Ok, well my comment about "screaming for mercy" was hopefully taken as tongue-in-cheek. My conversational writing style is somewhat cold sometimes without intention. Plus it's night here, so I must beg pardon for claiming that I would get back here in the evening. I had a dog dependency I had to resolve.
I will definitely try to find the raw data for my main issue, which is that through Quantitative Easing by the Fed (Rounds 1 and Two) the purchasing power of the dollar was devastated, which makes dollar wealth comparisons pre- and post-recession even worse than reported. If your wealth drops 20% from $100 to $80 but each $1 of that $80 buys half of what it used to, then your wealth has actually dropped by 60%: your eighty dollars has the purchasing power of forty dollars when once you had one hundred dollars of purchasing power. These hypothetical values don't exactly match the specific situation rendered by QE but give you an illustration of the worst aspects of the austerity imposed in America. I don't want to quote the exact drop in purchasing power of the dollar pre- and post-recession but I have found the data before and calculated that drop for a co-worker, and the drop was precipitous and un-reported by-and-large. I'll be back with that data when I have it.
In addition, many corporations snuck further cost-savings for themselves in terms of reducing volume of a product by unit but did not modify the unit price respectively, so they are receiving marginal increases in revenue despite the down-turn and all the weight being thrown directly on consumers.
Here are some general articles about the loss in wealth for most Americans while the wealthiest experienced a gain in wealth for the wealthiest.
There are a ton of blogs out there with people talking about the issues surrounding QE but I am trying to sift through the chaff for you. I should have bookmarked the links I used with my coworker.
I will definitely try to find the raw data for my main issue, which is that through Quantitative Easing by the Fed (Rounds 1 and Two) the purchasing power of the dollar was devastated, which makes dollar wealth comparisons pre- and post-recession even worse than reported. If your wealth drops 20% from $100 to $80 but each $1 of that $80 buys half of what it used to, then your wealth has actually dropped by 60%: your eighty dollars has the purchasing power of forty dollars when once you had one hundred dollars of purchasing power. These hypothetical values don't exactly match the specific situation rendered by QE but give you an illustration of the worst aspects of the austerity imposed in America. I don't want to quote the exact drop in purchasing power of the dollar pre- and post-recession but I have found the data before and calculated that drop for a co-worker, and the drop was precipitous and un-reported by-and-large. I'll be back with that data when I have it.
In addition, many corporations snuck further cost-savings for themselves in terms of reducing volume of a product by unit but did not modify the unit price respectively, so they are receiving marginal increases in revenue despite the down-turn and all the weight being thrown directly on consumers.
Here are some general articles about the loss in wealth for most Americans while the wealthiest experienced a gain in wealth for the wealthiest.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/23/a-rise-in-wealth-f...
In the UK, pensioners feel the bite of QE:
http://www.sharingpensions.co.uk/quantitative-easing-annuity...
There are a ton of blogs out there with people talking about the issues surrounding QE but I am trying to sift through the chaff for you. I should have bookmarked the links I used with my coworker.