Since the economy is so good and a significant majority of supposed journalists want to destroy President Trump and elect Democrats, they search far and wide for what they perceive are negative stories with which they can propagandize the public.  The following is a story by the Washington Post News Service:

James Collins has been working at Walmart for six years.  His pay: $11 an hour, the same as what a new hire would make on their [sic] first day of work.

Collins, a 65-year-old maintenance worker at a Dallas store, joined the company when the starting hourly wage was $8. Over the years, Walmart has steadily raised that rate, in part to attract workers in a tightening labor market.  But data shows that pay for longer-term workers like Collins has remained stubbornly stagnant.

"There's no appreciation for experience anymore," Collins said.  "Someone could walk off the street today and get paid the same as me."

Their idea is to tell the public that retail employment is not good or fair.

Start by noticing that the story is about Walmart, the country's largest employer.  I have to wonder why it isn't about Amazon, since Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Post.

The article actually has some interesting pieces of information.

The writers essentially complain that a worker who is 65 and who has been there for six years isn't being rewarded for his seniority because new workers are also starting around the same $11 an hour that he is making.  I actually find it fascinating that Walmart has given him a 37.5% raise over six years from $8 to $11 per hour.  Isn't that amazing that the largest employer gave around 6% per year even though the government didn't require it to?

We are always told that the government needs to raise the minimum wage, but what we see is that the private sector is actually doing it, because capitalism and the marketplace are pushing wages up.

The writers also complain that the worker isn't being rewarded for experience and seniority.  Haven't unions always done that?  Doesn't a three-year electrician, plumber, carpenter, teamster, etc. essentially make the same as other union members who have been on the job for ten, twenty, or thirty years?  I don't remember the media complaining about that.

The Washington Post article continues like this:

Retailers have made headlines for raising their minimum hourly wages in quick succession – CVS to $11, Costco to $13, Target to $15 by 2020 – while 29 states and the District now require that employers pay more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.  But economists say those gains have not translated to higher wages among mid-level workers.

The average hourly wage paid to retail workers dropped to $18.58 in June, from $18.65 a month earlier, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  (Year over year, the average hourly retail wage has risen 2 percent, from $18.15.)

Economists cite a number of factors, including a decline in union jobs and fewer opportunities to move up within the industry.  Add to that high turnover rates and a trend toward part-time work, and the result has been a growing group of retail workers who may be making higher minimum wages but continue to feel stuck in low-paying positions.

Chief Executive Doug McMillon, meanwhile, received $22.8 million in compensation last year, up 2 percent from the year before, according to company filings.

Then the article says retail wages were down 7 cents per hour last month.  I assume that the statistical sample may have shown that, but I would challenge the journalists to find retail workers whose salary was cut last month.  It's a go-go economy, and something else would have to be at work if wages really fell.  The article notes that several retailers are raising their wages, and more people are quitting their jobs each month than ever, and there are one million fewer part-time jobs than when Trump took office, while Hispanic, black, and female unemployment, along with total unemployment, are near all-time lows.  People over twenty-five without a high school diploma have also seen their unemployment rate drop from 7.6% to a record low 5.1%.

Now, which of those pieces of information would make a journalist believe that existing retail workers are taking a pay cut?

Here's something more like it, from Bloomberg:

Americans' confidence in employment prospects is soaring as the labor market tightens.  The latest proof: A record number are voluntarily quitting to seek better jobs.

Some 3.56 million workers left positions in May, the most in data back to 2000, and up from the prior month's 3.35 million, Labor Department data showed Tuesday.  That pushed up the quits rate, which measures quitters as a share of employed people, to a 17-year high of 2.4 percent from 2.3 percent.  With more workers feeling assured of finding better employment, sustained wage gains may soon follow.

Then we get the gratuitous comment about CEO pay to gin up hate for the rich.  The stories we always see are similar to the garbage the Economic Policy Institute puts out.  Take a gander:

According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO pay is 271 times the nearly $58,000 annual average pay of the typical American worker.

All this kvetching, while the actual median pay of 210,160 CEOs in May of 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was $183,270.

The number is easy to find, but obviously, it doesn't fit the Democrat agenda, so it is effectively hidden from the public.

Left-wing senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders earn almost as much as a median CEO in the U.S at $174,000 per year, and their pensions and other benefits dwarf those of the average CEO, yet they stir up hate against business-owners.

Here are the salaries of some of the pundits who get paid to basically regurgitate Democrat talking points :Joe Scarborough: $4 million; Rachel Maddow: $7 million; Chris Matthews: $5 million; Chris Cuomo: $2.5 million.

I understand why young people think socialism is good: they have been misled by professors.  I do not understand why seasoned journalists would spew forth such nonsense.  Capitalism is what helps lift most people out of poverty, not socialism.

The Democrat agenda of government-run health care, free college, higher minimum wages (no matter what the local market is), massively higher taxes, open borders, sanctuary cities and states, zero fossil fuels, and massively higher taxes would destroy America, yet that is what most of the media supports on a daily basis.

Thank God we elected Trump to make America great again, instead of Hillary, who would have continued the path toward destruction of the greatest economy that ever existed.