real wages still below 2009 level

[InRareForm]

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/07/16/real-wages-still-below-june-2009-level/

[boutons_deux]

Santa Cruz among top 10 list of cities with plunging wages
Below are the cities in the top 10
1. Anniston-Oxford, Ala.
2. Rocky Mount, N.C.
3. Elizabethtown, Ky.
4. Atlantic City, N.J.
5. Flint, Mich.
6. Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash.
7. Las Cruces, N.M.
8. Ocean City, N.J.
9. Sandusky, Ohio
10. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Calif.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/5/article/p2p-76676263/

[boutons_deux]

Goldman Sachs profit doubles in second quarterThe New York-based banking giant said it earned $1.9 billion in the second quarter, up from $962 million the same period a year ago.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/5/article/p2p-76683934/

[boutons_deux]

McDonalds Tells Workers How to Budget on Their Meager Earnings

Two mega corporations--McDonalds and Visa--have partnered up to tell workers at the fast-food restaurant how to successfully budget on the meager wages they are paid. The suggestions, though, have little bearing in reality,

“You can have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it,” McDonalds soothingly assures their employees.

But workers at McDonalds make an average of $8.25 an hour.

The suggested budget, published by the company on a website (http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/mcdonalds/budgetJournal/budgetJournal.php), leaves room open for a second job. And it also says that employees could spend $20 a month for health care, which is an extremely low estimate; $0 for heating; and $600 for rent, another low-ball estimate, particularly for those who live in expensive cities.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mcdonalds-counsels-workers-budgeting

[boutons_deux]

Bank of America Profit Rises 63%Bank of America on Wednesday became the latest large bank to report second-quarter financial results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.

Net income rose 63 percent, to $4 billion, or 32 cents a share, from $2.5 billion, or 19 cents a share, in the period a year earlier, while revenue increased to $22.7 billion from $22 billion.
Analysts had been expecting second-quarter earnings per share of 25 cents, according to Thomson Reuters.

The bank benefited from higher revenue from equities sales and trading and a reduction in expenses, but its mortgage unit continued to struggle.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2013/07/17/bank-of-america-profit-rises-63/

Unregulated, wealth-extractive financial/casino capitalism doing great.

[TeyshaBlue]

Every major bank has posted double digit gains. Sickening.

[boutons_deux]

and the banks are making $10Ms from debit cards for public assistance, wage payments.

Yves rips Ronnie a huge one: (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/mcdonalds-tells-workers-to-toil-70-hours-a-week-use-ripoff-payroll-cards-as-part-of-financial-literacy.html)

McDonalds Tells Workers to Toil 70 Hours a Week, Use Ripoff Payroll Cards as Part of “Financial Literacy” (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/mcdonalds-tells-workers-to-toil-70-hours-a-week-use-ripoff-payroll-cards-as-part-of-financial-literacy.html)

The poor have to endure not just the indignity of struggling to survive, but also from having to listen to pious lectures on how they really can proper on their meager incomes.

So the message of the well-off to the struggling is work long hours at grossly underpaid jobs, when those “long hours” can’t even be cobbled together in this crappy economy, and then work really hard the rest of the time to stretch your meager earnings as far as humanely possible. This is just a prettied-up version of Dickensian sweatshops. The working conditions and hours are somewhat less grinding and we now have more varied forms of cheap entertainment, but the underlying premise is similar: the elites prefer a savage, mercenary version of capitalism to the less ruthless one that labor was able to win out of its protracted, hard-fought battles. The resulting coarsening of social relationships and a waste of human potential are costs the top brass seem only too happy to incur.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/mcdonalds-tells-workers-to-toil-70-hours-a-week-use-ripoff-payroll-cards-as-part-of-financial-literacy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

America is a failed society and civilization

[boutons_deux]

David Brooks Wonders Why Men Can't Find Jobs: Comedy Ensues


In 1954, 96 percent of American men between 25 and 54 years old worked. Today, 80 percent do. One-fifth of men in their prime working ages are out of the labor force.


Brooks' point piece turns out to be a popular column topic among conservative writers: Why aren't people working? The twist in this one is that it's a gender-based thesis. Brooks got hold of some stats showing that men are having more trouble recovering the jobs lost in the recent recession than women. He cites a Floyd Norris column (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/business/economy/gender-gaps-appear-in-employment-recovery.html) from this weekend, "Gender Gaps Appear as Employment Recovers From Recession," which provides all the relevant numbers.

Norris's piece actually offered a simple explanation for the gender gap. The jobs that are coming back, he says, are in the health care sector, where women hold four out of every five jobs. In fact, if you read Norris's piece carefully, you learn that women are actually losing ground in non-health-care related industries like manufacturing and financial services, that men are getting jobs back in those fields at a better rate than women. But, again, there's been more recovery in the health care sector for whatever reason, hence the stats.

Brooks takes all this data and decides that the real issue here is that men are not adaptable and can't bring themselves to make the changes needed to find work. He weaves an elaborate analogy involving the John Wayne movie The Seachers, which I guess is about the end of the cowboy era and how the rugged, violent men who tamed the West had trouble fitting in to the cushy, civilized world they helped create. (What David Brooks knows about any of this is anyone's guess). Brooks writes about Wayne's Ethan Edwards character as the hero who has made himself obsolete. "Once the western towns have been pacified," he notes, "there's no need for his capacity for violence, nor his righteous fury."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/david-brooks-wonders-why-men-cant-find-jobs-comedy-ensues-20130716#ixzz2ZJkeAbBV

[Jacob1983]

America is a business.