1/8/2015
Senator: U.S. Economic Recovery Only Benefiting the Wealthy
WASHINGTON – Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the leading figure in the Democratic Party’s left wing, on Wednesday said the U.S. economic recovery is only benefiting the richest 10 percent of Americans and that the country’s middle class “is in deep trouble.”
Referring to recent improvement in macroeconomic data, Massachusetts’ senior senator said statistics indicating sustained gross domestic product growth, a drop in unemployment, low inflation and an all-time high for the Dow show the “success of the overall economy” but do not reveal the real situation affecting tens of millions of people.
“If you work at Walmart, and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries on the table, what does more money in stockholders’ pockets and an uptick in GDP do for you?” Warren said here at the AFL-CIO National Summit on Raising Wages, an event held at Gallaudet University.
In touting the economic recovery, President Barack Obama has recently pointed to a 5.8 percent unemployment rate – the lowest level since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 – and a steady rise in GDP over the past two years.
But Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2016, though she recently denied having any plans to run, said that “despite these cheery numbers, America’s middle class is in deep trouble.”
She lamented that “there have been deep structural changes in this economy, changes that have gone on for more than 30 years, changes that have cut out hard-working, middle class families from sharing in this overall growth.”
Warren placed the blame for this situation on supply side, or “trickle down,” economics, which she said means “helping the biggest corporations and the richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone else.”
That economic theory took hold because of support from “pretty much the whole Republican Party” and “too many Democrats,” she said, noting that those pro-business politicians demanded deregulation and an end to big government.
Labor Secretary Thomas Perez also attended the gathering – organized by the AFL-CIO, the United States’ largest labor union federation – and stressed the need for an increase in the national minimum wage, calling such a move a “moral imperative.”
source
Senator: U.S. Economic Recovery Only Benefiting the Wealthy
WASHINGTON – Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the leading figure in the Democratic Party’s left wing, on Wednesday said the U.S. economic recovery is only benefiting the richest 10 percent of Americans and that the country’s middle class “is in deep trouble.”Referring to recent improvement in macroeconomic data, Massachusetts’ senior senator said statistics indicating sustained gross domestic product growth, a drop in unemployment, low inflation and an all-time high for the Dow show the “success of the overall economy” but do not reveal the real situation affecting tens of millions of people.
“If you work at Walmart, and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries on the table, what does more money in stockholders’ pockets and an uptick in GDP do for you?” Warren said here at the AFL-CIO National Summit on Raising Wages, an event held at Gallaudet University.
In touting the economic recovery, President Barack Obama has recently pointed to a 5.8 percent unemployment rate – the lowest level since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 – and a steady rise in GDP over the past two years.
But Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2016, though she recently denied having any plans to run, said that “despite these cheery numbers, America’s middle class is in deep trouble.”
She lamented that “there have been deep structural changes in this economy, changes that have gone on for more than 30 years, changes that have cut out hard-working, middle class families from sharing in this overall growth.”
Warren placed the blame for this situation on supply side, or “trickle down,” economics, which she said means “helping the biggest corporations and the richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone else.”
That economic theory took hold because of support from “pretty much the whole Republican Party” and “too many Democrats,” she said, noting that those pro-business politicians demanded deregulation and an end to big government.
Labor Secretary Thomas Perez also attended the gathering – organized by the AFL-CIO, the United States’ largest labor union federation – and stressed the need for an increase in the national minimum wage, calling such a move a “moral imperative.”
source
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