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Some startling statistics on U.S. wages and incomes and the increase of part-time workers, by the publisher of U.S. News and World Report, Mortimer Zuckerman. He cites the Pew Research Center reports that show one third of Americans identifying themeselves as lower class or lower middle class compared to one quarter before 2008. This affects social mobility with the increasing gaps in incomes, education and social behaviour acting to reinforce each other and leading to even lower future mobility. Industries that are showing growth are in low wage occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows growth in future in industries noted for low wage part time work- health care, social assistance and retail, with some jobs lacking minimum wage and overtime protections. Revealing in this respect is that in the last 2 years fully 43% of net employment growth is in the 1.7 million jobs added in low wage work in food service, retail and employment services industries. The number of Americans working full time declined by 5.9 million since Sept 2007, part time workers increased by 2.6 million. The effects of higher part time workers and job recovery predominantly in lower wage industries is likely to affect consumer spending and slow growth....

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Confessore describes ways in which the Republican Party agenda moved away from the interests of ordinary American working class voters in the last decade, ignoring some of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the deep recession in the years that followed.

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The Census Bureau reports that 46.2 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010. This is an increase of 2.6 million over 2009. This is the highest number of Americans living in poverty since 1958, when this statistic was first measured. Poverty is defined for 2010 as income at or below $22,314 for family of four. Also relevant is the median household income which went down to $49,445 in 2010, a decline of 2.3% from 2009. The typical household earned less in 2010 than in 1997, in inflation adjusted terms. The Census Bureau reports 16.3% of Americans had no health insurance coverage in 2010, the same as 2009.

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Bernie Sanders points out in this NYT op-ed the idea that Donald Trump could benefit from the same discontent among working class voters that helped the Leave campaign is a wake up call for the Democratic Party. He calls for global trade and a global economy that works for working class, middle class Americans.  Sanders is pushing for a Democratic Party that embraces the concerns of working class Americans, that understands the impact of factory closings and loss of jobs, of economic uncertainty, of declining incomes and shrinking opportunities.

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U.S. commercial oil inventories cover about 164 days of net imports by Jan. 2015. Excluding net imports from Canada and Mexico this reaches 279 days of net imports from other countries. When strategic oil reserves are included this goes up to 450 days, which will put pressure on oil prices in 2015 as the price of oil drops below $50. The surge in oil production in the U.S. by 1.2 million barrels a day contributed to this buildup.

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The racial polarization in the U.S. before the presidential elections of 2012 between Romney and Obama. During the 2008 elections Obama did as well as Clinton by getting 43% of the white vote, it now appears headed into the 30's. This situation is reminiscent of the one facing Mondale in the 1980 election with Reagan, when Mondale received only 35% of the white vote. Fully 91% of the support for Romney comes from white voters as he passes 50% among overall voters in a late Oct. 2012 ABC/Washington Post poll. One irony in this situation is that Obama contested the 2008 election as a person who could bridge the racial divide.

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This article in DW.com cites experts who point out that the Republican Party always had tensions within it because of the diverging interests of three groups that have allied together to form the party- Wealthy businessmen and corporate interests, evangelicals, and white working class people who have seen their incomes decline for several decades. The interests of each group have some overlap, are sometimes masked but frequently they diverge. Nigel Bowles, former director of the Rothermere Institute at Oxford University, says there is no particular reason that this coalition would hold together, that it was unstable to begin with, a wonder that it did not split up earlier. Scott Lucas, an expert on American Studies at the University of Birmingham, says that Reagan showed great skill in holding this coalition together, and Donald Trump has taken it apart by mobilizing only one constituency of white working class voters and leaving out others. The break between Republican party leaders Ryan, McCain, and state party leaders, with Trump is unprecedented in post war American politics, and putting it back together now looks like a lost cause in the medium term.  ...

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Jim Dwyer discusses proposed legislation in the New York City Council in November 2011, to set a "living wage" of $10 per hour, plus benefits, for workers at new developments receiving more than $1 million in public money. Under this legislation employers who do not include benefits would pay an hourly wage of $11.50. Discussion in the City Council has led to questioning this legislation on the grounds that the developments would not be built under the new rules. Dwyer points to San Francisco, which has set the minimum wage at $10.24 for January 2012, plus mandatory contributions to health insurance funds. The number of low wage workers in New York City with some college education has increased by 70%, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. Wages at the bottom were $10.85 an hour, adjusted for inflation in 1990, in 2010 the wages were $10. What this does is further increase the income disparities and inequality in the U.S. Because of the demographic changes in America with Hispanic children representing a large proportion of young children, and the high rate of dropouts from highschool in the Mexican American community in New York, this means more children in New York City growing up below the poverty line....

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The failure of foreclosure programs under the Obama administration continues into 2012.

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Hillary Clinton returns on September 15, 2016, to the campaign trail after 3 days of rest to recover from pneumonia. She chose to speak at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, with N. Carolina  now considered a state that is winnable, and with a new focus on young people on campuses where she wants to regain her once large lead in the summer. She said that the break had given her time to reflect on what it is she represents. "The campaign trail doesn't really encourage reflection and its important to sit with your thoughts every now and then. It helped me reconnect with what this campaign is all about." Adding that it was about quality health care, financial security, clean water and other critical needs of people.

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The Romney campaign is trying to keep Obama's support among Hispanics and Latinos to 65-70%. Latino leaders say Romney's positions on immigration during the primaries, when he chose to go to the right of Governor Perry, have affected their perceptions and his more recent centrist positions are being discounted. Republicans are awakening to their weak position in the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. Positions on abortion, gay marraige and religion are affecting a portion of the Latino vote. One question is how enthusiastic is the voter turnout, especially because president Obama failed to take up immigration reform in his first term and gave it a lower priority.

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Noam Scheiber of NYT provides this illuminating account of how the changes in employment affected Hispanic Americans since 2004. About 500,000 jobs were created in the U.S. construction industry in 2014. Of this 315,000 jobs went to Hispanics with the highest number in California, Florida, Texas and Illinois, which have large Hispanic population. This has enabled Hispanic employment to reach the pre-recession levels in 2015 before this happens for blacks and whites, according to the Economic Report of the President. The drop in immigrants from Mexico crossing the border as economic conditions deteriorated in the U.S. in 2009-2012, and the stricter enforcement, has resulted in native born Americans benefitting most from the jobs created. Hispanics took the biggest hit following the recession in 2009-2012, with a loss of 700,000 jobs for the 3 million Hispanics employed in construction. During the 2004-2007 construction boom Pew Research shows 1.6 million jobs going to immigrants, of which 800,000 went to native born Hispanics, before the collapse in construction in 2009. This time the recovery is benefitting native born Americans most....

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Friedman reviews Acemoglu and Robinson's new book, "Why Nations Fail." Acemoglu says that nations fail when wealth and opportunities are concentrated in the hands of few people, that a condition for societies to succeed is to create opportunities for more people. For this to happen it is important to create inclusive political and economic institutions. This is an important insight, but for Western society this is an insight as old as Adam Smith when he pointed out the importance of this aspect of western societies after the feudal period in his "Wealth of Nations." For Smith it was the failure to create inclusive societies that led to the gradual unravelling of societies in the river valleys of the Yangste and the Ganges, in China and India, of increasing poverty and the gradual disappearance of what constituted the middle class in India and China. Chapter 8 titled "Of Wages and Labor" in the "Wealth of Nations" makes specific reference to this.

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Lawrence Katz, Harvard labor economist, talks to Friedman about the jobs crisis in the U.S.. Katz identifies three jobs crises occurring at the same time today. One is the drop in the demand for goods and services that resulted from the longer term effects of the financial crisis of 2008, with rising foreclosures, weak housing markets, bad debt on the balance sheets of banks, and interest rates at close to zero reducing the scope of action by the Federal Reserve bank. The second, is the widespread long term unemployment with workers dropping out of the labor market. The third, is the nature of new factories and hiring. Work in new factories is done through increased automation, information technology and fewer workers. As a result job creation is a fraction of what it was in the past. Not mentioned here is the shrinking of the public sector under the strain of budget deficits for local, state and federal government. This leads to the question of how America will create jobs in the future. Katz believes the answer is creating more "hubs," networked urban areas like Austin, Silicon Valley, and Raleigh-Durham, by bringing together universities, high-tech manufacturers, software providers, and startup companies, to cooperate in creating new products that enhance people's lives worldwide. This has to be done by the private sector and government working together to build the infrastructure and make the investments in education, training of workers, and equipment for new job creation....

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Krugman points out that about 13 million Americans without insurance gained health insurance under the Obama plan. He says if it is turned back 8 million whites without a college degree in that 13 million will lose health insurance. Of these eight million about two out of three voted for Trump, so that 5 million Trump supporters could now lose health insurance even though they are older and have more health conditions. Krugman says this aspect of the election campaign was not covered well in the misinformation and social media information of the 2016 campaign, and the lack of media focus on the important issues in the election. On manufacturing jobs he says most of the jobs lost are not returning, and only token jobs such as at a Carrier plant in the news will take their place.

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Karl Rove, advisor to President George W. Bush, and organizer behind American Crossroads political action committee, says the election will be decided by the higher support for Romney among independents and the high turnout of Republican voters. The prediction for the voter turnout among Republicans is 36% Republican vs. 35% Democratic, according to Gallup. This compares with the 39% Republican and 37% Democratic in 2004, and 39% Democratic 29% Republican in 2008. The early and absente ballot voting advantage has significantly gone down almost by half for Democrats as more Republicans cast early votes in swing states like Ohio. Closing statements and crowds also appear to confirm this trend. Rove sees this as 51% to 48% favoring the Republicans. The addition of swing states - Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania also appears to suggest that a broader movement is underway that is happening right now in the final week before the election on Nov. 6, 2012. Rove focusses on the numbers. A behavioural assessment shows the importance in this campaign of the centrist position adopted by Romney in the closing months of the campaign; the selection of Ryan which gave Romney support from the Republican conservative base so that he could talk freely about his record in the liberal state of Massachusetts to independent voters and women, and most important the clear message to voters focussed on a five point plan to get the economy recovery were critical in shaping these numbers....