Recovery Trickles Down Very Slowly

[kskiska]

Finances Improve for People Who Already Have Jobs, Money

Friday, January 16, 2004; Page A01

CANTON, Ohio -- Cathy Wyatt is putting the finishing touches on her trendy coffee shop, Carpe Diem, opened just eight weeks ago. She is paying meticulous attention to her upscale clientele, complete with offering hard-boiled eggs marked for the Atkins-conscious crowd.

It may not fit with northeastern Ohio's hardscrabble image, but, she said, industrial Canton's old downtown is in a bit of a renaissance. "It's nothing for people to spend three and six dollars a day on their coffee," Wyatt said.

Just around the corner, however, the Stark County Department of Job and Family Services waiting room is standing room only. In the lobby, escaping the cold snowfall outside, a forlorn Monique Simmons, 21, waited for her ride, baby asleep at her feet.

"I've been looking for a job for two years," she said, recounting her last work at a local telemarketing firm, a job she left and now can't get back. "It's always, 'We'll get back to you.' I just hear a lot of excuses."

The contrast between the pulse Canton's economy is starting to feel on the high end and the stagnation painfully evident in the lower tiers points out a significant national trend: After three years of fits and starts, the economy is revving back to life, but at least so far, its fruits have gone mainly to those who least need them.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21204-2004Jan15.html

[ramapo]

1. I hope they vote, I fear they won't

Voter turnout will be important. The people who haven't benefited from the Repub policies of the past 20 years need to make that plain come next Novemeber.

Otherwise the top group who're collecting on the Bush*payoffs will return him to power for four more years of handouts.

[Mountainman]

2. I wonder if they even make the connection

At times I wonder if people who are down and out and still think this administration is doing good by them will ever get it. I think that even though they may suffer they think that somehow it is all their doing and has nothing to do with the policies of the right. Right wing talk radio is still very popular and many of those listening in during the day must be unemployed but they still let themselves be f..cked over again and again. The right needs these people to win so there must be a lot of them since the right has a hold on at least 1/2 of the votes.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. What is this thing called "recovery"?...

Does anyone know what it looks like? We haven't seen anything remotely resembling a recovery in northern Alabama.

[lcordero]

4. I hate to say it but the "boom" didn't trickle down either

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V12/7/reich-r.html

The dirtiest little secret about the Roaring Nineties is that average working families gained almost no income, while their health care costs soared. From 1986 through 1997 (the latest year for which detailed IRS data are available), the average income of the richest 1 percent of Americans rose 89 percent, to $517,713. During these same years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose 1.6 percent, to $23,815. (These figures, not incidentally, are after all federal income taxes were paid.)

the bottom 90 percent of Americans never caught a break in the first place.

[Ready4Change]

5. Thin line between trickle down and trickle out.

Reagan crossed that line too, and we didn't recover till Clinton showed up.

[lcordero]

6. that depends

we didn't recover till Clinton showed up.

That depends on who the "we" people are.

[0007]

7. ....and the homeless have new cardboard boxes to sleep in

on these cold nights. Things are indeed looking up for everyone.

[RamboLiberal]

8. Timken plant where * pushed his tax cut laid off 900

Blue-collar struggles stand to reason. Canton's Hoover Co., the struggling U.S. vacuum-cleaner maker, laid off 500 workers in June. Timken Co., the world's largest industrial bearings maker, hosted President Bush last year as he pitched his third major tax cut in three years. Then Timken announced it would cut about 900 jobs.

Wonder if they're still cheering Whistle-ass now?

[rman]

9. been trickling in the wrong direction last 30 years:

"To really see what is going on you need to look at the top 1%, the top 0.1% and the top 0.01%. Then you discover that there has been an explosion of income on the very top of the scale:

top 1%
1970 9%
2000 22%

top 0.1%
1970 2.8%
2000 11%

top 0.01%
1970 1%
2000 5%

We are by these numbers fully back to and by some measures above the level of concentration of income that we had in the 1920's."

"What went wrong"
Paul Krugman, een vooraanstaand economisch analist
rtsp://real.dialnsa.edu/REAL_BEARD/spring2003_events/schwartz.rm (realplayer)

[SoCalDem]

10. This subject line gave me a terrible "mental image"

You all are lucky that I am no artist..

I had a mental image of Cheney in boxer shorts with "recovery" trickling down his pasty white legs, and dripping onto the upturned faces of poor liliputian-esque people at his feet... He's the "pissy" one, so he came to mind.. * probably wears diapers these days.. They are coddling him like the big baby he is ..