Nice work if you can get it

For a while now, Republican talking heads have groused about the lack of reporting on just how strong the economy is, most often citing stock values and the GDP. Of course, the vast majority of stocks (to the tune of 75%) are owned by very wealthy Americans, and with real wages failing to keep up with inflation, growth in GDP obviously isn't benefitting workers. And it's no secret that all the tax cuts of the last five years have disproportionately benefitted the upper class.

But as Salon notes today, America is also losing jobs.

The employment numbers for May came out this morning, and the news is pretty much all bad. Economists expected that the nation would add about 170,000 new jobs in May. The number out today: Just 75,000, about half the number needed just to keep pace with population growth.

But we've had some good job months lately, right? Not as much as you might think. The Labor Department initially reported that 138,000 new jobs were created in April. Today, it revised that number downward to 126,000. The Labor Department's original number for March was 200,000. The new number: 175,000. Add May's number to the revised numbers for March and April, and you get a three-month average of 125,000 new jobs, which is to say, less than the number required just to break even.

So while righties can crow about economic growth all they want (and they will), it's all in the name of supply-side economics-- shifting society's wealth to the already rich, and shifting society's tax burden to the already struggling.