AMERICA DIES YOUNG, POOR AND
ADDICTED!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/americas-slow-march-to-death-us-life.html
A Nation Commits Suicide
Study on pay for young adults highlights plunge in US living standards
Study on pay for young adults highlights plunge in US living standards
12 December 2016
A study released last week by a team of economists from
Stanford, Harvard and the University of California at
Berkeley found that the odds of American children growing
up to earn more than their parents declined precipitously
from 1970 to the present. Whereas in 1970, 92 percent of 30-
year-olds earned more than their parents did at a similar age,
that number fell to 51 percent by 2014.
The figures for males were even worse. As of 2014, only 41
percent of 30-year-old men earned more than their fathers at
a similar age. The researchers also found that the decline in
the ability of children to earn more than their parents was
greatest in the Midwest, where decades of deindustrialization
have had their most devastating social impact.
The economists concluded that even rapid economic growth
would do little to reverse the downward trend because of the
immense and ongoing growth of social inequality.
The authors of the study described their findings as a harsh
verdict on the strength of what they called “the American
dream.” In fact, their own findings add to a mass of social
indices demonstrating that the much-vaunted but largely
mythical “American dream” has turned into a nightmare. To
the extent that this term, promoted to encourage illusions in
American capitalism, ever corresponded to social reality, it
was largely in connection with the belief that each young
generation would enjoy a better standard of living than the
one that preceded it.
Just last week, the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) reported that overall life expectancy in the
US declined for the first time in more than two decades in
2015. The fall reflected rising death rates for a variety of
diseases, an increase in unintentional injuries, accelerating
suicide rates and an increase in infant mortality.
Earlier this year, a group of Harvard researchers reported that
there was a 15-year life expectancy gap between men in the
richest one percent of the population and those in the bottom
one percent. Another reflection of the social crisis is the
CDC’s finding that deaths from heroin overdoses surpassed
gun homicides in 2015, while total annual deaths from all
opioid overdoses quadrupled between 1999 and 2015.
The study on pay noted that the sharpest drop in the
percentage of young adults earning more than their parents
occurred from 1970 to about 1992—from 92 percent to 58
percent. The percentage stabilized for about a decade and
began to fall again beginning in 2002.
There is a direct correlation between this downward
trajectory in living standards and the decay of American
capitalism. The 1970s was the decade when the unraveling of
the post-World War II economic boom and the erosion of the
dominance of American industry found open expression in
the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1971
and the growing share of global markets, including the US
market, captured by rivals such as Germany and Japan.
At the end of the decade, the American ruling class initiated a
major shift in its class policy, terminating the postwar period
of relative class compromise and launching a class-war
offensive aimed at breaking the militant resistance of the
working class and reversing its previous social gains. A wave
of plant closures and mass layoffs that began under the
Democratic Carter administration was intensified under
Reagan, who used the growth of unemployment along with
union busting and wage cutting, made possible by the
betrayals and collusion of the unions, to drive down working-
class living standards.
This ruling-class offensive has continued ever since, under
Democratic no less than Republican administrations. The
pace of decline in working-class living standards slowed
somewhat in the 1990s, with Clinton presiding over a
transient upward trend in economic growth based on the
removal of virtually all restraints on financial speculation and
parasitism. The resulting dot.com bubble imploded in 2000,
fueling a new wave of mass layoffs and wage cutting under
both the Bush and Obama administrations. This offensive was
stepped up in response to the Wall Street crash of 2008.
It is this social catastrophe, rooted in the decline of American
capitalism, that underlies the political crisis of both big-
business parties in the 2016 election and the victory of Trump
—the personification of the economic, political and moral
decay of the American ruling class.
The election was dominated by the growth of popular anger
and disgust with both parties and the political and economic
status quo. The broad popular support, particularly among
young people and workers, for the Democratic primary
campaign of Bernie Sanders, who presented himself as a
“socialist” opponent of the “billionaire class” and social
inequality, reflected the initial stages of a movement of the
working class to the left. Sanders worked to channel this
opposition behind the Democratic Party, culminating in his
endorsement of and campaign for Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s campaign, the most right-wing in modern
Democratic Party history, focused on scandalmongering
against Trump and warmongering against Russia. She was
broadly backed by Wall Street and the CIA and ran as the
continuator of Obama’s supposed economic “recovery.” She
utilized racial and gender politics to portray “white working
class” support for Trump as motivated by racism and sexism
and distract attention from the ongoing growth of social
inequality and impoverishment of broad layers of working
people.
In an election where the two candidates vied for the
distinction of being the most despised presidential
contenders in US history, and the biggest bloc of voters were
those who saw no reason to vote, Trump was given a free path
by the Democrats and Sanders to exploit the economic
grievances of workers and middle-class people whose living
standards had been devastated by the policies of both parties.
Both the Obama administration and the Clinton election
campaign were the outcome of nearly five decades, beginning
at the end of the 1960s, during which the Democratic Party
has repudiated any connection to policies of social reform and
moved ever more sharply to the right.
It will not take long for workers, including those who voted
for Trump, to realize that they have been taken for a ride and
face in his administration the most ferocious enemy of the
working class. His cabinet of billionaire reactionaries and
warmongering generals already makes clear that his will be
the most right-wing, anti-working class government in US
history.
Trump’s policies of social counterrevolution and war will do
nothing to resolve the underlying crisis of American and
world capitalism. They will only exacerbate the social crisis.
The working class will face immense shocks in the coming
months. It will move into struggle against a government that
is preparing an unprecedented level of state repression in
defense of the corporate-financial elite.
The interests and needs of the working class can find no
expression within the existing political system. The defense
of democratic and social rights must assume the conscious
form of a socialist political movement of the working class
against the capitalist system.
Niles Niemuth
AMERICA: A NATION RULED BY and FOR CRONY BANKSTERS
TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING
MNUCHIN: THE FORECLOSURE MACHINE!
http://the-trump-white-house.blogspot.com/2016/11/mnuchin-trump-vows-to-keep-obamas-crony.html
The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”
“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”
Wikileaks exposed!
BARACK OBAMA AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING…. And not one went to prison!
“Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.”
MUCH MORE HERE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-bankster-owned-president-citigroup.html
“As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.”
“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013, while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in prison.”
THANKSGIVING 2016
THE LAST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
STAGGERING ADDICTION and POVERTY IN AMERICA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/staggering-poverty-in-america-under.html
Markets pushed to record highs on Trump surge
Markets pushed to record highs on Trump surge
By Nick Beams
12 December 2016
In his book on the 1930s Depression, The Great Crash, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith included a chapter titled “In Goldman, Sachs We Trust.” The title could well be reprised in an analysis of the stock market surge that has followed the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.
Since November 8, Wall Street’s Dow Jones index has risen by 7.8 percent, closing on Friday at a record high of 19,765—the 14th record close since the election of Trump. It is heading toward 20,000 just weeks after it broke through 19,000 for the first time. The euphoric surge in the Dow is even more remarkable considering that on election night the futures index at one pointed indicated a possible 500-point decline.
The broader-based S&P 500 index has also enjoyed a surge. It has risen by 5.6 percent in the last month and also set a new record on Friday—the seventh time it has done so since the election.
The chief component in the rise of the Dow
has been the leap in the share price of the
investment and banking giant Goldman
Sachs. Its shares have risen by 33 percent,
making it responsible for 29 percent of the
overall rise in the Dow, or 400 points out of
the total 1,422-point increase in the index
since the election.
The second biggest contributor to the stock market
lift-off has been JPMorgan Chase. Its shares have
risen by 22 percent, contributing 7 percent to the
rise in the Dow.
During the election campaign, Trump railed against the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton for her close connections with Wall Street, and Goldman Sachs in particular. On Friday, however, Trump offered a major economic post in his administration to Gary Cohn, the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, second in the chain of command to CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Cohn has been tapped by Trump to head the incoming administration’s National Economic Council, responsible for implementing the White House’s economic policy agenda. If he accepts, he will join two other former Goldman Sachs operatives in the new administration—Steven Mnuchin, who is to head the treasury department, and the ultra-right-wing Steve Bannon, who is to be the chief strategist of the Trump administration.
As for Blankfein, who supported Clinton in the election, he has turned around. Summing up the attitude of much of the financial aristocracy to the new administration, he told the Wall Street Journal that Trump was “a very smart guy,” who “may turn out to be a much better president than anyone else who might have been in that place.”
On the basis of appointments made so far, the Trump cabinet will be the wealthiest in American history. His choices for the key posts of Treasury, Commerce, Education and Transportation have a combined net worth of at least $8.1 billion.
The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is the understanding that the incoming Trump administration will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be in the hands of some its foremost representatives.
One of the main reasons for the rise in bank stocks, reflected in the fortunes of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, is that a Trump administration will tear up the few restrictions on the operations of the banks and finance houses put in place under the Dodd-Frank Act, which was introduced in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. The 2011 report on the financial crisis
produced by the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations made
it clear that Goldman Sachs’
operations in the lead-up to the 2008
Wall Street crash were of a criminal character.
Another factor fuelling the enthusiasm on Wall Street is the prospect that a Trump administration will cut the corporate tax rate to as low as 15 percent from its present level of 35 percent, while introducing personal tax cuts for the very wealthy.
The so-called infrastructure program of the new regime is also viewed as providing a boost to the bottom line. The basis of the Trump plan, at least so far as it has been revealed, is not a program of government works, but rather the provision of massive tax write-offs—possibly as high as 80 per cent—for corporations that undertake infrastructure projects. These will involve public-private partnerships under which the corporations will enjoy a permanent revenue stream from their operation.
Consequently, engineering, transport and construction companies are among those that have enjoyed a rise on Wall Street. Energy companies have also benefited based on the view that a Trump administration will ease environmental and other regulations in line with a broader deregulatory program across the economy as a whole.
Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again” in an attempt to tap into the hostility to the political and financial establishment across broad layers of the American population—a hostility reflected not only in support for him, but even more strongly in that received by the Democratic Party contender Bernie Sanders, who proclaimed himself a “socialist” and opposed to the “billionaire class” before swinging behind Clinton once she received the nomination.
The basis of that opposition has been underscored by a new study on economic inequality in the US issued by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman released last week. It showed that in the period from 1980 to 2014, the latest year for which complete data were available, the share of income received by the bottom half of the population, a total of 117 million adults, fell from 20 percent of the total to just 12.5 percent.
No doubt one of the factors in the rise on Wall Street is the recognition that the new administration will increase these trends even further.
There is also the perception that US firms will be the beneficiaries of the economic nationalist “America-first” agenda that forms the centre of the Trump program.
In general, media commentary on the rise in the markets has been celebratory in tone. But some notes of caution have been sounded. According to a measure developed by economist Robert Shiller, the present level of the cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio stands at a level exceeded only three previous times: in 1929, in 2000 at the height of the tech bubble, and in 2007 during the housing and stock bubble.
Others have drawn parallels with the economic nationalist and protectionist Hoover administration, which sparked a 13 percent market surge in 1928 before the US economy plunged into the Great Depression.
AMERICA DIES YOUNG, POOR AND
ADDICTED!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/americas-slow-march-to-death-us-life.html
A Nation Commits Suicide
TRUMPERNOMICS: Serving the Rich, the Greedy and the Crooked.
TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES, LOOTERS and CRONIES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/trump-promises-wall-street-more-obama.html
Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet
choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has
been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben
Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards
government “interference” in housing regulation, has been
nominated as the Housing and Urban Development
Secretary.
ANDREW PUZDER:
ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER and
ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS
TRUMP'S OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY/ NON-ENFORCEMENT POLICIES WILL HELP KEEP THE HAMBURGER INDUSTRY WELL STOCKED WITH "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS.... The America people will then be forced to pay the REAL cost of all that staggeringly expensive labor
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/donald-trump-advances-obama-clinton.html
“Yet Andrew Puzder, the chief executive of the company that operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as labor secretary.”
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