Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yet even with American’s wages declining in purchasing power they’re still addicted to access to easy credit to buy crap they don’t need.
I think Dave Ramsey said that 7 out of 10 households are living paycheck to paycheck and just look at how many of those households have newer cars in the driveway.
You do have control over you spending, but it’s understandable that that new Dooney Handbag and Denali are important for making it in this world.
Oh this is an evil corporate problem never mind the boomers that just won't get out of the way and crawl in a hole and die. That one of the biggest reasons why the job market wages are stale.
Hmm, did former generations crawl in holes and die?
I think we have to separate your points. On one hand the addiction to debt is a bad thing for individuals - but a GREAT thing for business, corporations, government, politics and a small slice of a population. I have never fell into that trap and never will. But we can't deny that the entire economy is set up to benefit those in debt.
Although we can blame individuals it's also a systemic problem. Marketing, advertising, predatory behavior by corporations, etc....it's really hard for many individuals to counter these messages. You DESERVE that fine car, nice house, good vacation, top notch wedding, etc..... (sarcasm)......
God Forbid if we watched our pennies and our GDP fell - we'd have politicians coming out of the woodwork attacking the government for their horrible policies which caused people to SAVE. The game is definitely rigged in favor of higher consumption.
We can pretend that we are smart enough to avoid these messages being thrown at us every second - but people are impressionable. For example, we are the only civilized country in the world that allows "direct to consumer" advertising of dangerous drugs. How can a typical person (100 IQ, etc.) hope to see 10,000 viagra commercials an then not think there is something wrong with them if they don't want sex all the time? How can someone be bombarded with commercials saying they should be smiling...or else they may be depressed?
Brainwashing works. I'm not making an excuse for individual responsibility, but our culture does allow various forms of predatory behavior...and often toward populations which are susceptible (older folks, etc.).
Interesting that two very conservative states, WY and ID, lead the pack with the smallest declines. Less than 1% in each instance.
WY has less than .2% of the population of the USA........statistically it means nothing at all. It's like me taking one town in the burbs of NYC and pointing to that......
Neither of those states has anything approaching a diversified economy or population.
North Dakota is likely to look good now too - due to an oil boom which may peter out next year due to the current low prices.
Mineral extraction is the primary economic force in WY.
Yet even with American’s wages declining in purchasing power they’re still addicted to access to easy credit to buy crap they don’t need.
I think Dave Ramsey said that 7 out of 10 households are living paycheck to paycheck and just look at how many of those households have newer cars in the driveway.
You do have control over you spending, but it’s understandable that that new Dooney Handbag and Denali are important for making it in this world.
Oh this is an evil corporate problem never mind the boomers that just won't get out of the way and crawl in a hole and die. That one of the biggest reasons why the job market wages are stale.
At sufficiently low incomes, people with no available credit hardly have control over their spending.
It is a BOX that caused the decline of manufacturing and the middle class!
The post below hit on some main components of the decline. After 9 pages of a very interesting forum I would like to introduce everyone to THE BOX. What is the Box? It is the invention of the shipping container in the 1950s. This is the most interesting read for anyone who wants to know what truly happened to our economy and middle class. See the link below:
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
Marc Levinson
Some points to make:
At the same time shipping containers and overseas shipping became prevalent American Unions were increasingly trying to negotiate for more money, less hours and more pension and other benefits.
The only question is should America have stopped it? Should any of the Presidents between 1960 and up until Obama today try to stop world trade and place tariffs on manufactured goods (does anyone remember when Pat Buchanan was ran off the stage while trying to be the Republican nominee with his platform based mostly on stopping NAFTA and most other "free trade agreements":
I am not sure if even an isolation strategy would of worked. The entire rest of the free world was moving toward global trade and Americans would of eventually been so isolated we would of been forced to go global years later and at that point would of still had to gut our manufacturing and middle class but also found global fortune 500 companies that filled the void and taken out our "mean and nasty US corporations" who are headquartered in the United States and at least bring some sort of jobs and taxes to the US.
So the only way out of this mess is to figure "free trade" out and have politicians in place that can do there best to give us (USA) as many advantages in free trade as possible realizing lower wages is inevitable for any/all countries that have higher wages then 95% of the rest of the world.........OR realize that 95% of the rest of the world wishes they were a "lower class" American making $ 25-40k a year with a cell phone, car, a roof over there heads, a washing machine, AC, etc.
**********EXCERPT from the Box***********************
As wage earners, on the other hand, workers have every reason to be ambivalent. In the decades after World War II, wartime devastation created vast demand while low levels of international trade kept competitive forces under control. In this exceptional environment, workers and trade unions in North America, Western Europe, and Japan were able to negotiate nearly continuous improvements in wages and benefits, while government programs provided ever stronger safety nets. The workweek grew shorter, disability pay was made more generous, and retirement at sixty or sixty-two became the norm. The container helped bring an end to that unprecedented advance. Low shipping costs helped make capital even more mobile, increasing the bargaining power of employers against their far less mobile workers. In this highly integrated world economy, the pay of workers in Shenzhen sets limits on wages in South Carolina, and when the French government ordered a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, it discovered that nearly frictionless, nearly costless shipping made it easy for manufacturers to avoid the higher cost by moving abroad.
*************************************************
Quote:
Originally Posted by BugsyPal
Each of these "middle class is dying in America" reports/threads comes down to the same very sad statistics: the quantity and quality of jobs that support such a lifestyle/demographic continue to decrease and or vanish.
The great burst of the middle class in the United States really came about via several factors that came together starting probably just before WWII and continued almost through the 1970's.
First was the expansion of labor unions. Next came the GI Bill which sent hundreds to college that otherwise never would have gone. Finally the US economy still was manufacturing/trade based enough that a there was enough employment or self-employment that paid enough to put a family in the middle-class.
The United States has been through about three or more recessions since the 1980's. After each such event labor participation rates are never what they were before, and this time that is true in spades.
The American labor market is moving into two very distinct sectors; highly skilled/educated (better to higher wages) and low skill/service (low wages).
Thanks to technology including the spread and growth of computers companies and businesses are able to reach the same or greater productivity with fewer and fewer employees. Those that do have positions often find themselves doing far more than someone say in a similar position a decade ago.
Years ago walking though a corporate HQ or any office really and you found scores of secretaries, typists, telephone operators, archivists, actuaries, copy machine operators, and so forth. Today most of those jobs are gone or no longer exist in past form.
The biggest hit comes from the loss of US manufacturing base. Post war all those factories churning out everything from automobiles to washing machines not only provided those employed by that particular company with work, but places that provided support (everything from parts to raw materials and supplies) kept gave many more employment as well.
Look at healthcare the industry everyone keep harping on about being a bright spot in the US economy. If you look closely at the numbers hired numbers of techs, assistants and other lower paid workers out numbers the higher compensated doctors and nurses.
Even the USPS, once seen as the ticket to a middle class lifestyle is laying off workers due to technology.
Irrelevant. We have one party two face system. Special interest groups owns our house of reps not the people.
Exactly! Money is power, and those with the power to control it are moving the money to people who will support them. The problem now is, only candidates who are easily corrupted stand any chance of getting into office.
Joe Sixpack knows he is hard up financially, but he does not realize that there are 92,000,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 65 who are not working. Not until Joe realizes the magnitude of our situation will the political winds change. McConnell and Boehner are still trying to please Reid and Pelosi. It isn't gridlock. It is intentional. It is like a Japanese Kabuki theater. Everybody knows the characters and the story. They know the outcome and still they seem compelled to watch.
There are a few responsible people in Congress, but they cannot be effective as long as the entrenched "old guard" remains in place.
This is the way the power brokers in America want it. They want a servant class and a smaller class that are being served. The concerted efforts to weaken public education, destroy voting rights, and allow corporations to buy our elections are the basis of the United Corporations of America. And their plans are working well, as these statistics demonstrate.
Read some history. If you like the way things were in Victorian England or Czarist Russia, then by all means sign on to the campaigns of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, etc. That's where they aim to take us.
I am 67 and none of the recessions I have gone thru compares at all to the great depression. Seems each hit hardest in regions that already had economics that were going down hill already; the recession just brought quicker collapse. In those you can't expect a return to past from what I have seen. Now if the banking system would have collapsed as in the great depression the we would have experienced what was experienced then over the entire country. I saw no bank panic at all I the news. People going to banks they read about already taken over by FDIC and open.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It is a BOX that caused the decline of manufacturing and the middle class!
