10/14/09 Stockholm, Sweden – According to the New York Times, “now pay cuts, sometimes the result of downgrades in rank or shortened workweeks, are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”
What does this mean for you? Well, for Bryan Lawlor it has meant taking a 50 percent pay cut, down to $34,000 per year. The government holds up our weak “recovery” statistics and when it comes to the tragic realities facing the average American it’s just the same refrain… deny, deny, and deny some more.
It’s not just the money, the pay cuts are also contributing to strained relationships. Lawlor feels that he’s less of a man while his wife disputes that she considered trading him in for another husband. All the while they hide the painful reality from their children and are terrified of Christmas, and the near-certain promise of gift shortcomings.
If we want real recovery we’ve got to quit drinking at the teat of stimulus boondoggles and face head on the crash that is going to happen either way. The economy is broken and needs creative destruction to be made whole again. Government intervention needs to be stopped cold so proper market forces can once again take hold. It’s the only way to get through this crisis once and for all.
Thanks to Naked Capitalism for turning us on to this coverage of the employed taking deeper pay cuts.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of The Daily Reckoning. Previously, he was founding publisher of UrbanTurf and RFID Update, which he operated from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico, and associate publisher of FierceFinance. He specialized in direct marketing at MBI, facilitated MIT Sloan School of Management programs, and has been featured on CBS. Vega graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he was on the board of Let’s Go Publications and directed business programs involving McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard Business School faculty. He is also enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
