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"What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about 6 unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.... The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild."
Your view that the "middle class developed upper class tastes..." --I can't believe you are saying that only those born rich or on high salaries are the only ones that deserve to own a house.???
"Trappings of high living" - owning a home, having a car, going out to eat every now and then? So my middle class family, when I was growing up, were mired in the "trappings" of high living??
Now the welfare queens you refer to, that's a different story. My world is the hard-working, rapidly disappearing middle class, the class that used to be able to buy a home, keep the home, keep the job until natural retirement, feed and clothe their family, and go on a simple vacation. I don't know about the western part of the US, but around these parts, it's "rich" as in well to do, and larger and larger segments of the population sinking from middle class into the "working class poor."
Google "disappearing middle class," you will see a lot of articles by educated economists who understand what is happening to our country and why.
We all know that "Real Americans" don't rely on Socialist Programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security is not supported at all by general tax revenue, but soley by the payroll taxes of those who are thereby qualifiying for benefits somewhere down the road. You pay in, and that qualifies you to draw out. Doesn't sound socialist to me.
Now Medicare is a horse of a different color, and it's wrong it paint it with the same brush as Social Security. Participants do have to qualify, and they pay a Part B premium, but the cost of medical care has escalated so much that lord knows who is paying for what. (I'm sure some people do; I'm just saying that I do not).
Today, a decent pair of leather shoes can cost 5 - 10 hours' wage for a person earning $10 - $20/hour. Multiply that by a few family members.
You, too, have some good points in your longer post, NewEnglandGirl, but the part I quoted above undercuts your own arguments. Doing the math on that "decent pair of leather shoes" (based on the wages and hours you give) results in a price of between $50 and $200 for the pair of shoes. Even though I am not struggling financially and could afford a pair of $200 shoes, I do not pay even $50 for a pair of shoes, because I consider it wasteful. Why would anyone need leather, if that's really how much it comes to? Anyway, I'll bet that even leather shoes can be had for less than $50 a pair. Do I detect some entltlement mentality here? Not meaning you expect welfare to pay for the shoes, but that the thought behind it is "I deserve such shoes". That attitude is exactly what is wrong with our country.
But tehn people will think they have to have cellphone and the monthly bill.Ipod and computers etc. Seems a bit of warped theory to me. Choice is good and IMo a good pair of shoes can help your foot health.Decisions;lsecisions ;decison between social bling often and what is really best and good for you.Its all choice and one has justifiable as another.No PC foot wear please.
"What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about 6 unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.... The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild."
Those 22 statistics don't prove that the middle class is being wiped out in America. They highlight big trouble in many cases, but many are either skewed or lack historical perspective, or both.
Lets look at a few:
#1 - 83% of US stocks are owned by the top 1% of the people. If you look closely at the included table, it also shows the same stats for other years. In 1962, for example, the chart says the top 1% owned 94.4% of US stocks. If this stat supposedly proves that the middle class is being wiped out, then it was even more compelling then. Yep, we still have a middle class 48 years later.
#2 - 61% of Americans "always or usually live paycheck to paycheck, up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007" Well, we're in the early years of a Depression. I suspect the stats were pretty dismal in the mid 1930s, and I know they were bad in the double-dip recession of 1981-1983, and pretty awful in 2000-2002 as well.
#3 - 66% of the income growth from 2001 to 2007 went to the top 1%. Well, I argue that most of that income growth was money created out of thin air by the magic of highly leveraged high finance, and is likely to disappear just as fast at some point in this financial debacle.
#4 - 36% of Americans say they don't contribute anything to retirement savings. Nothing new here...in fact widespread poverty among seniors unprepared for life beyond the end of their working years was the very reason Social Security was created.
#5 - 43% of Americans have less than $10K saved for retirement. Essentially this is the same point as #4 above, and again, it's nothing new.
#6 - 24% of Americans have postponed their retirement age this year. Is that a surprise in the collapse of a credit-bubble? But a comparison of retirement age versus life expectancy shows that even postponed, those Americans will have a longer retirement than their predecessors did even just 10 years ago.
#7 - More than 1.2 million Americans filed for bankruptcy last year, a 32% increase over 2008. Again, is this a surprise in a credit bubble collapse? This is exactly what I was talking about before--middle class Americans trying to live upper-class lives on borrowed money they never will have the capacity to repay. My only regret here is that the banks that lent them the money aren't eating the losses instead of the taxpayer.
#8 - Only the top 5% of US households have earned enough additional income to cover the rise in housing costs since 1975. Sure, but the increases in median and average housing costs were driven largely by an even larger increase in median house size and trimmings. I guarantee you that a 1,200 sq ft 3BR house like the one I spent my teen years in has not risen more than wages in that time frame.
#9 - For the first time ever, US banks hold more than 50% of the cumulative net worth of residential housing. This one's ridiculous...most of those holdings are fiat money printed by the fed and and held at outrageous book values against inflated asset valuations. Much of that fictitious net worth will be written off or inflated away in the years to come...it's effectively worthless, no matter how well-hidden on the books by rigged accounting procedures.
#10 - In 1950 the average senior exec earned 30x the average worker. Since 2000, it's grown to 300-500x. That's something I'd love to see fixed, but it's a red herring when applied to the "proof of a disappearing middle class" argument. The existence of ten hideously overcompensated senior execs at Boeing, for example, doesn't negate the tens of thousands of good blue-collar jobs there. The execs may be greedy pigmen that are gaining disproportionately to their workers, but their workers are still very much middle class.
I don't see anything in those 22 points that makes a compelling case for a disappearing middle class. Probably the best of the 22 was the point on global wage arbitrage. Given that we're doing a cracking job of running the 1930s playbook, mistake-by-mistake, I expect we'll see some protectionism emerge just like the Smoot-Hawley Act did in GD I. And I'd guess it'll work just about as badly...more so in fact, given our deficit-driven dependence on foreign purchases of our debt that will evaporate when the tariffs start showing up.
BTW, my leather dress shoes are a pair of Fluorsheims I bought for $120--in 1988. They've been well cared-for and re-soled a couple times, all told I think my cost averages out to around $0.60 a month.
Last edited by Bob from down south; 08-19-2010 at 01:06 AM..
becareful of all these statistics, they can show anything the writer wants to... im not interested enough to research anyone of them but theres quite a few that look like they were pulled from a hat or a certain group was targeted to get the results they wanted..
just saw another statistic that the average savings for a 65 year old is about 56,000,,, who knows if thats true either..
any time you see percentage signs speaking for the country dont waste time reading it.
just the other night i saw a commercial for drunk driving, they said 40% of all accidents involve drinking. i said to my wife see its actually safer to drive drunk ,the other 60% were sober.
you get the point anyone can bend statistics to show anything they want.
i can tell you i never ever had anyone poll me....
[sorry, lost this part of my comment on the shoe thing, will try to reconstruct it later]
The point is, those that were fortunate to make the big bucks with great pensions (many pensions are far more than the average working salary) are the ones here talking about whose fault it is that many seniors are retiring in a financial struggle. Many of these seniors raised families (cost??), lost much in divorces, lost much in investments, or simply had good old full time American jobs that paid modestly and thus had no pension attached to them, or high social security.
Generalizations are never a good idea.
Last edited by RiverBird; 08-19-2010 at 08:26 AM..
But tehn people will think they have to have cellphone and the monthly bill.Ipod and computers etc. Seems a bit of warped theory to me. Choice is good and IMo a good pair of shoes can help your foot health.Decisions;lsecisions ;decison between social bling often and what is really best and good for you.Its all choice and one has justifiable as another.No PC foot wear please.
It costs less to have a cell phone than a landline in many parts of the country.
Computers are necessary for anyone who makes their living with a computer as a primary tool.
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Why don't they, Boompa?
