Reports: Scott Walker Is Destroying the Middle Class

Even as Scott Walker and the Republicans attack transparent government and promote dark money, new reports demonstrate the evisceration of the middle class in Wisconsin under Republican rule.

Just think Scott Walker actually believed he was "called" to bring to the nation what he has inflicted onto Wisconsin.

It was widely predicted last spring Walker was a lightweight who could not handle a presidential primary campaign.

The only question now is whether Walker's wreckage of Wisconsin's middle class was done purposely or accomplished by Walker's incompetence.

From Joel Rogers in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "According to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, Wisconsin now leads the nation in destroying its middle class. Defining 'middle-class households' as those with income 67% to 200% of their state's median, Pew showed Wisconsin leading all other states in the 2000-2013 period in its rate of loss. The finding is shocking, but probably not news to anyone who's been watching Wisconsin trends in wages, jobs and income. As COWS, a think tank based in Madison, has consistently shown in its annual State of Working Wisconsin, wages have been stagnant, job growth anemic and income has been declining for a long time."

Low Wages Are No Good

You offshore American jobs and people lose their jobs.

No good, not for Americans and not for the economy.

Krugman offer some advice against falling wages; might seem obvious but Republicans love the idea of falling wages.

Concern about falling wages isn’t just theory. Japan — where private-sector wages fell an average of more than 1 percent a year from 1997 to 2003 — is an object lesson in how wage deflation can contribute to economic stagnation.

So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn’t enough: we need a real recovery.

There has been a lot of talk lately about green shoots and all that, and there are indeed indications that the economic plunge that began last fall may be leveling off. The National Bureau of Economic Research might even declare the recession over later this year.

But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come — which is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy weak.

To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America will turn into Japan — that we’ll face years of deflation and stagnation — seems, if anything, to be rising.