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‘Dismal’: US Consumer Sentiment Collapses To Record Low
US consumer sentiment collapsed to a record low in early June, the preliminary read on University of
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It was 1999, I remember being 16, just got my driver’s license, gas was $.99 and I made $5.35/hr working at a dilapidated convenience store. Glory days.
1996, shift leader at Carl’s Jr. making 5.25/hr and a store clerk at a video store making 5.00/hr, two full time jobs and I couldn’t afford to live on my own. My parents, just beginning to become radicalized by the far right, were bitching about bread and milk prices.
Got liberals in ascendency? “Make the economy bleed”…. Works every time.
Haha, I was still making $5.15 an hour as a convenience store clerk in 2003, but now the federal minimum wage is up to a whopping $7.25 an hour and hasn’t changed for 13 years! Interestingly, less than 2% of workers make minimum wage (or less) as of 2020. I’m guessing that number has dropped with today’s labor market which effectively renders the federal minimum wage completely useless. Time for UBI?
Very generous UBI is currently available if you are a defense contractor, big pharma, insurance provider, banker, oil company, corporate farmer or rancher. Or if you have political connections, a good grant writer and a dumb idea (like pumping CO2 into the ground); UBI is readily available through grants. UBI for people sleeping in cars and under bridges – no way. That would be socialism and we all know that is bad, even if we can’t explain why.
My first job was in 1960 and I earned $50/week (40 hours in a factory). Gas was $0.25, and bread was 0.25 a loaf. McDonalds was a bargain. The burger was $0.15, the fries $0.12 (only smalls then) and a Coke was a dime. Could eat for 37 cents (3 cents more if you wanted a cheese burger). Now those were really the days.
… and conservative politicians told us how terrible and dark it was. Then we had “Morning In America”; manufacturing emigrating to China, the death of unions, the fictionalization of the economy and a new understanding that greed is good. Don’t worry, the job creators new found wealth will trickle down – eventually. And you will get your “pie in the sky” as the song goes. Let’s all sing along now:
You will eat bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray live on hay
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die