http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/its-labo...tain-them/
Quote:It’s Labor Day weekend — but the wealthy think they owe nothing to the people who sustain them
Quote:Maybe Labor Day is a good time to clue them into one big reality behind this so-called “recovery:” Most Americans haven’t recovered. Not by a long shot. In June, median household income was still $3,400 less than in 2007, when Wall Street’s crash started the collapse of our real economy.
Why are working people still so far down? Take a peek at those new jobs the economists are hailing. They’re really “jobettes,” paying only poverty-level wages, with no benefits or upward mobility. In the recession, about 60 percent of the jobs we lost were middle-wage positions, paying approximately $14 to $21 an hour. Most of those jobs have not come back. Instead, of the jobs created since the recovery began, nearly six out of 10 are low-wage, paying less than $14 an hour. A central fact of the new American economy is that working-class people are increasingly unable to make a living from their jobs.
To grasp this widening inequity, befuddled economists might bite into a burger or pizza. Seven of the 12 biggest corporations that pay their workers the least are fast-food giants. Yum! is one. It’s a conglomerate that owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell. Workers don’t find these chains so yummy; for pay averages $7.50 an hour, with no health care, pensions, etc. In contrast, Yum!’s CEO hauls off about $20 million a year, even as even as he dispatches lobbyists to oppose any hike in our nation’s miserly minimum wage.
