Today's Must Read: It's the Economy, Stupid (Redux) (Update, Update II)

Very good, concise view of a recent study on income inequality and its effects on the economy -- which, of course, anyone who stops to think for a minute will realize is not good:

The United States has a private economy, but relies on public spending to guarantee a (low) floor of economic wellbeing. And it’s no secret that, for decades, private companies have taken advantage of that public floor to pay workers less than what they’re worth.

But now that fact has a number: $153,000,000,000. According to a new study from UC Berkeley, highlighted by the Washington Post, that’s how much taxpayers spend in public assistance every year on families that are also receiving a paycheck.

These are families that don’t want to be on TANF or SNAP, and don’t want to be shamed by the GOP for not qualifying for the federal income tax, but the jobs they hold down aren’t paying them enough in wages to make ends meet on their own.

The favorite targets on something like this are WalMart and McDonald's, and they certainly are egregious scrooges when it comes to paying their employees a living wage, but it's a fairly widespread phenomenon. Apple, for example, brags about creating over a million jobs in the past few years -- and then as you scroll down, you notice that Apple's employees in the U.S. number 66,000. The number is significantly higher -- as in, an order of magnitude higher -- overseas, counting in Apple's suppliers. It makes good sense from their point of view, which has little or nothing to do with the state of the American worker. Come to think of it, it's not so great for the Chinese worker, either. And they're not alone.

Read the whole thing. There are also some good comments.

And add to that this post from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo which notes a key observation from Robert Reich:

In recent decades Republicans have made a moral case for less government and lower taxes on the rich, based on their idea of “freedom.”

They talk endlessly about freedom but they never talk about power. But it’s power that’s askew in America –concentrated power that’s constraining the freedom of the vast majority.

Update: Factor in this:

It’s hard to comprehend the thinking of people who cut funding for homeless and hungry children. It may be delusion about trickle-down, it may be indifference to poverty, it may be resentment toward people unable to “make it on their own.”

The indifference and resentment and disdain for society reach around the globe. Only two nations still refuse to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: South Sudan and the United States.

Maybe it makes them feel powerful.

Update II: Of course, the Republicans have a solution to the problem:

GOP leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) have begun to recognize that the vast gap between rich and poor is detrimental — and to blame the problem on President Obama. Their solution, so far, has been to propose cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from food stamps, Pell grants, Medicaid and other programs for those without means — and, on Tax Day, to give $269 billion to the few who already have the most.

That'll fix it, all right.