide with the beginning of the current Administration.
http://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate
Great recovery there, ain’t it?
They don’t count self-employed people, do they? It seems to me that they don’t.
If you’re an independent contractor, or have a sole owner/employee business that doesn’t require any employees or structures, I get the impression that those people aren’t counted.
Ex-PH2: actually, I’m pretty sure they do count self-employed persons as “employed” when calculating unemployment statistics.
Unemployment figures are based on self-reported data from surveys. If an individual reports they’re regularly working – even part time, as little as 1 hour per week – for pay, they’re counted as “employed” for standard unemployment rate (U3) purposes. Also counted are those who (a) did 15 hours or more of unpaid work in a family business owned by someone in their household, or (b) who are temporarily absent from their regular job (whether the absence is paid or unpaid). See
http://www.bls.gov/cps/faq.htm
The official unemployment figure, U3, is IMO essentially nearly worthless. It makes no effort to capture either involuntary part-time employment or those who’ve temporarily dropped out of the workforce. To point out the absurdity of the measure: U3 can actually decline when you have a net job loss nationwide. That can happen when more people also get fed up and quit looking for work during the same time frame than the sum of jobs lost plus new entrants into the labor force. U6 removes some of the ambiguity by accurately accounting for involuntary part-time employment, many “discouraged” workers, etc . . . , but still doesn’t provide the complete picture.
You want to know how the economy is really doing, look at the labor participation rate. If it’s climbing – even very slowly – it means jobs are available and more people are taking them. If it’s shrinking – as it has been for about 6 years now – it means the economy is in the toilet and jobs are damn hard to find.
Hondo,
You know I am sick to death of reminding liberal thinkers that they are really not for the little guy.
Every time I see a meme or a discussion about corporate greed, I love to ask them questions. Things like: Do you own an Apple Computer? Do you bank here? Do you buy specifically made in the US items? How many of your items are made in China? Do you support slave labor?
And then I reply: If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you are supporting the corporate greed you are so against, and not only that, you’re keeping the people of China down. Americans are down too, but your demands that unskilled laborers, or uneducated people should make 15/hr is keeping them out even more so.
They become purple with rage because I have told them they actually support a free market economy and to that end make the producers richer. When they try to turn it around on me…heh. I tell them to have a nice hot cup of their own hypocrisy and to STFU, that I support the free market, the producers– and harbor no ill will to those who earn more money than I do-BUT, maybe ONE day, I’ll come up with something that makes me as wealthy. If not, I mind my own affairs and keep forward.
Defend, you go, girl.
Atta girl! Gets ’em flustered real fast, too. lol!
Just ask one of those ‘liberal’ thinkers to give up their latest bits of tech toys, e.g., smarphone, notebook, iPad in various versions, laptop – whatever. Take the OnStar out of the car. In fact, take all that electronic whizbang stuff out of the house, including the smart TV and go back to the radio, antenna CRT TV, and the landline, for just one week.
No ‘smart’ refrigerators, gas stoves that have to be lit with a match, no home security video – none of that stuff that they take for granted. And stop shopping for clothes and furniture at the stores in malls. Ditch the cell phone altogether and use payphones, and no plastic cards for any payments. Use cash and checks.
Then see how long they last.
“Concern for the little guy” has ALWAYS, ALWAYS been a cover for the Left. Tell people you care, that you’re fighting for them (and those bastards on the other side are trying to stop you). Then, you can take ever last cent from the little people, live like a king, and even make the lives of the poor worse, yet the Left will still defend you.
“Progressive” – I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Communism by any other label, is still communism. Unfortunately, they are very well entrenched in higher and secondary education, governments (local and up), employment and every other facet or aspect of our lives.
Yes, but they don’t see how thin is the ice they are standing on.