How Are People Getting By?

[laserboy]

Some other things to take into consideration:

4) More people are making due without health insurance and reitrement savings/pensions

5) Savings rates in the US have now touched 0%

Bad news on savings

[James Boston]

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You are mistaking median with mean. The mean income of 1985 North Carolina Geography majors is $1M. The median is much lower. Any guesses why?


[/ QUOTE ]

Jordan? I don't know, that's my best guess.

[theBruiser500]

"The rise in median income, if that means the "middle" income of all incomes sampled, could be exclusively attributed to the higher number of rich incomes conentrated among the very few. The fact remains that the lowest half or 2/3's of American society hasn't seen any improvement in real household dollars/hour for the better part of two generations, there are more poor, and the middle class is shrinking as a result of losing income. "

How could the higher median incomes be attributed to concentration of wealth in a few? The way a median works it seems like there would need to be a broad increase in wealth because the increase of super wealthy just wouldn't move the median much.

[warlockjd]

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Companies dont want to pay people for over 40 hours a week, they hate paying overtime. But its getting harder to find people for work, so they are forced to pay overtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

The overtime is coming from white collar jobs that don't pay overtime

[Bill Murphy]

[ QUOTE ]
Here's one thing I've wondered about. Jokerswild started ranting about Halliburton many months back. I told him to buy the stock. It's tripled since then and has paid out a fair amount of divys too. If people knew who was going to gain from government action then why not take advantage of that. Same thing about energy. I was making posts about it at least a year and a half ago. Why not take advantage of something that is clear? Maybe take some of that credit card money. Maybe divert some of that poker money.

[/ QUOTE ]

v, vnh.

[FishHooks]

All jobs are forced to pay overtime if you work more than 40 hours, isn't that part of labor laws? Maybe I'm mistaken....

[mccreadj]

No. Under federal and most state law, employers have to pay overtime to employees OTHER THAN executives(high-level managers), administrators(medium level managers), and professionals(people who have gone through extensive specialized training, such as doctors and lawyers).

For instance, I'm a lawyer paid the same salary, no matter whether I work 40 hours or 80 hours a week.

[elwoodblues]

Also, weren't there recent laws passed (don't want to look it up right now) where an employer can opt to pay Comp time for hours over 40 in lieu of overtime.

[warlockjd]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, weren't there recent laws passed (don't want to look it up right now) where an employer can opt to pay Comp time for hours over 40 in lieu of overtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know the details, but a good rule of thumb is: If the Bush administration passed it, it's good for plutocrats, corporations, and big business and bad for the people like you and I.

[FishHooks]

Overtime is not just white collar jobs. My dad manages a resturant and can't ever find any cooks, he practially pays all of his cooks 10+hours a week in just overtime on average.