Is it just me or are wages in the United States among the working stiffs going in the wrong direction?

Circuit City announced this week it was firing 3,400 workers who the company considers to be high-wage earners and replace them with people than make less money. (Check out my analysis on this at MSNBC.com.) And a flurry of recent union contracts have ended with major concessions on wages, one of the biggest trends being new employees would make substantially less starting out than workers before them.

Here are some interesting facts from Peter S. Cohan, a management consultant from Massachusetts:

This decade has featured record debt levels, extreme income inequality not seen since 1928 — according to the New York Times in 2005 the top 1% (over $348,000 in income) took home 21.8% — their largest share of national income since 1928, and a negative savings rate of -0.7% — last seen in 1933 — the depths of the Great Depression.

Another group in the top 0.01% are CEOs who send lower paying jobs overseas to maximize their business profits and boost their incomes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Princeton University economist Alan Blinder estimates that 30 million to 40 million jobs could be sent overseas due to globalization. For those American workers whose jobs are offshored, it could be harder to pay their bills. But the bosses who send the jobs overseas should be just fine.

Are workers doing just fine?

Every few months or so a study comes out about how day care is creating gorillas. The latest is a study published in the journal Child Development that finds kids who spend a lot of time in child-care facilities exhibit more minor behavior issues than there at-home counterparts. Some of those issues include aggression and disobedience. (Full disclosure here: both my children fall into this category of spending a lot of time in child care centers during their pre-K years.)

For working parents whose kids are spending their days in child care centers it’s just another bit of bad news to make them feel guilty and crummy about themselves. But guys, let’s not take the noose out quite yet.

Am I crazy, or doesn’t this study make perfect sense. We parents who have chosen this option send our little tikes out into the world on their own at an early age, so they learn independence early on. With independence comes free thinking, at least thinking that is separate from what their parents want to shove down their throats.

Yes, these kids are more disobedient and more aggressive because they can be and have to be. It’s the real world baby..dog eats dog. They’re only gaining experience that they’ll need anyway when they get into the real world..the rough and tumble work world.

When kids spend every waking moment at home with a stay-at-home mom or dad there is little opportunity for real independence. The parents make sure they eat, make sure they do certain crafts, make sure that if there are siblings around no one ends up biting the other on the butt, or other body parts.

My son often gets punched in the head by a boy at school he considers his buddy, and I remember many times my daughter got into scuffles with her pals, not to mention her teacher.

I proclaim that these kinds of experiences are not a good or bad thing. It’s just life and kids learn to deal with life quite well when we let them. You still have to be there for them and keep them on the right track when they come home with attitude because some other kid mouths off like a 10th grader, but let’s put this all in perspective.

There was some positive news in the study. Turns out children in high-quality day care (whatever the heck that is) have better vocabularies, and some steps up in math and reading. Alas, all these advances tend to fade as the years go on.

So it turns out we all end up on the same playing field sooner or later, whether your parents dropped you off at car line, or you were connected at the hip with mom or dad.

And is there really anything wrong with creating a little gorilla in the mist? You don’t see any gorillas leaving their natural habitat to hang out with the Dian Fossey’s of the world.

When we make decisions about our careers it’s impossible not to take your family into consideration.

John and Elizabeth Edwards were faced with such a decision this week. It was both heart-wrenching and uplifting to watch the two of them during a press conference talk about her cancer and explain why they decided to stay in the presidential race. I say “they” because such a decision would impact both of them.

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial today that I found right on target (I rarely think that about Wall Street Journal editorials.)

Here it:

In today’s nasty and polarized politics, we weren’t surprised to see some of the cranks on the Web criticize John Edwards for announcing that his presidential campaign will continue d espite the return of his wife’s cancer. By these lights, he is supposed to retire from public life and tend to her full-time.

Shouldn’t that be up to the two of them? By the look of their press conference yesterday, Elizabeth Edwards wouldn’t want her husband to give up his pursuit of the Democratic nomination despite her diagnosis. They seem to be in it together, and to like each other besides.

The decision to continue also reflects the changing reality of cancer and its treatment. The spread of Mrs. Edward’s breast cancer to her bones meant that she probably can’t be cured in the sense of being declared cancer free. But with improving treatments and new, less toxic anticancer drugs, she could live her currently active life for many more years. “I don’t expect my life to be significantly different,” Mrs. Edwards said yesteday, in a demonstration of fortitude that is itself a lesson for the rest of us. God speed.

This is probably a good time to start thinking of asking your boss for a raise at the end of the year. Come on. Right now. Begin finding ways to show off, take on new projects, save the company some money. And make sure that everyone notices. Don’t go around the office or plant bellowing about your accomplishments. Just make sure the people that matter are aware of all the hard work you’re putting in. Maybe have a sit down with your manager and explain to him or her what you plan on taking on, or ask them for some feedback when you complete a project or make a change to the work environment that makes you or others more efficient. And document everything so you can share your deeds with the boss come year’s end. Don’t wait for your boss to have you sitting in an office with your annual performance evaluation, workplace experts advise. Take the initiative and be the skipper of your own career ship. (Gilligan never made more than minimum wage.)

(Reuters) — U.S. consumer sentiment slipped to its lowest in six months in March, as worries about declining stock prices and the health of the housing market shook consumer’s confidence in the economy, a report showed Friday.

Often times I hear economist talk about how solid the job market is these days but I get tons of mail each week from readers of my Your Career column on MSNBC.com from employees who feel anything but secure in their jobs and the job market in general. Most of them aren’t confident about their employment status and many wonder how they’ll be able to make ends meet if for what ever reason they’re out looking for a job. If you signed up for a risky home loan and your rate has recently skyrocketed, the concern over job security becomes even bigger.

So many people are living from paycheck to paycheck today. Why is that? Do you feel secure with your job, your bank account?

So you plan for months to go on some great vacation but the week before you depart is like hell on earth. Trying to finish up all your work. Trying to get people to watch the house, pick up the mail. Making sure you didn’t screw up the flight time, or the car rental. Worrying about the weather when you take off. And the big one, will the kids be healthy?

Ugh. Is it all worth it? We’re supposed to relax, recharge our batteries, return to work and life in general with a new lease on life.

How did our lives during the industrial age come to this? Work, work, work for months on end. Then, a tiny snippet of a vacation, a week, maybe ten days if you’re lucky. You have to get back. Who else is going to do your job? The world will cease to revolve without you.

Who came up with this formula? What was his or her name? What planet did they come from? Maybe they are aliens who came down to earth long ago and have actually imprisoned us in this 40-hour prison.

How come the work/vacation dynamic wasn’t set up to allow people to work half a year and take vacation the other half? It could work. With all the people in this country, many of them unemployed, we could all share jobs — work half, hang half.

It’s not totally crazy right? Maybe we’d have to scale back our lifestyles, but so would everyone else who’s working the half-year shift.

Imagine what incredible things we could do if our batteries actually got enough time to recharge.

Aren’t you all sick of drive-by leisure?

Women have got a long way to go baby.

Today MSNBC.com published the Work & Power survey it conducted in conjunction with Elle magazine. I got to write the lead story explaining some of the most significant results. What we found when we surveyed 60,000 men and women: men still rule the roost in the work place. OK, we knew that. But what we didn’t know was both men and women who have a preference say they’d rather work for a guy than a gal boss.

Check out the findings at MSNBC.com today.

What is going on? Are women just difficult to work for? Are we fighting old stereotypes that will never die? Do men just make better leaders?

What hope does Hillary, or any other women, have of becoming president of our great nation?

Hello Everyone:

Are women too wacky to become president?

I have a treat for you. Please click on the link below and you’ll see Bill Maher’s “New Rules” bit last night about how women need to control themselves at least until a women president is elected. He maintains that Hillary Clinton will never be elected president until women stop acting crazy. The misogynists among us, he says, will use any excuse to label women emotional and led around by their hormones.
Start the video and then jump to the part where you see Brittany Spear’s bald head. That’s when the fun begins.

What’s your take?

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