{"id":318,"date":"2004-07-20T12:42:06","date_gmt":"2004-07-20T19:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/318"},"modified":"2004-07-20T12:42:06","modified_gmt":"2004-07-20T19:42:06","slug":"tell-me-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/318","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the NY Times<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers – nonmanagement workers ranging from nurses and teachers to hamburger flippers and assembly-line workers – fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest decline since the depths of recession in mid-1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.<\/p>\n

Coming on top of a 12-minute drop in the average workweek, the decline in the hourly rate last month cut deeply into workers’ pay. In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January, and is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 2001. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have not received a cost of living increase or years of service salary increase in two years. Despite the fact that years of service increases are supposed<\/i> to happen automatically. Despite the fact that I am paying more for my health insurance, and just about everything else.<\/p>\n

We’re supposed to get a 2 to 3% increase in October, but I’ll believe it when I see it in my paycheck. The state still has a hiring freeze and the university is still facing budget cuts. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I count myself lucky that I have a job with benefits–it could be far worse and I know it. I’ve done my time working minimum wage, and it wasn’t fun.<\/p>\n

Given the choice of no job, or a job with no COLA or YOS adjustment, I’ll take the unchanging paycheck, but I find it more than a little irritating to hear claims of how the economy is better, and how the tax cuts are helping the economy. Sure, if you’re already in a higher tax bracket things may be looking up, but from where I’m standing, things are none too impressive.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming I’m in financial trouble; Michael and I are doing fine, due to the fact that we’re careful with our money (Rule 1 Never, ever, ever carry a balance on the credit card), and he has a second (part-time) job. Our financial stability is despite, not because of, the national economy.<\/p>\n

What I don’t understand is how people can brush things like this off; how they can claim the economy is doing better when, in fact, the majority of Americans are not in fact doing better, but are in fact doing worse.<\/p>\n

For me, it’s summed up here:<\/p>\n

The upper echelons of consumer spending, at places like Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom department stores, are reporting gangbuster business. “I’m surprised by how well we’ve sold high-priced fashion at this stage,” said Pete Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom’s full-line stores. <\/p>\n

But at the other end, sales at stores open at least a year at big-box discounters like Target and Wal-Mart have disappointed, while sales of used cars are declining year over year, government figures show. “We’re not seeing the traffic, not even the same volumes of sales calls,” said Richard Cooper, a sales manager at Jones Ford in Charleston, S.C. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.<\/i> Guess W is just doing his best to help the rest of us get to heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the NY Times On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers – nonmanagement workers ranging from nurses and teachers to hamburger flippers and assembly-line workers – fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest decline since the depths of recession in mid-1991, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-58","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}