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 Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
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