And Another Way Mr. Bush Has Screwed Helped You!

From the Times Argus:

Hourly wage earners are still losing the battle against inflation. As of March, their weekly pay lagged rising prices by 0.5 percent over the previous year.

The wage stagnation seems out of synch with the healthy economy. U.S. output of goods and services grew at a robust 4.4 percent pace last year and 3.1 percent in this year's first quarter. And corporate profits shot up 13.4 percent in the last quarter of 2004, the biggest jump since 1987.

Despite that good news, non-supervisory workers haven't gotten an inflation-adjusted raise of more than 2 percent since 1998.

At the same time, with President Bush touting an "ownership society," workers are bucking a federal tax policy that targets wages, not investment income, for its highest rates.

For example, two married workers, filing jointly with a combined income of $58,100, are getting taxed at a 25 percent rate. Each is also paying a 6.2 percent Social Security tax, plus a 1.45 percent Medicare tax.

But if the couple didn't go to work and instead derived the same income from collecting stock dividends or selling appreciating assets, their tax rate would be just 15 percent.

Ownership means Mr. Bush and his friends own, you pay.