Guess Who Pocketed ALL Of Delaware’s Income Growth During the Recovery?
Inexplicably buried at the bottom of page A-3 of the News-Journal’s dead tree edition is one of the most important stories of the year. This Jonathan Starkey story tells us the following:
Delaware’s wealthiest residents hoarded all of the income gains as the state recovered from the recession, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute that provided yet more evidence of an imbalanced economic recovery.
From 2009 to 2012, the top 1 percent of Delaware earners saw income growth of 15 percent.
The bottom 99 percent? Their incomes fell 1.6 percent. The study was based on Internal Revenue Service data of adjusted gross income.
Got that? Yet Jack Markell opposes a decent living wage and opposes restoring progressivity to the tax code. The policies he put into effect during the so-called ‘recovery’ led to more, not less, inequity in income growth. Actually, you can’t call it income growth for the 99% who saw their income shrink by 1.6%. This is obscene.
You can read the response of Markell’s spokesman in the article. It’s not worth even trying to defend, IMHO. However, one of the survey’s co-authors explained it thusly:
(Mark) Price blamed the unequal economy – in Delaware and across the country – on the reduction of well-paid manufacturing jobs, falling union representation and a minimum wage that has not kept pace with rising costs, among other factors.
“Economies are growing,” Price said. “They’re generating lots of wealth and lots of income growth. It’s just not flowing equally.”
I cannot think of a more powerful platform for a progressive candidate to challenge this status quo.
It is long past time to raise the minimum wage in a meaningful way and to make those who have profited inequitably pay their fair share. That’s my litmus test for this General Assembly and for anyone who would deign to run for Governor in 2016.
This hoarding of the wealth, aided and abetted by our so-called elected officials, has got to stop. The 1% can’t control everything, can they?
Tags: Economic Policy Institute, El Somnambulo, Income inequality in Delaware, Jack Markell, Jonathan Starkey, Steve Tanzer Delaware, the 1%
When reached for comment, John Carney said, “Sucks to be you.”
I guess we found where the redistribution is happening.
STOP engaging in class warfare, Puck!
Wrote that to make a point. Whenever these inequities are brought up, Markell and his, wait for it, ilk, argue that we’re engaging in class warfare.
That kind of statement is designed to distract attention away from the class warfare that they engage in, which results in the 1% getting ALL the lucre from the so-called economic recovery.
The 1% has engaged in class warfare for decades. We’ve lost the war. Perhaps we can at least win a skirmish or two going forward.
Rather than engage in class warfare, or attack the so-called 1%, ask yourself more fundamentally why this is happening? It took the Markell administration 6 years to get jobs back to where they were in 2009 when he took office. As soon as there were more jobs than in 2008, the administration started crowing about how there were more Delaware jobs now than ever in our history. Except that it kind of overlooked the last 6 years.
Dover had done virtually nothing to promote economic development — and by that I don’t mean going around courting companies, I mean putting in place policies that will promote economic and job growth.
State spending when up 24% over the last 6 years, while the median income fell by more than 10%. No state or country has ever taxed its way into economic prosperity. And if a higher minimum wage is such a great idea, why don’t we raise it to $50/hr or $100/hr — that would certainly be a boon for everyone right?
Point is, that most of the 1% probably has stocks and investments — those types of assets are doing fine in this economy. But we’re not creating jobs for the rest of us. Raising taxes, no matter how you slice it, is only going to chase jobs away from Delaware and make our state even less competitive.
I’ve come to accept that the GOP is pretty intellectually bankrupt when it comes to economics and I am tolerating better the fact that they think I’ll never know any better than to believe their bullshit. The big sin is that this re-iteration of their own failed policies is just so damned boring.
California has turned its own budget tide by raising taxes (they have a budget surplus!) and the minimum wage is going up all over there. Meanwhile, Kansas and New Jersey are failing.
let’s also not forget Chris Coons is voting to allow more H1B workers. Which directly affects Delaware workers in the banking sector. There are tons of jobs, upper level jobs at Chase, B of A, BNY, Barclays, Capital One that remain open and not filled because the banks don’t want to increase the salaries. Instead, they cabal to try and get H1B people to fill the roles at ridiculous wages, and hold back citizens and local residents from getting ahead in the workplace.
“Rather than engage in class warfare…”
Still telling the same old lie. I’m calling out into the open the class warfare that you and your fellow oligarchs have waged against the middle class and the poor for decades.
You have waged your war in the back rooms, effectively bankrolling the best legislators that money can buy. You have created a revolving door so that former congressional staffers can make lots of money lobbying their former bosses for tax breaks/loopholes that get slipped into legislation under the cover of darkness.
Virtually every single one of those amendments has contributed to more wealth going to the wealthy and less to everyone else.
To repeat: You and your cronies have engaged in class warfare. I’m just calling you on it.
I volunteer to be an insurgant in any movement against the 1%
“I mean putting in place policies that will promote economic and job growth.”
Do you have a specific idea or example in mind or is this just a bullet talking point. If you are going to respond “eliminate regulations,” that’s not what I meant by an example. I mean a real specific example, along with the impact on how that will promote economic growth.
But more importantly, if “most of the 1% probably has stocks and investments” and “those types of assets are doing fine in this economy.” and taxation policy regarding those assets is intended to promote investment, economic growth, etc. Why are those investments “not creating jobs for the rest of us.”
Could it be that most of the investments are not used to generate capital that is used for production of goods and services, thereby creating jobs? Rather couldn’t it be the case that those investments are used to generate capital for capital’s sakes – to wit making money (which by the way, money making money does not create jobs except for a few areas where conspicuous consumption is the norm?
Now here I am sounding like an anti-capitalist, but there really is a difference in investing for economic growth, which does create jobs and investing for ROI. What you fail to comprehend (I’m not sure why since it takes nothing more than some light reading) is that most companies are doing quite well these days because they are using their money to generate money, effectively creating profit without producing any goods or services for those dollars and yet our taxation policy promotes that behavior. If I am running a business and I can make money without hiring any workers, why wouldn’t I do that? It would be silly of me to hire people. People are a pain in the ass. They get sick, then they want to go to the doctor, or have babies, take vacations, stuff like that. They want to share in the profits for God’s sakes. Who the heck wants employees? If I can get 10% or 20% on my dollar without having any employees, you bet your sweet bippy that’s what I’m going to do.
And that’s the crux of this. There is a disincentive to create jobs because companies can make more profit without the jobs and the baggage that goes along with them.
You want solid economic growth and jobs. It’s not in the canard of reducing regulation, it’s in a few simple changes in our taxation policy to favor investment that is tied to production rather than favoring investment that is tied to making money.
By the way, I love money. I just happen to love my country more.
The root cause is our banking system. Now companies make more from financing than from manufacturing, thereby stalling our standard of living. For every $1 of public debt we are only getting $.03 in growth compared to 40 years ago when it was around $.43 of growth/$1 of debt. Bank debt is growing around 30% more than our economy which supports how we are only growing through unsustainable credit and inflation instead of savings and investment in capital.
Most troubling is the market bubble that’s growing. Stock market capitalization to GDP is around 200% compared to 180% before the crash.
@Dave: you’re absolutely correct.
5.75% isn’t progressive enough for you? The Governor knows what most of you should. We can easily move across the border…
Got that? Yet Jack Markell opposes a decent living wage and opposes restoring progressivity to the tax code. The policies he put into effect during the so-called ‘recovery’ led to more, not less, inequity in income growth. Actually, you can’t call it income growth for the 99% who saw their income shrink by 1.6%. This is obscene.
Some of us are looking to move out of state. Way out of state. Not because of alleged excessive taxes, but because Delaware has succeeded in systematically destroying the natural environment here.
Toxic inland waters, PCBs in fish, paving over every square inch of Sussex, etc. DuPont and Vlasic may have left the state, but the browsites remain.
Crazy low taxes, in fact, are the only thing remotely bearable in this toxic state.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle, can the man be any more tone-deaf?
http://wdel.com/story.php?id=66296
Change your bleeping registration, John. Closed door meetings with the people who have already unconscionably tilted the tax code to their benefit. And, let’s be honest. This is just the type of thing he’d do if he were running for governor. Which he is.
He’s not tone-deaf. He just is who he is. A Republican who doesn’t give two shits about the people he’s helped screw while in Congress. Perhaps the finest prototype to roll off the line at Carper Cyborgenics. Somewhere, Charles Cawley is nodding in approval.
At least I don’t have to wonder if he’s holding ‘closed-door’ or open door meetings with people who could sure use a living minimum wage. He’s not. It is not entirely out of the question that I could end up voting for Tom Gordon.
At least the “listening tour” uncovered shockingly predictable”facts.”
OMG. What a fucking buffoon.
It may be time to not stay home on election day, but to vote for Carney’s Republican opponent as the only way to dislodge him. Like using maggots to remove dead flesh. Paging Rose Izzo…
I was think the same. Maggots lol
This is the Hubris of one party rule. There’s no interest from these guys in progressive policies to grow middle income, protect workers in any way, sustainable energy policy or anything else that doesn’t feed the little piggies. But I shouldn’t read this stuff. It’s pissing me off big time!