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-Both parties falsely pretend the economy is great when they are in charge.
Of course they do.
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-The economy is not generating middle class jobs.
There are middle class jobs, and the size of the American middle class hasn't changed at all in past 12 yrs, but has declined about 10% in past 50 yrs, but you are right in saying there are more rich people than ever, but people moving up should not be a problem. Maybe the definition of middle class should be changed to include some of them. Middlle class avg income was $65,000 in 2021. Is that still accurate, because lot of people make a heck of a lot more than that and they see themselves as middle class.
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Originally Posted by Retroit
You mean Bidenomics isn't working? I'm shocked. I thought for sure that having a president that was put in office by the top 0.1% would have fixed everything.
Its about a trend going back 50 yrs.
Last edited by Finn_Jarber; 12-11-2023 at 11:06 AM..
There are middle class jobs, and the size of the American middle class hasn't changed at all in past 12 yrs, but has declined about 10% in past 50 yrs, but you are right in saying there are more rich people than ever.
Those are the ones that tell us the groceries don't cost more now, that people should have saved more, that people should buy electric cars, etc... People completely out of touch with regular people. They are laughing at those struggling now.
Those are the ones that tell us the groceries don't cost more now, that people should have saved more, that people should buy electric cars, etc... People completely out of touch with regular people. They are laughing at those struggling now.
Yep. And guess what --- finance should have been drilled into people in school. I've said it a hundred times on here. My daughter gets it - I think - keep your darn costs down starting with what you spend to go to college. You do not want to be working your entire life away to pay debts.
And another thing that should be painfully obvious to everyone is that the politicians of both parties are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yeah, I don't know how much longer we can pretend that the cuddling of mega corporations isn't what is killing the middle class.
You bring up a valid point, confirmed by:
"Energy companies — like ExxonMobil and Shell — and food and commodities corporations — like Kraft Heinz — saw profits that have "far" outpaced the inflation that followed the onset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Tech, telecommunications and finance firms also experienced significant profit increases, according to the report." https://www.thestreet.com/investing/...o&cm_ven=YAHOO
Those are the ones that tell us the groceries don't cost more now, that people should have saved more, that people should buy electric cars, etc... People completely out of touch with regular people. They are laughing at those struggling now.
Groceries cost more, but not three times more like some larpers claim. Not sure what electric cars have to do with anything.
It all started with NAFTA. The smart people - Ross Perot, and a few others - warned against it - but the establishment saw dollar signs, and here we are 3 decades later. What could possibly go wrong by letting a lot of our industry move south? And then on top of NAFTA - you have the wide open southern border bringing in tons of poor people with no skills who don't want to assimilate here. Problems are almost unfixable at this stage, but a good start would be shutting the border.
Exactly this.
I remember when this was first starting to effect my career. As usual with me, I would always speak up of my distain for it...and I remember distinctly hearing this quote "our country is going to transition to a service based economy"....well, here we are.
Jack Welch set the bar with offshoring, and so many corporations followed. Too bad Perot didn't get elected, it might have made some change...who knows.
On a side note, it's funny that Stockman wrote that article. Which is pretty spot on.
He was directly responsible with the demise of a 100 year old company. He came in, reduced headcount by offshoring as much as he could (it was stomach turning watching waves of people being escorted out of the building) , inflated the companies quarterly earnings, then tried to strong arm the automotive OEM's for more money. It eventually all came crumbling down, and he narrowly escaped a indictment, and eventually ended up having to pay $7 million in a settlement.
My father in law sent me this article about the middle class on decline at the expense of the elite.
The main points of the article by David Stockman:
-Money creation went into continuous high gear after the 2000 dotcom crash, which favored those with many assets at the expense of those with fewer assets.
-Since 2000, the top 1% have gained on average $20 million in inflation adjusted net worth, the top 0.1% $88 million on average.
-The bulk of society with few assets not only didn't experience the money creation induced asset appreciation, they had their wages eaten up by inflation. CPI likely understates it, but shows that cost of living has risen 82% since 2000 while median real annual wage as tracked by social security payroll taxes shows wages are only up 14.5% since 2000. Whereas wages for the 1% and 0.1% have skyrocketed.
-Median wages no longer buy a middle class lifestyle. The average of the bottom half of workers make only 65% of the poverty line for a family of 4.
-Valuations of historical stock markets are out of whack due to money creation flowing into assets. Net worth of the top 1% was equal to 135% of GDP in 2000, but is equal to 207% of GDP today.
-Both parties falsely pretend the economy is great when they are in charge.
-The economy is not generating middle class jobs.
-The bottom half of income workers generated just $17,900 on average (for comparison the top half averaged $102,000). That's 84.5 million workers averaging that little. Or in other words, the bottom 50% of workers earned only 15% of income per the social security administration.
-The US invests in Wall Street and not Main Street. Net real investment has fallen from 6.7% of GDP in 2000 to 4.8% of GDP in 2022. This hurts the bottom half of workers.
It all started with NAFTA. The smart people - Ross Perot, and a few others - warned against it - but the establishment saw dollar signs, and here we are 3 decades later.
NAFTA was promoted by Reagan, Bush et cal as a Free Market Capitalism thing, which it was of course. Clinton signed it into law when he took office.
Was it good of bad? Both.
It generated lot of economic output, better consumer prices and foreign investment, while some factory jobs were lost when factories moved to Mexico, and it also suppressed wage growth in some industries in US.
It wasn't just NAFTA, because lot of IT jobs disappeared in India, and US companies started manufacturing in Asia. I worked for a company which started offshoring in 2002, and 10 yrs later over 90% of us had been laid off.
NAFTA was promoted by Reagan, Bush et cal as a Free Market Capitalism thing, which it was of course. Clinton signed it into law when he took office.
Was it good of bad? Both.
It generated lot of economic output, better consumer prices and foreign investment, while some factory jobs were lost when factories moved to Mexico, and it also suppressed wage growth in some industries in US.
It wasn't just NAFTA, because lot of IT jobs disappeared in India, and US companies started manufacturing in Asia. I worked for a company which started offshoring in 2002, and 10 yrs later over 90% of us had been laid off.
Yep, NAFTA was just icing on the cake. Millions of manufacturing , assembly, engineering , design, IT, etc jobs have been lost due to offshoring since the late 70's.
And the blame does span parties.
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