When you hear Trump tout the tremendous economic growth, awesome job growth, and record stock market, keep this chart in mind. Real wages for real workers has fallen for four straight quarters. And that is using a manipulated inflation rate far lower than reality. If the economy was really booming and unemployment was really 4%, how could real wages be falling?
The truth is the average middle class American worker is making less than they did last year and have seen their real wages essentially stagnant since 1999. The bullshit is so deep, you need hip boots to wade through it. Luckily the ignorant masses don’t understand maff, so real wages is a mystery to them. They’re busy following the latest sexual misconduct accusations and spending money they don’t have on Christmas gifts they don’t need. So it goes.
To be fair, anyone elected Pres would tout the same BS.
They All know the data has been so manipulated and massaged in or to maintain CONFIDENCE in the Government (and the Dollar) that it only leads to positive results even if nuclear warheads fell on 10 major cities.
Yes, Trump has his political faults, but how many other people could have withstood the assault from the Globalists and absolutely disgusting false attacks from the Democrats.
Yes, it would be a very positive to fix many data points like the Unemployment Rate and Inflation, etc., but don’t you think Trump has much, much bigger fish to fry.
Trump is probably the only one that could survive that massive assault.
He is also probably the only one that has or will ever face it. No one else has ever been willing to go up against the global elitist status quo and try to change things from the way they want them to stay.
Now you’re living in your own private Idaho! Yep sucking zionist and Wall Streets cock is going up against the elitist status quo. Take a shower, wake up, and smell the coffee, SUCKER
“To be fair, anyone elected Pres would tout the same BS” – Wrong. Donald Trump was elected President precisely because American voters knew the other “establishment” pols would tout the same BS.
Donald Trump SHOULD be the one in front of all of this, and having press conferences telling the world what he has seen, the BS being shoveled out by the various organs of the cesspool called Washington, and rallying the Americans that see it as well to his cause. In other words, he should be a statesman, not a pol.
Instead, we seem to be seeing him send tweets that could possibly get him impeached, touting a stock market that he, himself correctly labeled as a bubble, and praising a Federal Reserve that he also himself (correctly) labelled as corrupt and the cause of these serial bubbles in finance.
He currently occupies the largest “bully pulpit” in human history. Why is he not using it to rally the American public (as short sighted as they are, he has their ear) the same way he rallied the voters to come out in droves to support him during the election? Mainstream media still covers Presidential press conferences, even if it is Trump.
Joseph Goebbels is reputed as once saying that the same lie, told over and over again becomes truth. Well, how do you suppose the truth, told over and over again would play out? It can’t be worse than all the lies, and may even wake normally asleep sheeple if it starts to make sense and the dots look to be connecting. Has it even been tried?
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, he is following in the footsteps (so far) of the modern Presidents before him, which seem to stand for nothing, and basically occupy space in the theater of the “Whitehouse” to keep the illusion that the citizens still run whats left of America.
At first I was thinking that maybe the presidency should be limited to one term so that – having achieved that highest office and proven themself top dog – the president could just tell the truth and do what’s best – even though it would be wildly unpopular. Then I remembered that presidents don’t do any better in their second term when they’re similarly free to ignore the stupid wishes of the stupid people. Carter was relatively honest. If he hadn’t been such a sanctimonious fucker he’d be remembered more fondly. I can’t think of any president since Eisenhower who wasn’t an asshole – and that’s probably only because I don’t know enough about Eisenhower.
Eisenhower was one of my top Presidents.
However, I placed JFK ahead of IKE.
I still have my “I Like Ike” lapel pin.
JFK wasn’t around long enough to know how he would have turned out.
jfk was not popular until he was killed–
he was in the home state of his veep,a state in which he should not have had to compete hard, trying to shore up his base when he was killed–
I, too, used to hold Ike in high esteem as perhaps the best president in my lifetime, but after reading and watching videos about the Reinweisenlager or Rhine Meadows Camps, my opinion of him changed, and not for the better. He termed his German prisoners “Disarmed Enemy Forces” as opposed to POWs to avoid Geneva Convention rules. They were then treated worse than animals and the war was already over.
Here’s an interesting documentary for when you have an hour and a half to kill and are interested.
Granted, you can assume just about any government statistic is a manipulated lie. However, I see anecdotal evidence of wages rising across the country. Friends on both coasts tell me they are raising wages to attract entry level salaried talent. Amazon fulfillment centers used to pay $10-$11/hour for seasonal workers and this year I’m seeing wages as high as $17.50/hr. The same is true for other fulfillment centers such as Target, Trader Joe’s, and even Walmart. Lumber mills up in Northern Idaho are now paying $15.50/hr for unskilled workers where they were only paying $10/hr a year ago. Harvest jobs in various areas of the northwest are also paying more to attract workers. Now this is a small sample and these aren’t all the types of jobs you want to be creating to form the basis of a solid economy, but overall I see more year over year higher wages being advertised around the country. So there must be some tightness in the labor market somewhere.
Anyone legitimately wanting a job and not being able to find one is becoming a rarity today.
The numbers on unemployment and living off of food stamps and such is declining, and that is in spite of importing millions of unemployable “migrants” from all over the world.
Construction is suffering a major labor shortage as well as skilled industrial work such as machinists (who are becoming more highly skilled by the day as the industry advances) and other technical workers.
This can be verified by simple observation (how many unemployed that can’t find a job because there are none do you know?) and by looking at the job openings and shortening periods of unemployment for those that do lose their jobs. Changing jobs to move to a higher paid job is a trend again, something we haven seen since the mid Bush years.
But no one, at least in the anti Trump and doomsayer crowd, seems to want to recognize this and prefer preaching to other equally unobservant anti Trumpers and doomsayers that won’t bother to question and investigate what they are being told.
FWIW, most of the more loudly outspoken of them also make their living selling gold and stuff, which may be why they are seeing the economic conditions negatively as people leave those fear driven markets.
Explain the data on the chart. Narrative versus facts. I deal with facts. 40% of working age Americans aren’t working. 15% of those working are part time. Another 15% are government workers.
I guess anyone who points out uncomfortable facts about this glorious economic recovery is an anti-Trumper to douchebags like yourself.
You probably don’t understand the concept of real wages anyway. A story will do.
You’re the same anonymous asshole who made the same comment last week when I presented facts you didn’t like. You’re a Trump troll.
Thanks Admin!!! The economy hasn’t recovered from the bankster rape that took place in 2008.
One thing you don’t deal with is facts. Manipulated statistics to produce misleading graphs are not facts.
Try looking around you.
BTW, so you can avoid answering it again, how many people do you actually know that are unemployed and want a job that can’t find one?
Further, how do you explain record trade deficits (meaning more buying) and increasing tax revenues if things are as bad as you want them to be?
(No, I don’t expect legitimate answers)
Those facts are from the US government. Why the fuck would the government manipulate the numbers to look worse you fucking brain dead moron?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-06/higher-wage-hope-hammered-american-worker-compensation-slumps
Enough of your anecdotal bullshit evidence when the economy is $3.5 trillion. Only a total moron who knows nothing about economics would tout record trade deficits as a great thing. Trade deficits detract from GDP you douche.
You’re nothing but an ignorant Trump troll trying to spin a false narrative. Hit the fucking road.
And again, you avoid answering those two simple questions you should be readily able to answer.
Because you know you are just a negativist that can’t support his position in the real world.
Admin, I’m not sure I believe any government-produced statistics. They have lied to us about so much for so long I would look out the window to verify the color of the sky.
Also, I’m not sure they even see a lot of economic activity any more. If you had a choice between (a) paying 28% (or more) on legitimate, reported income / wages and (b) paying nothing on illegitimate / unreported / side-gigs for cash, which would you take? For how long?
By making it not just unrewarding but penalizing to pay taxes the government encourages un-taxed behavior, for better or worse. I am paying MORE in ObamaDontCare premiums than I do on my house note! I declare everything (so far) but every year it gets harder; I won’t sell drugs but I really would consider “working on a cash side gig” in order to keep the family fed, housed and clothed!
When the government FORCES people to behave unethically to survive, that government is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. See if I’m wrong or right.
We are only doing token Xmas gifts this year. The kind you hang on a wall etc.
I think 4% unemployment is not necessarily important if true or false if income is falling. The new jobs are shit jobs. They don’t pay shit.
I agree with Tree Farmer we are seeing wages rising big time here as unemployment is at best 3% and a shortage of workers. I think the differences between how states operate is where we see growth or loss of wage as we gain from some long term Democratic states that people are fleeing.
There are two important facts: the first is that the economy should have imploded in 2007-8, but the fed/gov stepped in and created the bubbles we are now living in and waiting for the pin to come along. This is the reality.
The second point is the Obama administration played footsie with the numbers to make the glorious leader, I mean president, look like the savior who delivered us from the cliff. This is the unreality, but what all the media/economists want us to believe.
So if you look at Trump from the reality, he is just riding the train that should have gone over the cliff many years ago and there is nothing he can do to stop it.
But if you use the unreality that Obama’s seized on to prove his worthiness as the man who saved the world from economic ruin, Trump is indeed doing better by bringing back some confidence in the economy.
But reality is a bitch and even though there is some confidence, the bottom will fall out and we are all screwed.
The question is then, who would you want in place as President to rebuild after the tsunami? I’m not naive enough to think that there is even a chance we can rebuild and that Trump is the answer to all the questions in life; hell, we have squandered our futures by selling ourselves into trillions in debt, but there will be something left of America post crash and someone will need to try to pick up the pieces. Maybe that’s when having Trump as the President will become meaningful (if he survives the anti Trump throng).
After printing 20+ trillion even the most cynical should expect higher wages by now. It really wouldnt matter if wages were going up 3% per year, standard of living would still be declining.
Just out of curiosity, what has the average middle class worker done in the last say 18 years to increase the real value of their work? Are they better educated? Smarter? More hard working given their advancing age?
Fact is, half or more of the middle class has an IQ below 100, have poor education, and are getting older, and thus slower, less able to do hard work, etc..
This was always going to happen. The middle class lifestle, debt driven, was unsustainable, and will continue to crash.
Admin is right to point out the false narative. But even if the truth were being told, nothing could stop the collapse of the middle class. That the crisis is being compounded with fed and local and private debt, with rampant imports, with stunningly low education results, with a massive welfare state that pays people not to work and to breed idiots, etc., simply means that the collapse of the middle class lifestyle is ever more certain.
Make no mistake I supported President Trump and still do however that did not relieve him of my serious questions that have never been answered !
Make America Great Again , OK WITH WHAT ? BY WHO ? and at WHAT RATE OF PAY AND BENEFITS ?
Health insurence with realistic costs and coverage are now out of reach . Wages did not keep up with costs dumped on to the employee . Heavy industrial jobs vaporized and pensions disappear for the working people that were taxed to support this countries boondoggles implemented by those elected to protect the nations citizens and the country !
Now the government pensions are in serious trouble for everyone but the reps elected to tend to our nations needs .
With all these wars being touted bankrupting us one would think in time of war traitors are shot ! Even economic traitors !
Hell’s bells…if the federal government told me the sun rose in the east and set in the west I’d double check it.
When it looked like Jezebel was going to win I was buying ammo by the case, and there are many things Trump has done I support and some I’m thrilled with, but every time I see him touting and taking credit for the stock market or watch the Neo Cons and the Chick Hawks beating the war drums I get nervous in the service of the Republic…and buy more ammo by the case!
Amen Mark