Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The rich are getting richer,

the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is getting squeezed out of existence. Right?

4 comments:

Chalicechick said...

So, how much debt did those people get into to buy all that stuff?

I find the video's omission of that information quite telling.

CC

Joel Monka said...

Quite a bit, on the average. But that's a factor of how much junk one buys, which doesn't refute his point of how much cheaper things are today in terms of hours worked. I remember my father screaming over us kids breaking his electric drill when I was eight years old, telling us it had cost $50 (40 hours labor at minimum wage). Today, one can get a Black & Decker electric drill with more speeds, and reverse, for $16 (3 hours labor) at Walmart.

Robin Edgar said...

Right. . .

And how many lost middle-class American jobs is that $16 B&D drill worth Joel? To say nothing of all the other manufactured goods that are now being made in China, India and elsewhere. . .

Joel Monka said...

Well, under both Clinton and Bush, unemployment has been running between 4-6%, which is statistically nil, given our fluid and mobile society, and on top of that we've found work for 12,000,000 illegal aliens. We could restrict Chinese trade, like England and France do- and their unemployment rates are never below 25%, and are currently over 30%. The issue of unemployment is a little more complicated than that.