Why Wall Street Loves High Unemployment

Because it keeps the toiling masses grateful for the chance to work their asses off for pennies.

Natasha Chart reads the preliminary, third quarter productivity and costs estimates from the Bureau of Labor Standards and concludes we've been robbed.

American workers have been producing more, in less time, and not getting raises. In short, your boss is stealing from you.

Indeed, if the minimum wage had tracked productivity over the past 30 years, it would be $19/hour. That's how much our bosses have been stealing from us.

Get the picture?

They make more money off of your work and they don't share the increased returns. They invest money, you invest time and expertise, blood, sweat and tears, hours spent commuting and separations from your family. They get to realize a profitable return on their investment, you get to keep treading water and waiting for a ship that probably isn't coming.

They are stealing. From. You.

This is what it means to have organized labor in disarray, in retreat. This is what it means to have politicians in the pockets of the investor class, their donor classes, totally unaccountable to voters. This is what it means when both political parties are the property of the economic aristocracy. This is what it means when consumer debt obligations are sacrosanct, and business pension obligations aren't worth the paper they're written on. To paraphrase Anatole France, this is what it means when it's a crime to steal bread or sleep under a bridge, but not to crash the whole world's economy. It means they get to keep stealing from you, steal more over time, and can steal with impunity.

There are consequences to a lack of political power, to the working classes being too tired (all too understandably) to maintain civic participation, and these are them.

They get to steal from you and no one will stop them.