The root of political anger - wages

The Teahadists are tapping into a very real anger, but their members are being tricked and manipulated by the same corporate forces that are hurting them, into attacking the very thing that is their only protection from global corporatism, a democratic government. I have said it before and I will say it again, the root cause of the current economic crisis is the fact that real wages are declining. Wages have not kept pace with productivity since Reagan was president and they instituted their right-wing "voodoo economics". We never hear this on television and in the corporate media, but many economists and progressives are trying their best to get the truth out.

Robert Reich's recent column, "The root of economic fragility and political anger", hits the nail right on the head.

Missing from almost all discussion of America’s dizzying rate of unemployment is the brute fact that hourly wages of people with jobs have been dropping, adjusted for inflation. Average weekly earnings rose a bit this spring only because the typical worker put in more hours, but June’s decline in average hours pushed weekly paychecks down at an annualized rate of 4.5 percent.

In other words, Americans are keeping their jobs or finding new ones only by accepting lower wages.

The old adage still holds true - "It's all about cheap labor".
America was at its most prosperous when wages were high, which was because of labor unions and progressive policies that protected American businesses and interests.

Today, 30 years after Reagan, right wing corporatist policies, such as, outsourcing and globalization, have raped and pillaged America's economy. It has hollowed out our national infrastructure and reduced unionization to the point that real wages for working Americans are falling because we are forced to compete with slave labor in foreign countries.



This is the real reason for political anger in America, even though most Americans don't even realize it. Even most politicians seem ignorant of this simple truth, including President Obama, who appears to also buy into "voodoo economics" because his nominations have been stocked with Wall Street corporatists, such as Geitner and Paulson.