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epan
Guest
Because it’s true. Go to any good source, and not a biased one.
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iloveangels
Guest
I can honestly tell you that in 1979, actual earning power was less than it is now. I was there.
Many people could not own a house. Home loan interest rates were very high–near 10%. When they did own a house, there were more people living in less space. Most houses did not have the conveniences they have now, and everything was much plainer. Why? Because people had less spending power than they do now.
In those years, we had a horrific inflation–or rather stagflation problem. Common items went up in price dramatically from month to month but wages did not. These were the years when people switched from eating beef every day (Yes–the old norm) to eating turkey and chicken on weekdays. Prior to this turkey was considered a “specialty item” and was only available on Thanksgiving. There was no ground turkey or turkey sandwiches any other time of year.
Same thing with cars, groceries, real estate, you name it. Most families only owned one car and that was considered normal. People took turns driving each other to work. Also medical care was much more rudimentary.
These were also the years when the cars on the roads switched from being ALL American to being imports. American car quality was absolutely HORRIBLE. There were many new American cars with cracked heads, defective transmissions and other major defects that could not be fixed and they would not take them back. This is one of the things that drove the market towards imports whose quality & service was much better. The consequence of this, of course, is that many workers lost their jobs because of their carelessness.
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Arizona_Mike
Guest
As the OP on this thread, who posted this after I found it in the backpages of my local business section, let me throw this in - I am conflicted with some of WalMart’s employment practices towards their employees, while at the same time recognizing that the economies of scale practiced by Walmart that permit them to undercut other retailers’ prices (and may act to drive them out of business) also help a lot of Americans to survive in a dismal economy. Walmart does this, by providing lower retail prices, and by providing a (barely) living wage to those just entering the economy, or those who, due to advanced age and unfortunate personal circumstances, often find themselves having to re-enter the job market at a time when they shouldn’t have to.
If there is a good lesson to derive from all this, I think that it is this: the smaller the Catholic charity, the less you have to compromise, whatever your interpretation of Catholic values is.The big Catholic hospitals and adoption agencies that rely on matching government grants have some heavy decisions to make regarding what actions they have to take to survive if they are told that they must comply with an HHS mandate, or provide adoption services to homosexual couples. If a Catholic charity stays lean and keeps its overhead low, it is less beholden to the government and a secular view of how the charity should function, whether your political vision skews to the left OR the right.
That’s why I posted this article.
If there is a good lesson to derive from all this, I think that it is this: the smaller the Catholic charity, the less you have to compromise, whatever your interpretation of Catholic values is.The big Catholic hospitals and adoption agencies that rely on matching government grants have some heavy decisions to make regarding what actions they have to take to survive if they are told that they must comply with an HHS mandate, or provide adoption services to homosexual couples. If a Catholic charity stays lean and keeps its overhead low, it is less beholden to the government and a secular view of how the charity should function, whether your political vision skews to the left OR the right.
That’s why I posted this article.
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iloveangels
Guest
From purely a business point of view, you are correct, but that’s not at all what’s going on with these Catholic outfits and the HHS mandate. It’s much more complicated than that.
Suudy
Active member
I quoted numbers directly from the government. Are you saying Uncle Sam is biased?
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Faithdancer
Guest
Walmart and Chic-fil-A…
I only wish there were more companies which didn’t knuckle under to Planned Parenthood and to the militant homosexualists…woops, that’s right, Chic-fil-A did back down…well hopefully they’re still not actively funding the gay “marriage” crusade.
I only wish there were more companies which didn’t knuckle under to Planned Parenthood and to the militant homosexualists…woops, that’s right, Chic-fil-A did back down…well hopefully they’re still not actively funding the gay “marriage” crusade.
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Julia_Mae
Guest
The Walmart in my town pays higher wages than many. Know why? It’s a fairly affluent community and people have more choice.It’s really too bad people are forcing them against their will to work at Walmart.
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:...iVVHP8A8XBQNKDCVTAMCgjidkNogXVTyThBQ:rolleyes:
Walmart moves into a poor area where there is a very bad unemployment problem and offers jobs at poor wages and in poor conditions with management seemingly trained at the local prison camp. Are people forced to work? Take your pick: either the non-working are lazy bums or they are whiners who are working at a job they could just walk away from.
What’s also true is that my Walmart has better selection, better quality produce and more service employees than the ones in poorer neighborhoods. The poor are exploited. Thank God you aren’t living in this area with no job in sight and have little choice but to take whatever job you can get - could you just not take the job? Sure. You could also be homeless.
Are you sure some people aren’t, in practice, forced to take some jobs?
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Dale_M
Guest
Your link concerns absolute wages. I don’t think there is any doubt that people are paid more dollars now that in years past.
However, real wages are a measure of inflation-adjusted spending power. I believe that is what Epan is referring when he talks of the growing income disparity.
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Dale_M
Guest
oops… I should have dropped down to the second spreadsheet, which does make inflation adjustment.
Without doing a statistical analysis (i.e. just doing a quick look a figures) it seems the lower half of the population has remained more or less constant in buying power during the past 30 years. But the wealthier half have had their buying power increase. And at upper income levels, the gap compared to the lower income levels grew the most.
So the richest have been getting richer, but the poorest haven’t been getting poorer.
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epan
Guest
Yes, “real wages” is a common term for actual wages adjusted for inflation.
I believe that one of the clear historic trends of the past 500 years is the ever widening gap in wealth, in real terms. In 1200 AD, even though a king lived in a bigger house, and had more possessions… he probably had no glass windows. His life expectancy was about the same as everyone else. By our measure, his standard of living would have been quite low.
But not only has the individual gap widened, within societies, the gap between countries has widened. The richest countries are widening the gap in per capita GDP against the poorest countries, while the gap widens between citizens within those countries.
I believe that Benedict XVI, who is perhaps the most outspoken modern pope politically, has some clearly stated opinions on this topic.
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epan
Guest
Aren’t you just looking at actual wages, and not real wages, which are wages adjusted for inflation? If you adjust for inflation, then some experts say that wages have remained flat, other experts say that they have declined slightly. Meanwhile, productivity has doubled. The wealth produced by that increased productivity is reflected in the increasing wealth of the top 1%, and not in the paychecks of the workers responsible for it.
My opinion, is that there could be some more fairness, with everyone sharing in the increase in collective wealth, rather than just the few.
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iloveangels
Guest
You might want to take that up with the Chinese. They do most of our manufacturing now. Americans have less demanding and less valuable jobs than they used to. This is the cost of globalism. You get lower prices but you have to compete.
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epan
Guest
I understand what the model is for globalization. The labor market is global for manufacturing, and increasingly for intellectual labor.
When Nike (for example) decides to cut $20 from the labor cost each pair of shoes by moving production offshore, it does not also reduce the price of the shoe for the consumer by that amount. Instead, it puts some of that savings into increased advertising and promotion, to keep demand high. The price a consumer will pay is not related to the production costs, nor is the price that the producer will charge, in many cases.
For example, you cannot find a pair of Chinese made sunglasses which costs more than $3 to produce. A more typical production cost would be less than $1. These sunglasses sell for $100-$300 in the US.
It is true that technology has created a worldwide labor market. One problem is that governments have been slow to react to the globalization of that market. We could use some international treaties, or some laws which would require some minimum of local labor (name removed by moderator)ut to a product, in order to sell it in a local market.
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Julia_Mae
Guest
Someone asked Mother Teresa that same question and insisted the money was from the Devil. She responded: “Well, the Devil’s had it long enough.”
Suudy
Active member
No. I mean real wages. I’ve been posting on this since before the 2008 election. Here’s another of my posts:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7664684&postcount=44
The links to the CBO in my previous posts are no longer valid. However, in all quintiles, real wages have gone up since 1979. Here’s more links:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=6756501&postcount=37
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=6754698&postcount=43
Which is why I quoted numbers from the CBO and BLS instead of “some experts”.
You are presupposing that the increase in wealth is disproportionate to the level of responsibility, education, investment, etc. Why are the “workers” more deserving than the top 1%?
You want equal outcome. But as somebody posted here, equal outcome and equal opportunity do not co-exist.
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epan
Guest
I don’t want equal outcome, far from it. I propose more fairness, and I think Benedict does to. It is a social justice issue. Some people find more sense in the purely libertarian approach, which in my opinion would cause great human suffering to enrich a few, and others tend toward a more modified view of human liberty, which would allow ample resources for all, and try to minimize suffering. I think that this is what Benedict is driving at, and more in line with my own views than conservative American politics.
Suudy
Active member
And I don’t think you’ll find conservatives disagree with this high level overview. Such efforts at fairness assume equal opportunity, fair access to the economy, education, and services. If the wealthy were to prosper while the lower economic classes were getting worse, there would be no disagreement here. But since all quintiles are see rising real wages, it is hard to argue that the top 1% are doing it at the expense of others.
Further, the information about real wages fails to take into account in kind benefits, such as tax credits (such as the EIC, child credits, day care credits, etc), housing subsidies, SNAP, and other such benefits that reduce the out of pocket expenses of the lower classes. Indeed, I imagine if you took into account these kinds of benefits, the lower classes are significantly better off now than 30 or 40 years ago (and no doubt 100 or 200 years ago).
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iloveangels
Guest
She actually had a lot of people upset at her because she consistently refused some donations.
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Julia_Mae
Guest
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epan
Guest
Well, my own perception is that in spite of what the real wage numbers may be, that the standard of living has improved dramatically in four or five decades. What worries me for the US and Europe is that the middle class may be reset to a level which would be below what we now consider to be the poverty level, if wages are normalized to a global standard due to the equivalency of labor around the world, and its availability due to technology.
Looking further down the road, it is not too far fetched to imagine a day in which robotics and computers have replaced most labor intensive jobs. If that happens, then what is a fair distribution of wealth?
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