Tsunami. earthquakes and a nuclear meltdown. Tunisia. Egypt. Libya – the news is full of emergencies overseas. As bad as they are, these foreign-born events have distracted Americans from a dire emergency right here at home, right in our midst. In towns across America, our families, our friends our neighbors and our fellow Americans are faced with bankruptcies, foreclosures, unemployment and homelessness.
Do we really care that much about Muammar Gaddafi, or how much radioactivity is in the ocean off Japan? Not that much. What we care about is $5 a gallon gasoline and jobs, of losing our homes and the insanely rising food costs. We care about Social Security going bankrupt while we support illegal immigrants.
Recently, President Obama was more concerned about speaking to the American people about his NCAA bracket, then addressing the out of control spending going on right on his home court. Doesn’t he realize that we have a government spending emergency right here, right now? Doesn’t he realize that we have a massive and mushrooming deficit emergency?
We have Obamacare moving closer each day to full implementation, which will add $250 million a day to the already intolerable problem and there is Obama and the Democrats eagerly pushing the Republican House into a government shutdown.
Despite improvement in the labor market, many workers are barely treading water as their wages fail to keep up with rising prices. Average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers, including salaried employees, were flat in March from the previous month at $22.87. Wages have moved little in the past six months despite consistent job gains during that period.
Compared with a year earlier, average hourly earnings were up just 1.7% in March. Inflation is running above 2%, largely due to higher energy and food prices, which means workers’ average inflation-adjusted wages have declined.
The weakness in wages comes amid surging corporate profits and continued productivity gains. With unemployment still high—8.8% in March—employers are finding so much labor available that they are able to keep a tight lid on wages.
The modest wage growth appears to reflect lower expectations among the unemployed.
Average hourly earnings rose more than 3% annually through most of the 18-month recession from December 2007 to June 2009. Then wage growth slowed substantially. Even at lower wages, companies are likely to see an increased need for hiring. The average weekly hours of private-sector workers remained flat from a month earlier at 34.3, an improvement from the downturn and just below the prerecession level of 34.5. That suggests employers are tapping out their existing workers and might soon have to hire more.
In March, a disproportionate share of the employment gains came in sectors such as leisure and hospitality that tend to pay relatively lower wages. The largest wage gains since the recession have come in higher-paying service sectors such as information, finance and health care. Manufacturing workers saw their wages rise even as the recession accelerated. Many had cost-of-living adjustments in their contracts, so their wages climbed after energy prices surged in mid-2008
And then there’s Chicago and the state of Illinois.
Good old Chicago has had another marvelous revelation: the budget for city workers contains $18,000,000.00 a year to cover “drivers”. These people are bound by a union contract to do absolutely nothing except drive.
Here’s an example, two guys pull up to a fire hydrant. One gets out of the truck and paints the thing bright yellow. The other guy sits in the truck and watches. Or if the driver delivers workers to a more involved work site, he sits in the truck and sleeps while the other guys work. This contract is in effect until 2017.
Remember, we have a governor, Pat Quinn, (who carried only 2 counties in the entire state in the election, the counties with a vast multitude of welfare recipients) running things.
You homeowners, did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it? That’s $3,800 on a $100,000 home.
There’s much more hidden out there we don’t know about and that the media isn’t telling us about. Ice News will seek it out and report.
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