COME ON PEOPLE, WHAT ARE OUR PRIORITIES???

Now as difficult as this may be for some to believe, there are, in fact, far more important issues in far more urgent need of being discussed than are repercussions that an owner of an NBA team should be made to face for making what, everyone agrees, were ignorant comments. And I’m quite sure that many in our state-controlled media would much prefer that we discuss the latter and ignore the former. But we simply cannot continue to fall for what are nothing more than those things meant to distract us away from issues that are truly important.

One of those more important issues that should be at the forefront of our discussions has to do with the fact that the real median income of American men who work full-time, year-round peaked over forty years ago in 1973. In 1973, median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $51,670 in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars. The median earnings of men who work full-time year-round have never been that high again. And what you may ask has Barry "Almighty" done to perhaps correct this? Absolutely nothing!

Because as recently as 2012, the latest year for which the Census Bureau has published an estimate, the real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round was $49,398. That was $2,272, or about 4.4 percent, below the peak median earnings of $51,670 in 1973. In 1960, the earliest year for which the Census Bureau has published this data, the median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $36,420 in 2012 dollars. Between 1960 and 1973 that increased $15,250, or about 41.9 percent.

Now by comparison, the real median earnings of American women who work full-time year-round peaked in 2007, when women who worked full-time earned $38,872 in constant 2012 dollars. From 1960 through 2007, the real income of American women who work full-time increased $16,774 or about 76 percent. From 2007 to 2012, the real earnings of women who work full-time declined $1,081, or about 2.8 percent. One item that might also be worth mentioning here is that the steepest portion of the decline took place since 2009.

And in what is yet another issue that I would think take priority over the plight of some owner of a sports franchise would be the fact that in 20 percent of American families in 2013, and according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), not one member of the family worked. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000 of those families, or 20 percent, not one person had a job. And no one held jobs either because they were unemployed or no longer in the labor force.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that between missing airliners, mud slides and now some ignorant comments from a billionaire owner of a basketball team, we seem to be far too easily distracted away from those issues that would have a far bigger impact on us than whether or not this boob is a racist. And as I have asked before, would we even be talking about this if the guy in questions was black and he was talking about whites. Somehow I doubt it. So why are we talking about it now? Does it rise to level of our $17 Trillion debt? I just don’t think so!