Weekly Address: Vice President : Time to Give the Middle Class a Chance

[cal04]

Source: White House

In this week’s address, the Vice President discusses our continued economic recovery, with 10 million private sector jobs created over 54 straight months of job creation. Yet even with this good news, too many Americans are still not seeing the effects of our recovery.

As the Vice President explains, there’s more that can be done to continue to bolster our economy and ensure that middle class families benefit from the growth they helped create, including closing tax loopholes, expanding education opportunities, and raising the minimum wage.

Read more: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/09/06/weekly-address-time-give-middle-class-chance

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Transcript
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/05/weekly-address-time-give-middle-class-chance

In this week’s address, the Vice President discusses our continued economic recovery, with 10 million private sector jobs created over the past 54 months. Yet even with this good news, too many Americans are still not seeing the effects of our recovery. As the Vice President explains, there’s more that can be done to continue to bolster our economy and ensure that middle class families benefit from the growth they helped create, including closing tax loopholes, expanding education opportunities, and raising the minimum wage.

(snip)
When the President and I took office in January of 2009, this nation was in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the great depression. Our economy had plummeted at a rate of 8% in a single quarter – part of the fastest economic decline any time in the last half century. Millions of families were falling underwater on their homes and threatened with foreclosure. The iconic American automobile industry was under siege.

But yesterday’s jobs report was another reminder of how far we’ve come. We’ve had 54 straight months of job creation. And that’s the longest streak of uninterrupted job growth in the United States’ history.

We’ve gone from losing 9 million jobs during the financial crisis to creating 10 million jobs. We’ve reduced the unemployment rate from 10% in October of 2009 to 6.1% today. And for the first time since the 1990s, American manufacturing is steadily adding jobs – over 700,000 since 2010. And surveys of both American and foreign business leaders confirm that America once again is viewed as the best place in the world to build and invest.

That’s all good news. But an awful lot of middle class Americans are still not feeling the effects of this recovery. Since the year 2000, Gross Domestic Product – our GDP - has risen by 25%. And productivity in America is up by 30%. But middle class wages during that same time period have gone up by only fourteen cents.

Folks, it’s long past time to cut the middle class back into the deal, so they can benefit from the economic growth they helped create. Folks, there used to be a bargain in this country supported by Democrats and Republicans, business and labor. The bargain was simple. If an employee contributed to the growth and profitability of the company, they got to share in the profits and the benefits as well. That’s what built the middle class. It’s time to restore the bargain, to deal the middle class back in. Because, folks, when the middle class does well, everybody does well – the wealthy get wealthier and the poor have a way up.

(snip)
With corporate profits at near record highs, we should encourage corporations to invest more in research and development and the salaries of their employees. It’s time for us to invest in educational opportunity to guarantee that we have the most highly skilled workforce in the world, for 6 out of every 10 jobs in the near term is going to require some education beyond high school. Folks, it’s long past due to increase the minimum wage that will lift millions of hardworking families out of poverty and in the process produce a ripple effect that boosts wages for the middle class and spurs economic growth for the United States of America. Economists acknowledge that if we do these and other things, wages will go up and we’ll increase the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.

more at link

[MannyGoldstein]

1. That's why Biden's been a courageous leader in

the fight to protect the middle class bankers from being cheated by wealthy 99%ers.

http://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-relations-with-bank-industry-825

[liberalmike27]

8. Someone is Running

Blogging the other day, I talked about how using the word "progressive," in a very real way was a concession we should have never made, in effect allowing them to demonize "liberal," rather than just embracing it and saying "No, you know what, you call me a liberal and I'm going to thank you, because 'liberal' is a good thing, a good quality." Nope, we fled to the hills on that one.

Saying "Middle class this, and middle class that," is the same sort of shenanigans. Democrats got this rap of being kind to the poor, the downtrodden, the bedraggled (Good God man, being a decent human being, wtf is wrong with you!!!), so suddenly we're no longer allowed to talk about the poor, short of saying "Hey let's raise the minimum wage."

Part of fixing the Democratic Party is embracing the poor, workers, unions, and being liberal. Stop running away from the base, instead choosing to expand it.

[Helen Borg]

2. Nice words! Just saying...

[Trillo]

3. It's too bad our economy can't help those of us who hold formal education in contempt.

For but one example,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5492519

Go to school, and be accosted and hurt by police? No thanks. Never, ever again, not unless I'm reincarnated and can no longer remember all the past cruelties.

Please find a way to improve the economy without requiring us to associate with cruel and punishing educational systems.

[Enthusiast]

4. Vice President Biden,

maybe you should tell the President to reconsider his support for job killing trade deals.

[Duppers]

6. ^^^ this ^^^

[pampango]

7. Trade is 22% of our economy. It is 74% of Germany's economy. Guess which has the stronger

middle class. And their trade is governed by 'trade deals' to a much greater extent than ours is.

Trade is 51% of Canada's economy. Guess which has a stronger middle class. The same is true of Sweden (62%); France (42%); the UK (64%); Australia (33%). If there is a link between the strength of a country's middle class and the degree to which its economy engages in foreign trade, I think you would have to conclude that it is a positive correlation.

Of course the strength of any country's middle class depends primarily on its progressive taxes, strong safety net, support for strong unions, effective corporate regulation, etc. It is worthy of note, however, that the progressive countries that do a much better job of these than we do in the US also choose to trade with other countries a whole lot more than the US does. They obviously believe that trade (and yes, trade deals) enhances these progressive policies and does not negate them.

Obviously we should support GOOD trade deals, just as we should support GOOD peace treaties, GOOD climate change agreements, GOOD arms control agreements, etc. Liberals, in general, are much more supportive of peace agreements, climate change agreements and basically any kind of international agreement, but we want GOOD ones rather than just any agreement.

Conservatives, OTOH, generally oppose international agreements since they, by definition, restrict a country's freedom of action thus impairing its 'national sovereignty'. It is little surprise that their base wants out of the UN, the WTO and international agreements of all kinds.

[Enthusiast]

9. There have been no good trade deals here. We have seen the results.

[SoapBox]

11. ^^^This!^^^

[840high]

14. +10

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Thanks for posting!

Listened locally early this a.m. and Biden did his "folksy Biden" delivery. Was surprised that he covered a domestic subject after his "gates of hell" remark last week!

[abelenkpe]

10. I sincerely hope that we aren't counting the five temporary short term no benefit jobs

held since the company I worked for for 14 years went bankrupt in 2013 as jobs created by our recovery. The once thriving VFX industry in Los Angeles has been off shored over the past two years leaving thousands of workers who once held secure jobs with benefits with the choice of leaving the country to chase job opportunities abroad, switching careers entirely, or scrounging for the few temporary, short term, no benefit jobs left in LA. Lifting the investment in education or the minimum wage, while things that should certainly be done, won't bring those jobs or many of the thousands of other jobs in other industries back. Countervailing tariffs will.

[Phlem]

12. I like Biden and all but didn't

we need this like 16 years ago.

[blkmusclmachine]

13. Talk is cheap. We KNOW there won't be anything meaningful coming from this White House, except TPP &

Keystone Pipeline, and both of those are terrible long-term.

[Skittles]

15. that time was 20 years ago

[They_Live]

16. Here's your chance midde class. You have one week to get rich.

And then we shift to another talking point. So hurry!