Numbers don't lie? Who does this author think he is talking to? We all have seen numbers manipulated from all walks of life. Were the Enron numbers correct? I don't think so. Remember 90% of all statistics are made up on the spot. (joke).... It is very easy to cherry pick certain numbers to create support for whatever position you are trying promote. So please be a grown up and never say numbers don't lie.

in 1975 I was a union checker in a grocery store at the age of 19. I made 8 bucks an hour plus benefits. Time and a half on Sunday, double time on holidays. I could afford to live on my own on that part time salary and pay for school.

Today, my 19 year old daughter makes that same 8 bucks an hour in a coffee shop. No benefits, same hours a week, around 30. She is basically working to pay for gas, car insurance and her car.

That is what the economic model of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman gave us folks.

If your daughter was a union checker today she would make a lot more than $8.00 an hour. You need to compare apples to apples. Advise her to get a union job or get a college degree.

You missed the point didn't you? Same age, same skill set, same pay 30 years apart. Reagan destroyed the unions. Miltie hated unions. Republicans have been stripping workers of rights and benefits for years. The conservative economic model is nothing more than complete destruction of the middle class lifestyle that my generation grew up with. Back then, the world was ready to compete with our highly paid labor at pennies on the dollar. Believe me, the starving people in India would have died to take those textile jobs from the Carolinas. We did not let them back then because we actually gave a shit about our own people. Then, ole Miltie came along, gave Ronnie what he wanted and the rest is history. Its been a non-stop assault on joe sixpack ever since and what has really been the outcome?

More wealth at the top than even in the robber baron days. There used to be only one JP Pail Getty. Now there are thousands of them. I cannot wait until we wake up from this massive fraudulent scheme. Maybe colleges will stop teaching the lies of Monetarism. Maybe we can go back to when our nation gave a shit. I hope so.

I Don't think I missed the point at all. Back in the early 70's a friend of mine got a union job at an automobile plant in Pico Rivera Ca. and made ten times what I was making as a box boy in a supermarket. It took him 10 minutes to learn his job. The unions in this country outpriced themselves, drove up the cost and lowered the quality on american products which allowed market penetration from countries like Japan. I know you want to blame Reagan or Republicans for everything that is wrong in our country but I can assure you we have come to this point with help from both sides of the isle. I know it is much easier to be a partisan hack and rail against the other side for all your woes.

if you are my age then you lived through this era. You seem to believe that globalization was inevitable in its present form. It was not. We could have expanded our economy without selling off our own assets and sending our jobs overseas. We did it for decades and it worked. This entire economy is based upon the teachings of Milton Friedman. What is left of regulatory controls and what conservatives call "socialism" is just the last vestiges of Keynes and Galbraith. Had the righties got their way, our retirement funds would have been wiped out this week. Social Security is the next thing they want to destroy. I am not a fan of right wing ideology, that is true. I am also not a fan of far left ideology such as a Nader or Chomsky. But I know enough about the world and how power works to know that when you take an economic model and couple it with political opportunism like conservatism, you have a deadly cocktail that is ripe for greed and exploitation. This story is not new. Its been played out over and over again since we started living in cities.

Sorry, the first thing to go should be monetarism. Start there. Then just maybe we can clean this up.

Adjusted for inflation your $8/hr in 1975 would be $32.58/hr today. Do you believe that a checker at a grocery store should make that much? Do you know how much more milk and bread would be if that was the case? $32.58/hr at 40 hourse per week would be almost $68000/year. For completely unskilled labor. That's not sound economic policy. With all do respect sir, you were grossly overpaid in 1975.

Your daughter could go work for Starbucks. They give benefits to part time employees. Of course their lattes are $8 and they're shutting hundreds of stores down due to slow sales because of their high prices but she could go work there.