60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

[karim0028]

http://economicedge.blogspot.com/201...its-99ers.html

This saddened me when i saw it.... Its like the country is crumbling at its core.... Anyone else feel like we are whistling past the grave yard?

If anyone cares to find the original CBS link and embedded it feel free to.... I'm to damn lazy to look for it...

[pianodoctor]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

Very sad. We as itulipers knew it was coming, but it's still so sad to see it when it does. And angering to know it didn't have to happen. And maddening to see that the powers that be are still so not on the right track.

[karim0028]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

The thing that saddens me is that this is just getting started... We are no where near over with it.... Once all of these unemployment benefits expire, the cost of food rises, gas prices rise, what happens to these folks? This is like the calm before the storm; prices havent really started visibly rising; at least gas prices... Those are still pretty tame since 08... Everything else will start rising soon; commodity prices have been on a tear for ~ 6 months now, it should show up pretty soon in retail prices.

Last i recall > 60% of Americans are about 2 paychecks away from broke/homeless.... And its just starting to show up now....

[goadam1]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

It was a gut wrenching episode. If you are over 45 and fall off track, then you may be "finished."

[lomaxzoltor]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

http://economicedge.blogspot.com/201...its-99ers.html

This saddened me when i saw it.... Its like the country is crumbling at its core.... Anyone else feel like we are whistling past the grave yard?

If anyone cares to find the original CBS link and embedded it feel free to.... I'm to damn lazy to look for it...

Here's the link on CBS:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minu...page&play=true

[Rajiv]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

Here's the link on CBS:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minu...page&play=true

Embedded

[jpetr48]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

The media's job is to create fear and they have succeeded. It brings viewers and exposure like this
Yes there is a reality that workers over 40 are sometimes discriminated against. I once got wrongfully sued by an employee for discrimination - his perception not mine

The fact is this market is friend to no age group. I have seen senior executives of all ages with families prone to extended unemployment

Develop a good investment plan to get a monthly income stream and preserve capital, cut debt, brand yourself to target markets, keep learning something new in your profession every day, stop spending time looking at these threads and leave the consequences to a power higher than you ( and I do not mean the hiring manager).

[don]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

Compare the unemployed of Silicon Valley with those in the streets in France. Viva le difference?

Depending on who counts, the French left has repeatedly mobilized between 1.3 and 2.9 million people into action in over 240 cities and towns across the country. Given that the US has five times the total population of France, the equivalent mass mobilization in the US would entail between 6.5 and 14.4 million. No political movement in US history has so far come close to such numbers of mobilized, active participants. This truly mass mobilization in France began with the general strike on September 7. That action garnered a public opinion poll of 70 per cent either "supporting" or "sympathetic to" the strike movement.

The French strikes and demonstrations are coalescing around some basic demands that go far beyond the rejection of Sarkozy's demand for a two-year postponement of retirements for French workers. Contrary to so many US media reports, that particular issue was never what brought out millions of demonstrators and strikers; that was the bare tip of an iceberg. The issue that mobilizes the French is the basic question of who is to pay for (1) the collapse of global capitalism in 2008 and 2009, (2) the ongoing social and personal costs of high unemployment, loss of homes, reduction of job benefits, and the general assault on most citizens' standards of living, and (3) the costs of ending the crisis. The French masses have already absorbed and suffered the costs of (1) and (2). They have drawn the line at (3). That they now refuse.


Instead, they demand that the costs of fixing capitalism's crisis be borne chiefly by taxes on the banks, large corporations, and the wealthy. Those groups are declared to be (1) those most able to pay, (2) those who benefited most from speculations and stock market booms before the crisis began in 2007, (3) those whose investment and business activities were key causes of the crisis, and (4) those who got the biggest, earliest bailouts from governments subservient to them.

www.rdwolff.com,

[karim0028]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

The media's job is to create fear and they have succeeded. It brings viewers and exposure like this
Yes there is a reality that workers over 40 are sometimes discriminated against. I once got wrongfully sued by an employee for discrimination - his perception not mine

The fact is this market is friend to no age group. I have seen senior executives of all ages with families prone to extended unemployment

Develop a good investment plan to get a monthly income stream and preserve capital, cut debt, brand yourself to target markets, keep learning something new in your profession every day, stop spending time looking at these threads and leave the consequences to a power higher than you ( and I do not mean the hiring manager).

Alot of people did what your describing and lost alot of money.... 98% of folks have NO understanding whatsover of market dynamics, economics and can barely balance their checkbooks....


The system were in is tipped in favor of the agile speculator. There is no way to escape it... If you save you defacto lose money sitting in the bank. If you "invest"/speculate you ride it up and if you are not quick enough to get out when the getting is good; you end up riding it all the way back down...

I'm not a doomer nor do i think that its hopelessly lost. For every loser there is a winner, you just gotta keep your eyes open for new opportunities.... Almost every ituliper i would venture made money last year and the year before that and the year before that... But, then again we are not the average bunch... We are for the most part financially literate.

I just get saddened when i see folks in their 40s/50s getting the rug pulled out from under them and lose everything, bc fact of the matter is, at that age the only hope you ever have of getting any where near a comfortable retirement is to start your own business...

No way in hell will they be able to do it working a 9-5..... These folks will for the most part end up living with their children.

[Chris Coles]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

From my viewpoint the most stark aspect was the JP Morgan advert right at the beginning. They really do not see themselves as having any part in the collapse.

[don]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

From my viewpoint the most stark aspect was the JP Morgan advert right at the beginning. They really do not see themselves as having any part in the collapse.

I thought it was, fittingly (Mad Men have such wicked humor), a Viagra commercial. It's been decades since the American middleclass got it up.

[Rajiv]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

Also a take on the issue (including the video) from Huffington Post

One out of every 34 Americans who earned wages in 2008 earned absolutely nothing -- not one cent -- in 2009.

The stunning figure was released earlier this month by the Social Security Administration, but apparently went unreported until it appeared today on Tax.com in a column by Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston.

It's not just every 34th earner whose financial situation has been upended by the financial crisis. Average wages, median wages, and total wages have all declined -- except at the very top, where they leaped dramatically, increasing five-fold.

Johnston writes that while the number of Americans earning more than $50 million fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 in 2009, those that remained at the top increased their income from an average of $91.2 million in 2008 to almost $519 million.


The wealth is astounding, says Johnston. "That's nearly $10 million in weekly pay!... These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers."

Johston sees the depressing figures as a result of government tax policies maintained by politicians with an eye on re-election, not good government:
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[don]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston ... sees the depressing figures as a result of government tax policies maintained by politicians with an eye on re-election, not good government.

If this is indicative of his "work" there's no mystery why he won a Pulitzer.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

I have been unemployed several times, and will be again in three weeks. It can be horrifically stressful.
Now that I have "street cred", I will state my reaction to the 60 minutes:

1) How is it that a financial analyst more than 50 years old does not have enough savings to last two years, even getting unemployment benefits?
I would not hire someone like that!
We had way too many "real estate firms" and if a financial analyst was unable to see that it was a bubble, they should be unemployed.

2) How does a personnel manager get $200k/ year, and they also have insufficient savings. Only the most proficient engineers get salaries at that level.
How should a "PM" get paid more than most engineers? Instead of saving from thier away thier massively overpayed salaries, they squander it on a huge lifestyle.

3) Only one of the people was an engineer "fibre optics manager". Assuming he was technical, it was still a good move to take the target job. Nobody can spend 40 hours
a week job hunting.

[Rajiv]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

If this is indicative of his "work" there's no mystery why he won a Pulitzer.

From David Cay Johnston's article

During the years from 1950 to 1980, the share of total income going to those at the top declined, and the real incomes of the vast majority grew much more quickly than did nearly all incomes at the very top.

In those years, America had the money, and vision, to invest in the future through education, research, and infrastructure.

In nearly three decades of Reaganism, however, we have become a society of mine-here-and-now. Now what we hear from Washington is about today, not tomorrow. War without sacrifice (or a congressional declaration). Savings without interest. More government services while lowering taxes.

In this era, the incomes of the vast majority have barely grown while incomes at the top have soared. Reaganism has trimmed the base of the income ladder while placing a much heavier weight on the top. Narrowing the base while adding weight to the apex does not make a stable structure. Here are some numbers that may surprise those ages 50 and under, taken from the latest analysis of tax return data by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, who have won worldwide praise for their groundbreaking work examining changes in income distribution:

Bottom 90 Percent Income Share Changes

1950	64.44 percent
1980	65.37 percent
Change	+0.93 percentage points increase
2008 Change	51.77 percent
Since 1980	-13.59 percentage points decrease

So a three-decade era in which the bottom 90 percent increased their share of all income slightly was followed by a 28-year period at whose end income had fallen sharply. The 2009 data show that it has only gotten worse since then.

While the vast majority must get by on a much smaller share of the national income pie, the re-slicing resulted in concentrated benefits at the top. The top 10 percent enjoyed a nearly 40 percent increase in their share of the income pie. But within the top 10 percent, the re-slicing of the income pie between 1980 and 2008 was also heavily weighted to the top.

Those in the 90th to 95th percentile income category saw their income share rise by just 0.24 percentage points. The 95th to 99th income category got 2.43 percentage points more slice of the national income pie.

That means that of the 13.59 percentage points of increased pie going to the top 10 percent of Americans, the top 1 percent earned almost 11 percentage points of it. Now look at how the pie was sliced within the top 1 percent:

Income Share Gains, in Percentage Points,
in 2008 Over 1980 for Top 1% of Earners

99 to 99.5	99.5 to 99.9	99.9 to 99.99	99.99 to 100
1.21	2.73	3.23	3.76

Notice that as you move to the right, the numbers of taxpayers shrink, but the percentage points grow. The theme: more and more for fewer and fewer.

Income shares tell us about how groups are doing relative to one another. But you can’t spend income shares, so let’s look at incomes.

From 1950 to 1980, the average income of the bottom 90 percent grew tremendously. Not so since then:

1950 1980 Increase % Increase $17,719 $30,941 $13,222 74.6%

1980 2008 Increase % Increase $30,941 $31,244 $303 1%

Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher, instead of just 1 percent more.

That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week — less debt, more savings, and more consumption.

So how about the top? This is where the changes in incomes in these two eras become interesting, very interesting.

What the figures below show is that the closer you got to the top of the ladder in the era from 1950 to 1980, the smaller your relative increase in income, except for the very top, whose gains were slightly more than those of the bottom 90 percent. Since 1980, however, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes go nowhere, while on the highest steps of the income ladder, the further up you are, the greater your gains.
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