Corporations Have 'Captured' 88 Percent Of All Of Post-Recession Income Growth: Report

Corporations have reaped in approximately 88 percent of the national income growth since the economic recovery began, states a report by Northeastern University, cited by The New York Times.

The report, entitled "The 'Jobless and Wageless Recovery' From the Great Recession of 2007-2009," outlines what has been the most corporate-friendly recovery in more than a generation. Worker's wages and salaries have only accounted for slightly more than one percent of all income growth.

"The lack of any net job growth in the current recovery combined with stagnant real hourly and weekly wages is responsible for this unique, devastating outcome," states the report.

What accounts for this, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, Lynn Reaser, suggested to The Huffington Post in March, is that companies have been able to bring their production levels back to pre-recession levels without hiring. "We have now recovered all of the output lost in the recession, but we are still down by 7.5 million workers," she said.

In The New York Times, it was reported that equipment and software prices have fallen by 2.4 percent, while labor costs have risen by 6.7 percent. This, Barclay's economist Dean Maki told the Times, is giving businesses an incentive not to hire.

There is some data that suggests that the American people are sensing the nation's economic trouble. As of June 30th, Gallup's economic confidence of Americans index was pegged at -32, down from its Recovery high of -16 in February. A recent joint CBS News/New York Times poll also found that 39 percent of Americans believed the U.S. economy is in permanent decline.

Comments

[paintitblack]

10:43 PM on 07/08/2011

"There is some data that suggests that the American people are sensing the nation's economic trouble. As of June 30th, Gallup's economic confidence of Americans index was pegged at -32, down from its Recovery high of -16 in February"

Are people really this... to put it lightly, blindly optimistic? I hope it's just the wording and interpretation of this article an the poll, but I honestly don't understand how someone could see what has been going on for YEARS as anything but a very serious and scary situation. I guess not all people are reading gloom and doom news all day, but still... how do most people not know what kind of situation we're in?! That alone speaks volumes!

[Bill Roth]

03:19 PM on 07/05/2011

Boy, if we could just get rid of 10 million needless government jobs, we might be able to return to pre recession times.???? By these corporate genius raising prices on all needed items used by the masses and laying off cities who are now depended on those items; of course your going to get record profits. Win, win, for the elite few. People, shop at local vendors. Buy gas from the little guy gas stations. Remove all monies from the big banks for home town bankers or just put it in your mattress. Fight back by taking the bread and butter from them. It is time we call our fearless leaders bluff. Let's all remove our retirement packages and sit at home guarding our own wealth. Stop all work and production and let them move this economy over seas and let that class of new slaves buy their own worthless crap. Let the rich bring in a new population to cater to their endless greed. Wake up people! We could all bet on which bank we could close by 2012. Then remember to vote them all out. If your rep is doing the work of the people let them stay. Dem or Repub. Hand all others their walking papers.(Senators and Pres.) Too much time in one place makes for no change.

[codycap]

03:00 PM on 07/05/2011

2004 article by Molly Morgan and Jan Edwards entitled "Abolish Corporate Personhood."

"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property.
Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person."

{Conservatives are] engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; ...the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. JK Galbraith

"To be a social conservative is to believe that the poor have too much money, and the rich don't have enough." - J.K. Galbraith

"During the height of the great galactic empire, everybody was rich. Or at least, nobody was really poor. Or at least, nobody that mattered." (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams)

Conservatives tend to believe that humans exist for the market, and not the other way around.

[nobodysgirl]

01:14 PM on 07/05/2011

PeterCombs: Americans are unable to purchase products without decent paying jobs. Kind of the chicken or egg first argument, huh?

[Lochness71]

01:46 PM on 07/05/2011

Remember when the 2008 financial crisis started they blamed the US middle class and US consumers for buying too much on credit? Well we stopped buying things on credit and started saving and now we are being blamed for the economy tanking. They always find a way to blame the American people for their failures.

[Peter Combs]

01:36 AM on 07/05/2011

The fact that these companys can do this well without American workers should be a wake up call. Its a simple message, these workers are simply not needed...so why hire them?

These kinds of stories appear all the time..."Record earnings and no job growth"..One has nothing to do with the other, which should be obvious by now.

Job creation is based purely on market demand.....not on "I want a job"....The folks around the world certainly appreciate taking up the slack.

[zelda777]

05:14 PM on 07/04/2011

If people only really knew - the US has become a Corporate Dictatorship, seizing the wealth and power, taking away our choices, and manipulating the population in ways people can't even imagine. You think you are really living in a "free" country? Look a little deeper at what is really going on.

For example it was the oil and auto corporations who decided to rip up the old railway tracks in LA to create freeways, forcing people to buy cars, move to the suburbs, taking away a lot of their choice of lifestyle, all under the guise of "modernization." Decades later, a new train was built at enormous expense, the air had became horribly polluted, "urban planning" tried to reverse the trend, people started living hours a day in their cars, which enabled them to move far from the people they were once close to, thereby weakening family ties, as well as increasing obesity due to lack of exercise.. Is this a good thing? Could you even live in LA , or many other areas without a car?

Big Pharma and Big Insurance corporations ensure that Americans pay the highest health care costs in the world, but certainly do not receive the best care. Many people can't afford medical insurance or bills at all. These companies also oppose good and cheaper alternative health care which threatens their bottom lines.

[runswithscissors]

04:12 PM on 07/04/2011

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/effective_rates.pdf

These are the effective corporate tax rates that are so high that they're supposedly strangling business. The highest listed is a whopping 3.4%.

[1Truthseeker]

05:27 PM on 07/04/2011

In addition: 2008 Study reports that most US corporations paid no taxes! Go to:http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/12/us-usa-taxes-corporations-idUSN1249465620080812

[Skeetshooter]

01:11 PM on 07/04/2011

This is natural when the tick is bigger than the dog, but the dog usually dies as a result.

[codycap]

03:24 PM on 07/05/2011

lol

Fanned--can I steal this?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/01-14

[Skeetshooter]

07:37 PM on 07/06/2011

Sure. It's all yours!

[stopnlisten]

11:44 AM on 07/04/2011

"A recent joint CBS News/New York Times poll also found that 39 percent of Americans believed the U.S. economy is in permanent decline."
That's what the corporations want us to feel so that we can continue to make them wealthy. Dear, dear middle class Republicans, please wake up.

[effect]

11:56 PM on 07/03/2011

Duh! If one was conscious in America during this "recovery," one knew this.

I have been saying for years that what these guys are good at is concentrating your wealth in their pockets. That's what they do. That's how they got where they are. If you make it easy for them with tax breaks and bailouts, they'll just do it more. It is utterly counterintuitive to expect a black hole of money to spread the wealth or contribute one penny to anyone's prosperity but their own. They actually believe, somehow, that they can get by just fine in a world where the consumer no longer has any money.

Absent some real and effective regulation, we are on a toboggan ride to the bottom of the hill where all the money is in the hands of business, and none in the hands of people, or even the government. At that point, we will be fully a feudal society once again.

[Paperless Tiger]

08:53 PM on 07/03/2011

Clearly the corporations need to hide their profits some place, like maybe JOBS.

[gerald4]

11:44 AM on 07/05/2011

US manufacturing companies are hamstrung with more expensive labor costs, more expensive electrical energy costs, health care payroll tax costs, unemployment payroll tax costs, social security and medical care payroll tax costs, environmental manufacturing costs, fringe (holiday and vacation) benefit payroll costs, OSHA compliance payroll costs, union labor work rules, anti-business laws, and general anti-business attitudes that make manufacturing products in the USA many many times more costly than manufacturing the same product in almost any other foreign country.

US manufacturing businesses must therefore take advantage of the US FREE TRADE TREATIES and then offshore US jobs and/or import the products (including parts and sub assemblies for assembly in the USA) in order to meet the US consumer's demand for the absolutely lowest possible price for each product.

The US manufacturing business that do not offshore as many jobs as possible go bankrupt!

[janereally]

12:06 PM on 07/05/2011

no, they don't go bankrupt, that's what they WANT you to think - they want to book 5, 10, 15% profit increases every quarter, and have the extra $$$$$$ to pay their CEOs and senior management who are getting more than 400 times the average wage slave salary. THAT's where the money is going. not to research and development, not to "taxes" that they don't pay, not to jobs or benefits for people. But into the pockets of the corporate owners.

We only need the lowest possible price, because we haven't had a wage increase in real dollars since before Ronald Reagan, whom we have to thank for the two income household...

[Nobody78]

07:59 PM on 07/03/2011

And the clowns on the Right want to give them more tax breaks.

[Kai-HK]

01:39 AM on 07/04/2011

becuase taxing them more will induce them to create more jobs?

[Nobody78]

06:24 AM on 07/04/2011

No, but giving them tax breaks and subsidies isn't going to create any either.

[Nobody78]

06:25 AM on 07/04/2011

A business doesn't hire just because they are given a tax break, they only hire when they have more customers.

[KOSMOCITIZEN]

07:50 PM on 07/03/2011

we need a '' Consumption Revolution '' to start like today...

I have been analyzing the situation for some time .....and here is the problem
when we go to the super market or Wal-Mart the stuff we buy , even when the profit margin on most items sold there, are in pennies, nickels and dimes all these companies make billions of dollars
now think about all theses other companies , banks , computer companies , software co., telecommunication co. cell phone, and variety electronic manufactures ,chip makers, service providers , cable co.electric co,
big oil co, and so many others , the profit margin on their products and services they sold to us are in big numbers of dollars not pennies , even if their cost is in pennies.
and we pay and pay like smacks without any questions
we do that everyday given billions of dollars for their CEO
meanwhile if a vendor on the street corner sells the watermelon more than $5.. oh! it is too high

[Kai-HK]

01:40 AM on 07/04/2011

So grow your own watermelons and go into business for yourself. Who is stopping you?

[janereally]

12:09 PM on 07/05/2011

some of us already are. swapping, bartering, buying used, making it last. Keep my money in my OWN hands not Steve Schwartzman's or Lloyd Blankfein's or the Walton Family's.

[belogical2010]

07:36 PM on 07/03/2011

I always find it funny that the really important articles never get front page

[kamact]

01:24 PM on 07/03/2011

Blame it on "free market" zealots, the greed of the TBTF banksters and corporate elite, and the corruption of the bought-off DC politicians and regulators,...all colluding to take from the many and weaken America.