Pew Report: The Lost Decade of the Middle Class - Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier

[lkm370]

The middle class has been on a downward spiral since Reagan. What did people expect? Trickle down conservative economic policies simply don't work. It sounds good on paper and in a speech but it just dosent work.

[Goodnight]

And pray tell, why do they have "cheap" labor?

And who says the labor is "cheap?"

You know, in Tajikstan, the average hourly wage is $1.31/hour.

Did you think that Tajiks were all homeless, or did you think that they lived in card-board boxes?

They live in apartments. So do Romanians who make $2.50/hour. And in addition to living in their apartments, they have cell-phones, and cell-phone service plans and wear nice clothes and shoes, and party at Strandul Neptun and go on holiday at the Black Sea.

So how pathetic are you that you cannot live on $2.50/hour?

You'd have to be really, really pathetic......or you'd have to be intelligent and understand that there is a perfectly rational, logical, mathematical, economical reason...

....the cost-of-living.

Yes, the cost-of-living...it varies all over the world....and it even varies in the US.

This might come as shock to you, but sometimes $1,200 is the same as $2,300 and sometimes it is the same as $4,000 but sometimes it is the same as $650.

Economically...

Mircea


Many of the 3rd world workers have nothing and I would hope that living in an apartment and having a cell phone isn't the future of the middle class in the US, although I am sure the 1% would love that standard. No health care, no environmental regulations and no work standards, try spending a few days in the Phillipines tuna factory living in a hut and using open plumbing.

American companies are exploiting cheap labor and poor working conditions in Vietnam, China and other countries. But hey, that's the free market system. Wealthy international companies are after profits.

By the way Tajikstan is one of those countries with virtually no environmental regualtions, take a trip there and enjoy the polluted air, sewage in the water but at least they have cell phones.