zillaorange

The map is BRIGHT RED !!! CNN is hoping, wishing, dreaming !!! You know what you guys need ? Some new coloring books. Your reading level is 3rd grade maybe 4th. Go back & read my post again, all I provided WERE FACTS !!! That's if you read it at all in your haste to try to look half assed instead of asses !

Seth

Several friends who are middle class tell me different.

And 40 years ago we had the same situation that the TaxCuts® have engendered today, which is an employees' market. This occurs when there are more job openings than there are applicants, and employers are compelled to offer more competitive compensation.

That works much better, incidentally, than intrusive government artificially raising the minimum wage instead of allowing the marketplace to do what it does best.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

Are you truly so dumb you think trump gives a rats ass about our nation or his bass??


This is an election day and you are have a snit fit about and event 5 or more years ago.. why???


What are you trying to distract from??

get with it, talk about today or find a coffee shop to talk history with someone else..


this is a better subject for today.. an election to think about and use logic.. I can post much more on the TPP if you are interested, which i doubt very much..


The new TPP, as ratified by the original member states and some new countries that have agreed to come on board, has removed all of the requirements that the United States needed to make it beneficial for them. This makes sense. Why would we keep these changes for a country that is no longer involved?

This puts the United States in a really tough position. Now, considering that the countries involved include its largest trading partners like Canada, Mexico, and Japan, as well as countries like Australia, Vietnam, and potentially even Korea, American exports will be at a huge disadvantage considering trade between these countries will have reduced tariffs while American exports will be tariffed. American products in these countries will cost more compared to products from member states.

In the future, if the United States wants to get involved in the TPP, it will have to make some serious concessions to make it palatable, or even viable, in order to get the amendments that were originally there into the agreement. If Trump had not pulled out of it, the United States would have had a far better deal by remaining involved.

This is just another way that Trump has shown he does not know what he's doing. His supporters may not realize this just yet, as the results of his policies have yet to truly be felt in most of the American public, but his actions have seriously left the United States in a very very weakened position. His idiocy has undermined his own country.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

It is good that you have several friends.. also that they are making a good living.. but we must consider all Americans not only the exceptions..


every thing you have been told to embrace helps other become rich.. if you are part of the wage earning middle class..


Wages in the US have been flat for a lot longer than 20 years. Closer to 40 years if you want to trace the trend to its origin. That origin of course was the promotion of the economic nonsense of the Reagan administration. That was the turning point at which the once prosperous US Middle Class came under withering fire from the wealthy corporate sector, and has been losing ground ever since. It is not a mystery…no magical “market” leprechauns have anything to do with it, and it is really the pinnacle of simplicity to understand, once you sweep all of the economic voodoo and fairy tales away.

Reagan, the corporate handlers who told him what to do actually, convinced the nation that cutting taxes for the rich would create jobs. As preposterous as this is, there are still, obviously, many who believe it to this day, even after 40 years of straight economic decline of the US Working Class. As mountains of wealth were transferred to those who were already rich via “tax breaks” the wealth that the Working Class took for granted began to slip away. Workers lost tax deductions that they used to enjoy, so that the wealthy could keep their tax breaks. Healthcare costs began their climb to the stratosphere, and more and more Working Class folks had to pay more of their wages to healthcare, or they had to do without it altogether. Almost every benefit that once was enjoyed by our Working Class, has been dispensed with. Workers no longer have healthcare coverage, sick leave pay, paid vacations, or pensions. And while the cost of living steadily rises, wages for decent hard working Americans have not even kept pace.

Over time, the right of Workers to bargain collectively with their employers for decent wages have been stripped from our Working Class, along with every other benefit that used to be considered a “right” for our Workers. Before Reagan, approximately 35% of US workers were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Now fewer than 9% are.

So, wages in the US have remained “flat” over almost four decades, primarily because US workers have lost the ability to negotiate fair wages via collective bargaining. Wages have also remained flat because increases in the cost of living have erased any gains made in wages, and because all of the benefits that used to be associated with employment, such as healthcare coverage, on the job benefits, and pensions, have all been taken away from the US worker.

There is nothing difficult to understand about this at all. The wealthy class has become richer by magnitudes since the election of Ronald Reagan, and the US Working Class has been in steady decline for the same amount of time.

This is not a coincidence.

zillaorange

BLAH BLAH BLAH, c'mon back after you get your new coloring book !

debeda

Seth

I didn't know he played. Electric or acoustic?

Nickolai

The nationalist socialist workers party name is miss -leading the Nazis were an extreme right wing fascist party backed by wealthy western industrialist. Some leading American Nazis were Henry Ford. Randolph Hearst, GW Bush's grand father Prescott Bush who sold Nazi bonds through his wall street bank Brown Brothers Harriman. US corporations such as Kodak. Coca Cola, Chase Manhattan, as well as wealthy German industrialist such as the steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. The stock market crash in 1929 made an already suffering Germany miserable which allowed Hitler to rise to power and be named Chancellor in 1933. But a bankrupt Germany was able to re arm and build a powerful military machine that was invading its neighbors by 1937 just four years later the money came from wealthy western industrialists who saw Hitler and the Nazis as a strong buffer between them and the communist in the soviet Union who had assassinated the Romanovs and they believed if a workers revolution could do that to the Romanovs they could do it to them

Seth

I've seen the difference in a couple of modest Investments of my own, and besides knowing numerous middle class folks and some small business owners, I see a whole lot of other indicators, like beau coups more help wanted signs and a hell of a lot more dealer's plates on new cars.

In addition, clients are expanding their businesses as well, hiring more people, adding benefits and increasing wages.

I really don't pay a lot of attention to polls, because they are generally selective about who and where they "poll" and generally call during the day, when those whose respective input counts the most are at work.

I prefer seeing with my own eyes, and they haven't failed me yet in all my 63 years.

I've lived through the marketplace for 47 years, including four in the US Coast Guard and seen/experienced every phase since being on my own at 16 (finished high school while working nights and weekends as a handyman for a chain of residential hotels, living in one unit), and I've had a lot of different types of work experience that has taken me all over, so there's not much any "polls" can tell me that I haven't learned to see, research or figure out for myself.

And one thing my life experiences have taught me is that this country was doing just fine before a bunch of useful idiots, as Lenin called them, decided to try and change it with identity politics, social justice, oversized, intrusive government and abandonment of sound immigration laws.

debeda

Very well said, Seth! It's interesting how the dems always try to demean Trump supporters as "low educated". What you describe is a heck of a lot of personal responsibility and self-motivation. Ya know, like the people who began and also immigrated (legally) to this country.

Seth

That's a big 10-4!

straightUp Loc: California

Masterfully? You give them WAY too much credit. There are a lot of ignorant sheep in this country. You just have to know who they are and the rest is easy. It's really doesn't take a mastermind to scare them.

Also, it's not fascism toward blacks... It's just fascism. Fascism is a method of taking control from a democracy and putting it in the hands of a tyranny based on an appeal to emotions like hatred. It just so happens that ethnic divides are some of the easiest ways to accomplish that. In the U.S. it's pretty easy to tap into racist hatred against blacks for that purpose. In mid-century Germany, it was the Jews.

RRRoger

We need to vote out the corrupt Socialist Democrat Establishment Elite and Primary out the RINO Establishment Elite

dongreen76

What Hitler did to the Jews was fascism,fascism is that doctrine or that political philosophy that targets a specific group of people and decrees that they be put under regimental control or flat out exterminated.
There was political Rhetoric cica the eighties that was suggestive of just that be done to blacks.The social condition that they are in is remnants [have you observed some of their behaviour and converse with some of them] You would be witnessing the residue of policies implemented against them that demoralized and degraded them to such a degree,they no longer are a functional civilized part of society.

straightUp Loc: California

I agree with your statement about the polls. It's too bad your wisdom in that regard doesn't carry over to your assessment of the economy. Seriously, it's the same argument. Polls are misleading because they are mere samples. By the same token all your "indications" of a better economy are likewise mere samples.

Also keep in mind that the economy has been on the upswing since Obama's first term, many if not all of the the added jobs since Trump took office are actually riding that wave. There is no real indication that Trump or the Republicans have done ANYTHING significant to claim credit for ANY of it. In fact there is a dangerous risk that the economy is getting too hot and we're setting ourselves up for another crash. If Trump had brains he would be talking about stabilization, instead of bragging about record breaking figures.

Also, if you're thinking the stock market is a reflection of the economy then you really have no clue at all. The stock market has almost nothing to do with the economy. It's supposed to and it once did, but the stock market and the economy have been diverging for the last 30 years. At this point there's very little in common and it's becoming a factor in many economic predictions expressed in terms of r=returns (stock market) vs g=growth (economy). I don't know if you've seen this ... (r < g) but that's basically a expression of wealth concentration where capital returns on investments are greater than the actual growth of the economy, which means money is being shifted from the working class to the capitalist class.


So how old does that make you if your life experience predates the people Lenin was calling useful idiots?

LOL (Just kidding, I know what you mean.) ...And while I agree with you that Republican politicians haven't always leaned so hard on identity politics to leverage the support of useful idiots like they do today nor were they always such agents of oversized, intrusive governments, always pushing for laws that say what people can smoke or who they can marry. Oh, wait you probably meant Democrats... well they do it too. Let's not be hypocrites. But the fact is you're assessment of how well this country was doing when you were fixing hotel toilets is just as selective as your assessment on the economy. YOU might think the country was doing fine, but what you really mean is that YOU were doing fine. Black people, not so much. Maybe you think black lives don't matter, but like it or not they are part of this country.

Anyway, you get my point. The history of this entire nation isn't defined by your personal experience. To see the bigger picture you have to get over yourself. Try it sometime. ;)