Tuesday, August 06, 2013

When larger numbers are worth less

...that's the power of inflation (AKA 'stealth taxation' or 'legalized theft'):
Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour. That sounds very small, but after you account for inflation a very different picture emerges. Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today. And of course the official government inflation numbers have been heavily manipulated to make inflation look much lower than it actually is, so the number for today should actually be substantially higher than $10.74, but for purposes of this article we will use $10.74. If you were to work a full-time job at $10.74 an hour for a full year (with two weeks off for vacation), you would make about $21,480 for the year. That isn't a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968. That is how far we have fallen...

And as our economy systematically loses good jobs, more Americans are forced to become dependent on the government. Back in 1979, there was about one American on food stamps for every manufacturing job. Today, there are about four Americans on food stamps for every manufacturing job...

So where have the good jobs gone? Well, there are three long-term trends that are absolutely crushing American workers right now...
Read the whole thing.  And realize that as the decline of the rule of law and all the loose monetary policy of recent years soaks into the economy, we haven't seen anything yet...

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