The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
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Payment of OT is expected when someone puts in those hours, I sure don't see an issue with that. With that in mind, it would be interesting to understand if there is a differential increase in the income taxes for those that get paid the OT.
Back in the day, I knew some guys working at a 24 hour mfg operation. The company wanted to 12 hour shifts, but the employees basically refused because they paid a higher tax rate on the OT income (or so they claimed).... Company went to 3 shifts and basically saved some cash in the process.
It was an interesting situation
How 'temporary worker' programs are being abused by employers to lower wages
There is no doubt that H-1B visas — temporary work permits for specially talented foreign professionals — are instead being used by American employers to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Abbott Laboratories, the health care conglomerate based in Illinois, recently became the latest large American company to use the visas in this way, following the lead of other employers, including Southern California Edison, Northeast Utilities (now Eversource Energy), Disney, Toys “R” Us and New York Life.
Lawmakers from both parties have denounced the visa abuse, but it is increasingly widespread, mainly because of loopholes in the law. For example, in most instances, companies that hire H-1B workers are not required to recruit Americans before hiring from overseas. Similarly, companies are able to skirt the rules for using H-1B workers by outsourcing the actual hiring of those workers to Tata, Infosys and other temporary staffing firms, mostly based in India.
Criticism of the visa process has been muted, and reform has moved slowly, partly because laid-off American workers — mostly tech employees replaced by Indian guest workers — have not loudly protested. Their reticence does not mean acceptance or even resignation. As explained in The Times on Sunday by Julia Preston, most of the displaced workers had to sign agreements prohibiting them from criticizing their former employers as a condition of receiving severance pay. The gag orders have largely silenced the laid-off employees, while allowing the employers to publicly defend their actions as legal, which is technically accurate, given the loopholes in the law.
The conversation, however, is changing. Fourteen former tech workers at Abbott, including one who forfeited a chunk of severance pay rather than sign a so-called nondisparagement agreement, have filed federal claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying they were discriminated against because of their ages and American citizenship. Tech workers from Disney have filed federal lawsuits accusing the company and two global outsourcing firms of colluding to supplant Americans with H-1B workers. Former employees of Eversource Energy have also begun to challenge their severance-related gag orders by publicly discussing their dismissals and replacement by foreign workers on H-1B and other visas.
Congressional leaders of both parties have questioned the nondisparagement agreements. Bipartisan legislation in the Senate would revise visa laws to allow former employees to protest their layoffs. Beyond that, what Congress really needs to do is close the loopholes that allow H-1B abuses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/opinion/visa-abuses-harm-american-workers.html
There is no doubt that H-1B visas — temporary work permits for specially talented foreign professionals — are instead being used by American employers to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Abbott Laboratories, the health care conglomerate based in Illinois, recently became the latest large American company to use the visas in this way, following the lead of other employers, including Southern California Edison, Northeast Utilities (now Eversource Energy), Disney, Toys “R” Us and New York Life.
Lawmakers from both parties have denounced the visa abuse, but it is increasingly widespread, mainly because of loopholes in the law. For example, in most instances, companies that hire H-1B workers are not required to recruit Americans before hiring from overseas. Similarly, companies are able to skirt the rules for using H-1B workers by outsourcing the actual hiring of those workers to Tata, Infosys and other temporary staffing firms, mostly based in India.
Criticism of the visa process has been muted, and reform has moved slowly, partly because laid-off American workers — mostly tech employees replaced by Indian guest workers — have not loudly protested. Their reticence does not mean acceptance or even resignation. As explained in The Times on Sunday by Julia Preston, most of the displaced workers had to sign agreements prohibiting them from criticizing their former employers as a condition of receiving severance pay. The gag orders have largely silenced the laid-off employees, while allowing the employers to publicly defend their actions as legal, which is technically accurate, given the loopholes in the law.
The conversation, however, is changing. Fourteen former tech workers at Abbott, including one who forfeited a chunk of severance pay rather than sign a so-called nondisparagement agreement, have filed federal claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying they were discriminated against because of their ages and American citizenship. Tech workers from Disney have filed federal lawsuits accusing the company and two global outsourcing firms of colluding to supplant Americans with H-1B workers. Former employees of Eversource Energy have also begun to challenge their severance-related gag orders by publicly discussing their dismissals and replacement by foreign workers on H-1B and other visas.
Congressional leaders of both parties have questioned the nondisparagement agreements. Bipartisan legislation in the Senate would revise visa laws to allow former employees to protest their layoffs. Beyond that, what Congress really needs to do is close the loopholes that allow H-1B abuses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/opinion/visa-abuses-harm-american-workers.html
Two decades ago, this blue-collar city of wide streets and two-story storefronts hummed with commerce. Factories, mostly textile mills, employed a quarter of the workforce and the county unemployment rate had fallen to as low as 4.2 percent by 1997. At a community meeting at the North Lake Country Club, mill owners and bankers sang the praises of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which three years earlier had pushed wide open the doors of trade with Canada and Mexico.
Tom Fitch did not blend in. Amid a sea of suits, the sign-shop owner stood out in his blue jeans and ball cap.
“Here, these guys were saying how their profits had increased, and I stood up and asked them why they couldn’t see what was in front of their faces: This was going to destroy our town,” recalls Mr. Fitch.
He turned out to be more prescient than the bankers. Shelby went on to lose 40 percent of its factory workers between 1999 and 2014. Adjusted for inflation, income for the typical middle-income household dropped 20 percent (nationally, it dropped, too, but at only half that rate), while the poverty rate soared to 29 percent, nearly double the US average. Once China gained preferential access to US markets in 2001, Shelby and surrounding Cleveland County never again saw unemployment fall below 5 percent.
Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on current trade deals match “what I feel in my heart,” says Fitch, whose sign shop still operates in Shelby, though the country club has closed.
Debate over the pros and cons of freer trade has moved from the kitchen table to the political stage. Clearly, it has helped China and much of Asia, lifting hundreds of millions of workers out of poverty, as well as American consumers, who have saved many millions of dollars by buying foreign electronics, cars, and furniture for less than if they were made domestically.
But workers should have benefited, too, by moving to more productive jobs, according to orthodox economic theory. That hasn't happened, not for many lower-income workers in Britain, who voted June 23 to leave the European Union in a broad rejection of globalization, nor for their counterparts in the United States.
More than a decade after opening their doors to Chinese goods, many Americans have endured unemployment or low pay for longer than anyone expected, widening the gap between rich and poor. Except for Mr. Trump on the right and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont on the left, presidential candidates who lambasted recent trade deals, the political establishment by and large has yet to grasp the enormity of the problem.
Part 1: The harsh downside of free trade – and the glimmer of hope
Part 2: The surprising truth about American manufacturing
Part 3: What 'good' free trade looks like
Part 4: Why, this time, free trade has hit American workers so hard
Part 5: What can be done for free trade's working-class 'losers'
Why, this time, free trade has hit American workers so hard - CSMonitor.com
Tom Fitch did not blend in. Amid a sea of suits, the sign-shop owner stood out in his blue jeans and ball cap.
“Here, these guys were saying how their profits had increased, and I stood up and asked them why they couldn’t see what was in front of their faces: This was going to destroy our town,” recalls Mr. Fitch.
He turned out to be more prescient than the bankers. Shelby went on to lose 40 percent of its factory workers between 1999 and 2014. Adjusted for inflation, income for the typical middle-income household dropped 20 percent (nationally, it dropped, too, but at only half that rate), while the poverty rate soared to 29 percent, nearly double the US average. Once China gained preferential access to US markets in 2001, Shelby and surrounding Cleveland County never again saw unemployment fall below 5 percent.
Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on current trade deals match “what I feel in my heart,” says Fitch, whose sign shop still operates in Shelby, though the country club has closed.
Debate over the pros and cons of freer trade has moved from the kitchen table to the political stage. Clearly, it has helped China and much of Asia, lifting hundreds of millions of workers out of poverty, as well as American consumers, who have saved many millions of dollars by buying foreign electronics, cars, and furniture for less than if they were made domestically.
But workers should have benefited, too, by moving to more productive jobs, according to orthodox economic theory. That hasn't happened, not for many lower-income workers in Britain, who voted June 23 to leave the European Union in a broad rejection of globalization, nor for their counterparts in the United States.
More than a decade after opening their doors to Chinese goods, many Americans have endured unemployment or low pay for longer than anyone expected, widening the gap between rich and poor. Except for Mr. Trump on the right and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont on the left, presidential candidates who lambasted recent trade deals, the political establishment by and large has yet to grasp the enormity of the problem.
Part 1: The harsh downside of free trade – and the glimmer of hope
Part 2: The surprising truth about American manufacturing
Part 3: What 'good' free trade looks like
Part 4: Why, this time, free trade has hit American workers so hard
Part 5: What can be done for free trade's working-class 'losers'
Why, this time, free trade has hit American workers so hard - CSMonitor.com
You appear to be very agitated about something......
Until now, if temp workers wanted to unionize into the same bargaining units as permanent workers, both bosses—the one running the workplace, and the staffing agency “employing” the temps—had to agree. Which: Ha ha ha ha ha, yeah, no. That requirement dates back to the George W. Bush administration, of course, but now President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board has called for a return to an earlier standard:
In this new ruling from Miller & Anderson, Inc., the Board returns to a standard set in 2000, during the Clinton administration, in a case called M.B. Sturgis, Inc., which was overruled in Oakwood.
Under Sturgis, and now Miller & Anderson, permanent and jointly employed workers can negotiate in the same unit if they are employed by the same primary employer, and if they share a “community of interest.”
In a statement announcing the ruling, the NLRB said, “requiring employer consent to an otherwise appropriate bargaining unit desired by employees, Oakwood has … allowed employers to shape their ideal bargaining unit, which is precisely the opposite of what Congress intended.”
In short, this is undoing an obstacle in the way of workers organizing, taking a piece of power away from employers and giving it to workers.
NLRB Pushes Back Against Permatemps - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
you'll have the savvy and wealthy and the ignorant and poor. Fukk the middle class bunch of instigators anywho.
Alana Semuels examines (link is external) new research showing a decline in U.S. social mobility within an individual's working life:
Carr and Wiemers used earnings data to measure how fluidly people move up and down the income ladder over the course of their careers. “It is increasingly the case that no matter what your educational background is, where you start has become increasingly important for where you end,” Carr told me. “The general amount of movement around the distribution has decreased by a statistically significant amount.”
Carr and Wiemers used data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which tracks individual workers’ earnings, to examine how earnings mobility changed between 1981 and 2008. They ranked people into deciles, meaning that one group fell below the 10th percentile of earnings, another between the 10th and 20th, and so on; then they measured someone’s chances of moving from one decile to another. But the researchers wanted to see not just the probability of moving to a different income bracket over the course of a career, but also how that probability has changed over time. So they measured a given worker’s chances of moving between deciles during two periods, one from 1981 to 1996 and another from 1993 to 2008.
They found quite a disparity. “The probability of ending where you start has gone up, and the probability of moving up from where you start has gone down,” Carr said. For instance, the chance that someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above the 40th percentile decreased by 16 percent. The chance that someone starting in the middle of the earnings distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles decreased by 20 percent. Yet people who started in the seventh decile are 12 percent more likely to end up in the fifth or sixth decile—a drop in earnings—than they used to be.
Overall, the probability of someone starting and ending their career in the same decile has gone up for every income rank. “For whatever reason, there was a path upward in the earnings distribution that has been blocked for some people, or is not as steep as it used to be,” Carr said.
Carr and Wiemers used earnings data to measure how fluidly people move up and down the income ladder over the course of their careers. “It is increasingly the case that no matter what your educational background is, where you start has become increasingly important for where you end,” Carr told me. “The general amount of movement around the distribution has decreased by a statistically significant amount.”
Carr and Wiemers used data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which tracks individual workers’ earnings, to examine how earnings mobility changed between 1981 and 2008. They ranked people into deciles, meaning that one group fell below the 10th percentile of earnings, another between the 10th and 20th, and so on; then they measured someone’s chances of moving from one decile to another. But the researchers wanted to see not just the probability of moving to a different income bracket over the course of a career, but also how that probability has changed over time. So they measured a given worker’s chances of moving between deciles during two periods, one from 1981 to 1996 and another from 1993 to 2008.
They found quite a disparity. “The probability of ending where you start has gone up, and the probability of moving up from where you start has gone down,” Carr said. For instance, the chance that someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above the 40th percentile decreased by 16 percent. The chance that someone starting in the middle of the earnings distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles decreased by 20 percent. Yet people who started in the seventh decile are 12 percent more likely to end up in the fifth or sixth decile—a drop in earnings—than they used to be.
Overall, the probability of someone starting and ending their career in the same decile has gone up for every income rank. “For whatever reason, there was a path upward in the earnings distribution that has been blocked for some people, or is not as steep as it used to be,” Carr said.
I started out stealing beer from the store to sell at the rodeo.
I'm a semi-retired lawyer firmly in the 1%
Along the way there were thrills, chills, excitement, and danger. And a fair amount of racism.
I got all the sympathy in the world for people whose circumstances keep them from improving their boogaloo situation.
Except when those circumstances are "stupid and lazy."
I'm a semi-retired lawyer firmly in the 1%
Along the way there were thrills, chills, excitement, and danger. And a fair amount of racism.
I got all the sympathy in the world for people whose circumstances keep them from improving their boogaloo situation.
Except when those circumstances are "stupid and lazy."
I watched a program awhile back where it showed how much more regulations and taxes have been imposed by the Obama administration in his first 4 years as President.
While it's not just the Obama administration that's had this going on, previous governments have as well. Governments regulate and tax at their own peril and that's exactly what has happened and why corporations have left (both) Canada and the U.S. The result is that in the U.S. anyway, the middle class has been diminishing for years. So far, Canada has been doing well but additional taxes (i.e. carbon) and other regulations and/or taxes may well result in our middle class decreasing too.
We need governments to look at the long term, the affects of their rules and regulations and taxes, and how it affect the country as a whole. Unfortunately, all we have are weak, self-serving individuals who could care a less about the average Joe.
JMHO
While it's not just the Obama administration that's had this going on, previous governments have as well. Governments regulate and tax at their own peril and that's exactly what has happened and why corporations have left (both) Canada and the U.S. The result is that in the U.S. anyway, the middle class has been diminishing for years. So far, Canada has been doing well but additional taxes (i.e. carbon) and other regulations and/or taxes may well result in our middle class decreasing too.
We need governments to look at the long term, the affects of their rules and regulations and taxes, and how it affect the country as a whole. Unfortunately, all we have are weak, self-serving individuals who could care a less about the average Joe.
JMHO
The middle class has become an encumbrance to the rightful evolution of the upper. All that is realy required is a vast servile lower class bred and fed to maintain the gardens and avenues. I am a committed environmentalist and land barron.
Rexnord Bearings has officially decided to pull out of Indianapolis and move hundreds of jobs to Mexico, according to United Steel Workers Union President Chuck Jones.
Jones said the union met with Rexnord officials today. He said the company decided to move forward with its plans to have 300 union jobs and 75-80 supervisory jobs moved to Mexico.
According to Jones, the manufacturing company cited the wage difference as the reason they are moving. In Indianapolis, workers were making $25 per hour, plus benefits. The workers in Mexico will be making $2.50-$3 per hour, plus benefits.
The move is tentatively set to begin in April and be done by June 2017. More details on dates and times are expected Tuesday.
The union will also work with Rexnord Tuesday to secure help for the hundreds of employees who will soon be out of a job.
Employees impacted by the decision protested outside the company’s west side building.
After Carrier decided to leave Indianapolis for Mexico, Mayor Joe Hogsett set up a task force to help prevent other companies, like Rexnord, from doing the same.
Hogsett issued the following statement:
Rexnord officially decides to leave Indy for Mexico, taking 375 jobs with it | CBS 4 - Indianapolis News, Weather, Traffic and Sports | WTTV
Jones said the union met with Rexnord officials today. He said the company decided to move forward with its plans to have 300 union jobs and 75-80 supervisory jobs moved to Mexico.
According to Jones, the manufacturing company cited the wage difference as the reason they are moving. In Indianapolis, workers were making $25 per hour, plus benefits. The workers in Mexico will be making $2.50-$3 per hour, plus benefits.
The move is tentatively set to begin in April and be done by June 2017. More details on dates and times are expected Tuesday.
The union will also work with Rexnord Tuesday to secure help for the hundreds of employees who will soon be out of a job.
Employees impacted by the decision protested outside the company’s west side building.
After Carrier decided to leave Indianapolis for Mexico, Mayor Joe Hogsett set up a task force to help prevent other companies, like Rexnord, from doing the same.
Hogsett issued the following statement:
I am incredibly disappointed in Rexnord’s decision to disregard the experience, the investment, the sacrifice and the good faith efforts of their long-time employees with the decision to uproot this plant and move 300 good-paying Indianapolis jobs to Mexico.
From the beginning, I’ve made clear that my top priority is the well-being of the families affected. That is why, nearly a month ago, we expanded the City’s Carrier Task Force to begin marshalling local, state and federal resources to aid Rexnord employees. Despite today’s announcement, we will continue to work with community and union leaders to connect affected workers with the job training and assistance they need during this difficult time. In addition, we will begin the process of seeking to recover for the taxpayers of Marion County any and all applicable financial incentives that have been provided to Rexnord over the years.
Rexnord did not immediately reply to our request for a statement.From the beginning, I’ve made clear that my top priority is the well-being of the families affected. That is why, nearly a month ago, we expanded the City’s Carrier Task Force to begin marshalling local, state and federal resources to aid Rexnord employees. Despite today’s announcement, we will continue to work with community and union leaders to connect affected workers with the job training and assistance they need during this difficult time. In addition, we will begin the process of seeking to recover for the taxpayers of Marion County any and all applicable financial incentives that have been provided to Rexnord over the years.
Rexnord officially decides to leave Indy for Mexico, taking 375 jobs with it | CBS 4 - Indianapolis News, Weather, Traffic and Sports | WTTV
Automation is one of the biggest culprits. Unfortunately, you have zero chance of changing that onslaught. Ultimately, it'll put the Chinese worker out of business, as well. .... "Labour saving devices" even sofware that cuts out the draftsman, the Engineeer, the Tax Accountant, increasingly, the Lawyer,attack the educated middle class head on and there will more and more professions replaced by computer algorythms in the future.
Back in the Seventies, the so called "Futurists" went on and on about the wonderful leisure society that automation would bring. We'd hardly have to work, at all! What Alvin Tofler, et. al. failed to pick up on is that no one is going to pay you to be leisurely. Now, lage numbers are being forced into permanent leisure and scrape and scrounge is all that is left to them. They are rapidly becoming a majority. You can blame offshore cheap labour on some of it but even that dries up, eventually. Remember when Japan was the cheap labour bad guy? Well, Japanese labour is now more expensive than ours. Blaming foreigners for unemployment misses a bigger picture of the transition that our species is going through, right now.
Anyway, you can pigeonhole the idea with an old fashioned term like "Commie" or "Socialist" or some other Calvinist infraction but I put it to you that a generous, universal minimum wage is the pragmatic course for Capitalism to follow. In just a small handful of decades, the vast majority of us will be disenfranchised, outsider paupers. They will eventually pull your edifice down because, frankly, they will have no choice but to kill off the rich and redistribute their assets. They will have to do it to survive.
The American Dream is just a dream for more and more Michigan residents
Today, your chances of out-earning your parents are less than 50-50. And while upward mobility has declined across the nation, Michigan residents have some of the worst odds of climbing the economic ladder in the country.
It wasn’t always that way. In 1970, about 93 percent of Michigan’s 30-year-olds were earning more than their parents did at the same age (when adjusted for inflation), according to a recentStanford University study. By 2010, just 46 percent in Michigan were out-earning their parents.
The findings capture the frustrating dichotomy of modern economics. Unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But the standard economic indicators cited by politicians and business leaders belie the checkbook realities for many families, where workers bring home paychecks that provide a lower standard of living than that of their parents.
The implications of a fading American Dream are far-reaching, from huge swaths of working-age adults not even looking for work, to anger expressed at the polls for lives that don’t measure up to the dream we’ve been sold.
“This is a core aspect of American identity, providing a better lifestyle for your children,” said Robert Manduca, a Harvard graduate student and researcher who co-authored the Stanford report. “It’s what draws immigrants to this country and what we all expect.
When it fails to happen, it makes people feel the country hasn’t lived up its promise."
The study, which analyzed decades of data from the Census and tax returns, found young people entering the workforce in recent years are
The American Dream Is Fading Everywhere, But Almost Nowhere Faster Than Michigan | Alternet
Today, your chances of out-earning your parents are less than 50-50. And while upward mobility has declined across the nation, Michigan residents have some of the worst odds of climbing the economic ladder in the country.
It wasn’t always that way. In 1970, about 93 percent of Michigan’s 30-year-olds were earning more than their parents did at the same age (when adjusted for inflation), according to a recentStanford University study. By 2010, just 46 percent in Michigan were out-earning their parents.
The findings capture the frustrating dichotomy of modern economics. Unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But the standard economic indicators cited by politicians and business leaders belie the checkbook realities for many families, where workers bring home paychecks that provide a lower standard of living than that of their parents.
The implications of a fading American Dream are far-reaching, from huge swaths of working-age adults not even looking for work, to anger expressed at the polls for lives that don’t measure up to the dream we’ve been sold.
“This is a core aspect of American identity, providing a better lifestyle for your children,” said Robert Manduca, a Harvard graduate student and researcher who co-authored the Stanford report. “It’s what draws immigrants to this country and what we all expect.
When it fails to happen, it makes people feel the country hasn’t lived up its promise."
The study, which analyzed decades of data from the Census and tax returns, found young people entering the workforce in recent years are
The American Dream Is Fading Everywhere, But Almost Nowhere Faster Than Michigan | Alternet