Flatlined, again....

 

 

"How bad is it? How flat have our wages been? Flat - very, very flat..."

Here we go again. I had a nice topic all picked out for today and now I have changed my mind. The reason? Something very unusual happened this morning. The local newspaper told the truth about a subject most of us knew was true. However the powers to be in Washington keep telling us otherwise. The subject? Our "flat lined" take home pay for the past 10 to 15 years.

I have been chirping about this for years now. Jobs lost and jobs created are often times very much different. There is very little upward mobility. If you are lucky enough to have a job today, you have probably noticed that going for your annual review has become a tremendous waste of time and energy. Best case is you are able to keep your job and you might even get a fraction of a percent increase. Or not.

According to the article in the paper, in Minnesota (which is tracking with the national trend) REAL wages have only gone up a mere smidge. In other words, if in 2001 your take home pay was about $950, since then your annual increase has been a whopping .02%. Or, to put it another way, about $2/year. Can we all say "Big Whoop" together?

Just for the heck of it, let us visit some cost trends over the past few years to see if they too have gone up a mere .02% a year:

• Food - Since the year 2000, the cost of food has gone up over 50%. Some items much higher than that.
• Electricity - Over the past ten years, the cost of electricity has gone up over 30% - in some areas even higher. One reason - regulating coal plants out of existence. We still get about 1/3 of our power from coal. It is cheap and abundant. Solar and wind power are not cheap, nor abundant. Some energy experts predict a 47% rise in electricity prices over the next 15 years. If we totally kill our coal plants, even higher.
• Higher Education - This one is a whopper. To send our little darlings in the world of higher education costs a small fortune today. According to Bloomberg, the cost of a college degree has gone up an unbelievable 1120% in the past 30 years! And just think - for that kind of money your kids get to listen to radical Commies like Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers. Plus, they graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. 
• Medical Insurance - Well, at least ObamaCare brought this cost under containment. Hey, that is what we are being told! This one is hard to get a real increase on, although most plans have increased (some substantially). I was able to deduce this much. On the average since the year 2000, employer based premiums have gone up 90%. Some have gone up much more, some less. Too many variables are in play to come up with an exact number. However, most people you talk to will tell you they are paying more and getting less under ObamaCare.

That is just an example of some of the soaring costs we all experience in these days of flat wages. Bottom line - with flat wages and no way to control the costs of some of our stables, we are becoming a poorer nation. FORGET WHAT THE PHONEY STOCK MARKET IS TELLING US! The middle class is shrinking and the poverty class is growing.

What is the answer to all of this. I don't know. But something needs to happen, and happen soon. We can start by reducing the size and cost of government. Cutting regulations. Using our natural resources more. More of this to come in future articles. I need to dig a bit deeper into this hole to find some more truths.