The poor saps are being thrown crumbs and they are jumping up and down. The middle class gets a big raise ... finally! http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/13/news/economy/median-income-census/index.html
n a wealthy Virginia suburb, their cars are their beds The Washington Post Antonio Olivo5 hrs ago 1/10 SLIDES © Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post John Baird Jr., 47. It’s almost bedtime. John Baird Jr., 47, smokes on the hood of his 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis sedan, his plaid sleeping bag neatly tucked in the trunk. Kathleen McDermott, 81, slouches in the driver’s seat of her 2002 Ford Focus station wagon. Two angel statuettes stare from her dashboard into clothes and clutter behind her. Scott Downey, 52, works a crossword puzzle on his phone inside a 2006 Chrysler Town & Country van that smells faintly like cats. Clothes hang on hooks in the back, and emergency supplies of ramen noodles and Vienna sausages sit out of plain view. They are in a Home Depot parking lot, largely invisible among the subdivisions and sprawl of Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County, the nation’s second-wealthiest community. Sleeping in their cars, they are homeless but sort of not, a subset of a population officially classified as “unsheltered” and slowly shrinking in these suburbs of Washington, even as the number of people living in poverty continues to grow. Each member of the trio spent decades living a more stable existence before family trauma or economic hardship led them to the streets. Here, they help one another with errands and auto repairs, carpool to work or church, and check in on one another at night. Just like their neighbors in the subdivisions around them. Not the life he expected After pulling into his usual sleeping spot off Route 50, Baird looks left, right and left again. There are other car dwellers parked nearby. The glare of laptop computers or lit cigarettes gives them away in the dark... http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in...eir-cars-are-their-beds/ar-BBwXymz?li=BBnb4R7
Working class white men make less than they did in 1996 No wonder they are frustrated. Working class white men saw their income drop 9% between 1996 and 2014, according to a new report from Sentier Research. This group, who Sentier defines as having only a high school diploma, earned only $36,787,on average, in 2014, down from $40,362 in 1996. Meanwhile, college educated white men saw their income soar nearly 23% over the same period, from $77,209 to $94,601. Published by two former Census Bureau officials, the Sentier report shines yet another light on the fortunes of the white working class. This group has become a force in the 2016 presidential election, serving as the backbone of Donald Trump's support. And the Republican candidate's campaign has tailored much of his campaign to the working class, with promises that he will bring back the manufacturing jobs that once allowed them to support their families. Related: White, working class & worried The study first looked at the 1996 incomes earned by 10 groups of men in two-year cohorts ranging in age from 25 to 26 to 43 to 44. Sentier then looked at what men earned 18 years later, when the youngest cohort were 43 to 44 and the oldest were 61 to 62. The results varied greatly by age. The youngest group of working class white men, who were 25 to 26 in 1996, saw their incomes rise by 19%, from $32,677 to $38,803, over the 18-year period. However, their college educated peers enjoyed a 133% explosion in their incomes, from $40,487 to $94,252. Related: Working class whites blame Washington, but still want more government help When it came to the oldest cohort, who were 43 to 44 in 1996, both working class and college educated white men saw their incomes fall over the period. But the working class still fared worse, suffering a 47% drop in income, from $51,491 to $27,230. Men with college diplomas, however, saw their incomes fall 28.5%, from $95,734 to $68,406. This decline among older workers stems in part from people who left the labor force or shifted to part-time work, which pulls down the average income for the group, said Gordon Green, co-author of the report... http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/05/news/economy/working-class-men-income/index.html
When minimum wage was implemented we were still on the gold standard. Minimum wage was 25 cents per hour and silver was around 35 cents per oz. When we went off the gold standard, minimum wage and silver was about the same at around $1.25. Silver this year has bounced around from $15 to $20 per oz with it meeting in the middle as of this writing at $17.50. Therefore minimum wage probably should be somewhere between $12.50 to $17.50 per hour. That really is enough to cover the bare minimum you need to survive as far as food clothing and shelter. If you want more, educate yourself and get a better job. If you just want to get by, minimum wage is for you.
The real solution is standing in front of our face. Soon, real soon, the structural barriers in people's brain will begin to break down and reformulate from the ground up through reason. The idea is to continue to frame the problem so that we are distracted from the real issue.
Elon Musk: Robots will take your jobs, government will have to pay your wage Catherine Clifford 5 Hours Ago Computers, intelligent machines, and robots seem like the workforce of the future. And as more and more jobs are replaced by technology, people will have less work to do and ultimately will be sustained by payments from the government, predicts Elon Musk, the iconic Silicon Valley futurist who is the founder and CEO of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX. According to Musk, there really won't be any other options. "There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," says Musk to CNBC. "Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen." In a country with universal basic income, each individual gets a regular check from the government. Switzerland considered instituting a universal basic income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2578) a month this summer. Voters ultimately rejected the plan, but it sparked a broad, global conversation. Also this summer, President Obama addressed the idea of a universal basic income in an interview with the Director of MIT's Media Lab, Joi Ito, and Scott Dadich, editor in chief of WIRED: "Whether a universal income is the right model — is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people? — that's a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years."... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon...bs-government-will-have-to-pay-your-wage.html