28% of US Labor is expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020 according to the EPI and is the same percentage as what existed in 2010. While real median hourly wages on average dropped 2.8% for all occupations between 2009 and 2012, lower wage occupations saw a much larger drop of 5% or more for […]
Lead story at CNN was this: Washington (CNN) — An internal Veterans Affairs audit released Monday said tens of thousands of newly returning veterans wait at least 90 days for medical care, while even more who signed up in the VA system over the past 10 years never got an immediate appointment they requested. I […]
Novice Tea-bagger Representative candidate Dave Brat just handed Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor a defeat in the Virginia GOP primary. A $200,000 campaign fund challenging a 6-digit campaign fund. Apparently, Cantor was not backwards, conservative enough for the 7th District Tea-baggers. “‘There needs to be a change,’ said Joe Mullins, who voted in Chesterfield […]
This was an answer in the local Weekly Reader to a couple of others who insisted VA healthcare should be disassembled and handed over to the private sector. I guess I could have said “nuts; I did say “nonsense.” “All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re […]
I chased prisoners in 71 at Camp Lejeune as a sergeant and stood duty NCO at the Barrel Club Leeward side Gtmo, Cuba 1970 as a Corporal. It was not much fun dealing with those being discharged or drunk. I think some have the right idea on how to handle hostile drunks. Enjoy. Hat Tip: […]
June’s issue of Atlantic Monthly brings to the reader a series of graphs as presented by Derek Thompson’s “How the Rich Shall Inherit the Earth”. The article gives a pictorial representation of what has taken place since the eighties in skewing income to a small, very small group of individuals numbering < than a hundred […]
BLS economist Shawn Sprague writes What Can Labor Productivity Tell Us About the U.S. Economy? Labor worked the exact same number of hours in 1998 as they did in 2013 or ~194 billion hours. While there was no growth in the number of hours worked, the Non-Institutional Civilian Population grew by 40 million people, and […]
It has been the political right’s mantra of welfare and charity being best done by private organizations rather than be government sponsored. 50 years have passed since President Johnson declared war on poverty. It was declared an abject failure by the right as it did not make people independent nor did it make people want […]
Greg Sargent gets a great nugget from Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who “recently conducted a statewide poll in Kentucky for an unnamed client and found that Kynect polls very positively, in contrast to Obamacare, which is underwater.” Kynect is the Kentucky version of the Affordable Care Act exchange. To the extent the polling is correct, […]
This particular post was first picked up at Economist’s View and fits with Sandwichman’s posts on Labor. I have been watching Participation Rate in conjunction with U3 since 2001 along with others such as Laurent Guerby and while the US has decreased in the numbers of people in the Civilian Labor Force, our counterparts in […]