Today the Senate is likely to pass a tiny bipartisan budget agreement, and the Federal Reserve is likely to decide to wean the economy off artificially low interest rates. Both decisions are considered small steps back to what’s assumed normal, in light of Washington’s (and Wall Street’s) assumption that the economy is almost back on track. The reality is it’s not back on track for most Americans – not for the record 4 million who have been unemployed for more than six months, nor the unprecedented 22 million American children in poverty (we now have the highest rate of child poverty of all developed nations other than Rumania), nor the third of all working Americans whose jobs are now part-time or temporary, nor for the majority of Americans whose real wages continue to drop. And it’s not back on track when 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery continue to go to the richest 1 percent. To get back to the shared prosperity we considered normal more than thirty years ago -- before the supply-side, trickle-down, market-fundamentalist Reagan revolution -- will require fundamental change.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 15:33:53 +0000
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