Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low

[Purveyor]

In case you need more confirmation that the US economy is out of balance, here are three charts for you.

1) Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't. What they're suffering from is a myopic obsession with short-term profits at the expense of long-term value creation).



2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.



3) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. The other reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to. As a result, the employment-to-population ratio has collapsed. We're back at 1980s levels now.



MORE...

http://www.businessinsider.com/profits-at-high-wages-at-low-2013-4

[progressoid]

1. Woohoo! Recovery!

[Scuba]

2. Yet the wealthiest want more and more.

Really? You really want to be the last rich man in a poor country?

[tclambert]

16. They want to play Highlander economics. "There can be only one."

They want wealth concentrated more and more, all the wealth wrung out of the "little people," and eventually one sole "winner" of the wealth derby. Giant mega-corporations merge, "too big to fail" becomes "too big to fight" until Omni Corp. takes over everything, including all levels of government. Private prisons, private "security" companies (mercenaries), Emergency Financial Managers running school systems, cities, and someday whole states--Omni Corp. wants it all.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. Centrism, what's good for business is good for America, small government, personal responsibility,

money equals speech, greed is good, taxes stifle business, no free rides, globalism is both good and inevitable, protectionism hurts workers, invisible hand, market forces, trust authority, conform, obey, consume.

10 recs and no replies...

[woo me with science]

4. And let's keep our eyes on that bright horizon!

Thanks to both wings of the Corporate Party, we are being shepherded FORWARD...

To Austerity!

To the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement!

To the Keystone Pipeline!

To more education privatization!

And more surveillance and drones!

[Initech]

5. The Fortune 500: Screwing over the working man for profit and power since 1980!

And they show no signs of stopping either. The wealth addicted won't stop until they face life in prison.

[CalFresh]

7. You don't

need prisons. Put them in camps. Make them work for little or no money. Feed them only rice soup like our poor. Put a symbol of $ on their camp uniforms. Wait......................... I think someone tried that.

[malthaussen]

6. Third chart is kind of interesting, nyet?

At the time of our supposed greatest prosperity, fewer people were employed (as a % of total population) than now, our most recent time of greatest adversity. Obviously, many factors contribute to this, but it does suggest that "full employment" is not the Golden Road to prosperity.

-- Mal

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Over at CNBC they LOVE these charts.

[byeya]

9. Workers have utterly failed to capture the huge gains in worker productivity which is rightfully

theirs.
This is seldom addressed but productivilty has seen a great jump in the past 30 years and both organized and unorganized workers have been unable to get a share of this.

Whose country is this anyway?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

12. word. :(

sad. infuriated. sick of this shit.

[LibertyLover]

10. I got a .9% raise (that's nine tenths of one per cent) this year - ooooh wow -

so it goes away with the expiration of the 2% SSI tax cut. Where I work we have a mandatory retirement age of 62. Thankfully I have a pension and because of when I vested, my pension is based on my gross salary, not my net, but it is also based on a percentage of average of my last three years' salaries. So, I'm in my first year of that 3 year period . . . with a .9% raise and not much more probably the next 2 years either.

This year our Board of Directors wanted to give us a better raise, but word had it that the American director vetoed it. I should mention that I work for a non-governmental organization that is similar to the UN in that we are formed by Articles of Agreement among our member countries. The US is one of those members. But we are not a US corporation, so we are not subject to certain laws, like our having a mandatory retirement age. Supposedly that is going to be raised to 65, but I've been here almost 18 years and have heard that almost from the day I joined and so far nothing has happened, so I'm not counting on it.

Anyway, we are doing very well financially and the big guns are not hurting. This week for example, all the managers are down in a retreat in the Caribbean. The department directors and VPs had to settle for a retreat this week in Virginia, but at a very nice resort. Most of the lawyers from HQ and all the lawyers out in our field offices are in Colombia on a retreat. But all we wage slaves got was a .9% raise and a pat on the head from our new president appointed by the Obama administration. Whoopie.

I've already started looking for a job for after I retire. I hope to the Gods I'm able to find one.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

11. :( N/t

[bullwinkle428]

13. And yet this morning, I heard "Time for everyone to make sacrifices!" as a

justification for the chained CPI. When do those at the top begin to start sacrificing?

[Hotler]

14. When to middle class and the poor are asked to pay more .......

it's called shared sacrifice. When the rich are asked to pay more it is called class warfare.

[lexw]

15. I'm in the jobless list...

I began to see and apply for new jobs in January /February and I was happy, but since March it's appeared to have dried up.

[just1voice]

17. There goes the illogical meme of "invest to get ahead"; invest what?

People don't make enough money to have any left over to "invest". Oh but here's a great idea, let's steal their Soc. Sec. too.

[Cal Carpenter]

18. And this is the heart of it all

K & R

[HiPointDem]

19. kr

[noiretextatique]

20. great graphics

that explain a truly fucked situation

[moondust]

21. Gee, I wonder if there could be a correlation?

What did anybody expect would happen when they allowed corporations to grow and consolidate wildly like cancerous tumors?

Too late to call the surgeon?

[woo me with science]

22. kick

[One_Life_To_Give]

23. Lack of Investment

Wages are only one piece of the puzzle. Another shift has been the lack of investment in people, products and the means of production for what will be.