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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@hotmail.com href="mailto:tanstl@hotmail.com">David Sladky</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, August 20, 2013 11:34 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Obama Destroys the Middle Class</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><A
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/obamas-destroys-the-middle-class/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/obamas-destroys-the-middle-class/</A><BR><BR><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt" size=4>The White House's Economic Agenda</FONT><BR><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><B>Obama Destroys the Middle
Class</B></FONT><BR>by MIKE WHITNEY<BR><BR>According to a survey conducted by
Gallup on August 15, 2013, Obama’s Economic Approval rating has slipped to 35%.
A full two-thirds of the American people are now dissatisfied with Obama’s
performance vis a vis the economy. The survey mirrors the results of an earlier
poll (Aug 12) which found that a mere "Twenty-two percent of Americans say they
are satisfied with the direction of the country… Three-quarters of Americans are
now dissatisfied with the nation’s course." (Gallup)<BR><BR>The surveys show
that people are finally beginning to realize that Obama has been an unmitigated
disaster and that the propaganda about economic recovery is just meaningless
hype. To underline how bad things really are, consider
this:<BR><BR> "Over the last six months, of the net job
creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work," said Keith Hall, a senior
researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center quoted by McClatchy
Washington Bureau. Hall was head of the US Bureau of Labor (BLS) Statistics from
2008 to 2012.<BR><BR> Citing the BLS Household Survey, Hall
said that over the past six months 963,000 more people reported that they were
employed while 936,000 of them reported they were in part-time jobs. Hall
continued, "That is a really high number for a six-month period. I am not sure
that has ever happened over six months before." ("Report: 97 percent of new US
jobs are part-time", World Socialist Web Site)<BR><BR>The only jobs being
created under Obama are low-paying service sector positions that don’t pay
enough to meet the rent. Which is why a record number of young people are living
at home. Have you seen this?<BR><BR> "Last year, a record 36
percent of people 18 to 31 years old — roughly the age range of the generation
nicknamed the millennials — were living in their parents’ homes, according to a
new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. …And despite the
frequent stories of recent college graduates stuck on their parents’ couches (or
in their basements or above their garages), it is actually young people without
bachelor’s degrees who are most likely to be living at home…." ("Millennials, in
Their Parents’ Basements", Catherine Rampell, New York Times)<BR><BR>Don’t kid
yourself, it’s nearly as bad for college grads. The only difference is that
after you’ve wracked up $40,000 or $50,000 in student loans, you can proudly
display your sheepskin on the wall in your Dad’s attic where you spend your days
combing the internet for jobs that no longer exist in the good old
USA.<BR><BR>And another thing: The only reason unemployment has gone down at all
is because so many people have stopped looking for work altogether and fallen
off the radar. If the BLS counted these lost souls, we’d be looking at 11.2%
unemployment instead of the bogus 7.4 percent figure. But who cares what the
numbers are at this point. What matters is that the economy stinks, and the
smiling idiot at the top deserves a lot of the credit for that.<BR><BR>Did you
know that according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, 45 percent
of working-age households have no retirement savings at all? On top of that,
high unemployment and hard times have forced more and more people to dip into
their 401Ks just to make ends meet, which means that things are worse than the
numbers indicate. Has Obama made any effort to address the pension catastrophe
facing baby boomers and Generation Xers in the years ahead?<BR><BR>Sure, he has.
He appointed a commission of deficit hawks (Bowles-Simpson) to figure out clever
ways to cheat people out of their Social Security. That’s why Obama’s approval
rating is circling the plughole, because people are finally wising-up to what a
phony he is. Check this out from Dean Baker:<BR><BR> "It is
unfortunate that President Obama has proposed a budget that has substantial cuts
to Social Security. The vast majority of seniors are already struggling. The
proposed cuts would be a reduction in their income of more than 2 percent. By
contrast, his tax increase last fall cut the after-tax income of the typical
wealthy household by less than 0.6 percent…<BR><BR> President
Obama has accepted the agenda of the Washington elite, putting cuts to Social
Security and Medicare at the center of his budget and offering little that will
help to speed the growth of the economy and create jobs." ("Obama Accepts the
Agenda of Misguided Washington Elites", Dean Baker, CEPR)<BR><BR>Amen, to that,
Dean. And have you noticed the strong growth surge under Obama?<BR><BR>No, of
course not, because there hasn’t been one. The second quarter (Q2) GDP just
clocked in at a miserable 1.7 percent, most of which was due to an unexpected
uptick in inventories. Absent that, GDP would have been below 1 percent which
would be an embarrassment for anyone except the narcissist in chief. Get a load
of this from Nick Beams at the WSWS:<BR><BR> "Over the past
three quarters the US economy has grown at an annualized rate of only 0.96
percent, exposing the claims of the Obama administration that a "recovery" is
underway. The fact that the US economy is able to achieve a growth rate just one
sixth of the post-World War II average indicates that deep structural changes
have taken place within the American economy and anything approaching previous
growth rates will not be seen again." ("US growth and jobs figures point to
continuing economic breakdown", Nick Beams, World Socialist Web
Site)<BR><BR>Astonishing! Under 1 percent GDP for the last three quarters. What
a joke.<BR><BR>The reason the economy isn’t growing is because the people in
charge don’t want it to grow. It’s that simple. I mean, how hard is it to boost
GDP: You spend a little money, you run up the budget deficits and "Viola", the
economy grows! It ain’t rocket science. What Obama and his paymasters want, is a
subtler form of "structural adjustment". (Subtler than the Euro-model, that is.)
This is typical of the Democrats; they’re always trying to prove they can
implement the same hard-right policies with more finesse than their blundering
counterparts. But it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Everyone knows
that the middle class is getting clobbered while all the gravy is flowing to the
parasites on top.<BR><BR>Here’s something else from Beams article concerning the
"disconnect between the level of profits and the rate of
investment":<BR><BR> "While pre-tax corporate profits are at
record highs, amounting to 12 percent of GDP, net investment is barely 4 percent
of output…. Increased profits are not being used to expand production, as took
place in the past, but are increasingly being used to finance stock buybacks, so
as to increase the rate of return on shareholders’
capital…<BR><BR> This result indicates that rising profits are
no longer being produced by an expansion of the market, as they were in the
past, but are increasingly the result of cost-cutting, as firms raise their
bottom line by grabbing an increased share of a stagnant or contracting market
from their rivals. In other words, the once "normal" process of capitalist
accumulation—increasing investment leading to an expanding market, higher
profits and further investment—has completely broken down." ("US growth and jobs
figures point to continuing economic breakdown", World Socialist Web
Site)<BR><BR>This is more than a minor technicality. If corporate profits are
being recycled into stock buybacks and dividends instead of capital improvements
and investment, then Obama’s deficit cutting policies are actually squelching
growth rather than fueling it. Now take a look at this from Media
Matters:<BR><BR> "The Congressional Budget Office has
estimated that the sequester "will halve U.S. growth in 2013." MarketWatch
explained:<BR><BR> "U.S. economic growth in 2013 will be 1.4%,
the Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday….. CBO said however that
growth would be about 1.5 percentage points faster in 2013 if not for fiscal
tightening including the so-called budget sequester." ("WSJ Ignores Experts To
Downplay Harmful Economic Consequences Of Sequester", Media
Matters)<BR><BR>Looks like the CBO nailed it, doesn’t it? After all, there’s
only a small difference between 1.7 percent and the predicted 1.4 percent. For
all practical purposes, they’re the same. The economy is still not creating
enough jobs, growth, or momentum. The world’s biggest economy is essentially
dead-in-the-water, just where Obama wants it to be. That way he can compress
wages, increase hardship, and further concentrate wealth and power at the top.
Hurrah for Obama, Champion of the 1 percent!<BR><BR>Most people have figured out
what’s going on by now. Our charismatic hologram president has led us down the
primrose path. All the promises of hope and change were pure malarkey, not a
word of truth to any of it. 10 million workers still can’t find a job, 47
million people are on foodstamps, 5 million borrowers are in some stage of
default on their mortgages, the share of productivity gains going to workers is
smaller now than anytime on record, "four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with
joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their
lives" (Associated Press), and according to the Fed’s 80-page tri-annual Survey
of Consumer Finances, the median net worth of middle class families in the US
fell by 38.9 percent between 2007 and 2010? while "the median value of a US home
dropped by 42 percent."<BR><BR>Face it, Obama has been a disaster. Discretionary
federal spending is lower than it’s been in a half-century, while the budget
deficits are falling faster than anytime since WW2. What does that mean? It
means Obama is sucking the stimulus out of the economy to put more pressure on
wages and to reduce working people to grinding third-world poverty. It’s a
stealth version of starve the beast, and it’s working like a charm. The middle
class is taking it in the stern-sheets while Obama’s moneybags buddies laugh all
the way to the bank.<BR><BR>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a
contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. Whitney’s story on declining
wages for working class Americans appears in the June issue of CounterPunch
magazine. He can be reached at
fergiewhitney@msn.com.<BR><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>