2016 July 12^th

George Will tells us that, “America has now slouched into the eighth year of a recovery that demonstrates how much we have defined recovery down.” Of course Will could have said that we have now had a gradual eight year recovery from the most disastrous recession America has suffered since the Great Depression. Of course Will much prefers to see the economic glass half empty as long as we have a Democratic President holding the glass.

Will delights in pointing to recent job growth numbers to support his contention of sub-par growth: The economy created just 38 thousand new jobs in May. If Will had waited until the June numbers came out, he would have lost this nice talking point, for the economy created 287 thousand jobs in June.

Will is desperately trying to make the economy look just awful. He says, “Homeowners and the 10 percent of Americans who hold 81 percent of the directly and indirectly owned stocks (the stock market is 160 percent higher than its 2009 lows) are prospering Those whose wealth comes from wages are losing ground.”

According to a Gallup poll, in 2015 55 percent of Americans were invested in stocks either directly or through their retirement plans. Before the market crash, a drop that took the market indices down 50 percent, that figure was 61 percent. If you saw your retirement investments or 401 k plan decline by 50 percent almost over-night, you might be reluctant to jump back into stocks. Now the market is making new highs almost daily. That won’t last, but the market’s angst over Brexit and other issues has subsided.

The wage stagnation problem remains and that problem has a strong political component. The Wall Street Journal maintains a web site that will tell you what percentage of wage earners fall below any annual figure you enter. According to that web site if we enter 17 thousand dollars a year, (that’s a wage of just $8.17 an hour), 20 percent of all wage earners will earn less than that. If you are married and earn that hourly wage you are eligible for food stamps. Republicans are opposed to raising the government’s minimum wage of 7.25/hour. And some believe that there should be no minimum wage legislation at all. Senator Rand Paul and his father, Ron Paul, both believe that we should have no minimum wage.

It appears that conservatives rail against the sad case of wage earners pay stagnating, while simultaneously blocking any effort to increase the take home pay of those wage earners at the bottom of the ladder.