Statistics Prove Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out...

[Anuki Profile]

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America

Jul. 15, 2010

The 22 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

See proof of the Middle Class extermination -->

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

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.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

See proof of the Middle Class extermination >
http://www.businessinsider.com/22-stati ... e-people-1

[Tertiusgaudens Profile]

same in Germany. All talking of important middle class and wish strengthening of it - practically de facto there is no middle class having any influence anymore. Sad but true...

[Tertiusgaudens Profile]

Here a sad article

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2010/08/0 ... slow-death

[Kdaniel Profile]

bill clinton and al gore singned nafta and gat put a end to us middle class in usa

[Brothers Profile]

Who will buy the products that other countries make if your are not working and making some sort of money. Surely the rich cannot get richer without consumers. You think that the rich are going to work so that the rich can buy. I cannot see it sustaining anything on that level. But not to worry. Nationalism will flourish and the rich will have no place to hide and hopefully they will be sorry for what they did.

[Anuki Profile]

Here a sad article

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2010/08/0 ... slow-death

Middle class dying a slow death

August 9, 2010



Last year, I was lucky enough to interview Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and likely new head of the new US consumer protection agency.

We discussed the US banking crisis, but my interest in writing about Warren stems not from her views on the US banks, but from what she has been saying for years about the financial fragility of the American middle class.

In her book, The Two-Income Trap, Warren documented how middle class working families in the US were in a trap, and how their financial existence was becoming increasingly precarious.

She contrasted this experience of huge debts and constant bill-juggling with the reasonably secure experience of the same middle class in previous generations, particularly the post-war generation.

This phenomenon featured in an excellent article in the Financial Times last weekend.

Warren’s view is that the American middle class is getting progressively poorer, relative to those at the very top of the tree in the US, as well as to people with similar jobs and education elsewhere around the world. She has been writing for some time about the disappearance of the old US middle class and the American Dream.

This is not a revolutionary idea; many others have various theories as to why this is.

The reasons vary from the breakdown of the trade union movement to the rise of China and the constant peddling of debt from an unregulated finance industry.

Whatever the overall reason, the trend of a middle class that is either running to stand still or actually falling backwards is of crucial significance here, because the Irish middle class is about to take a giant leap backwards.

This group is now getting hammered by the collapse of property prices – which, ironically, has to continue if we are to get competitive and become a proper trading nation once again.

This is the central dilemma for all of us: we need to ‘lock in’ cheap property as a competitive advantage for the country, but that means trapping the property-owning middle class in a brace, where their debts remain static but the value of their assets falls.

This means, in its simplest form, that middle class Ireland is broke for the foreseeable future.

We can only avoid this vista by reengineering a property boom, which will just end in a bust a few years hence, putting us back to square one – with more debt.

This is not an option and, even if it were, it is unclear where the credit would come from to push up property prices, due to the broken banking system.

So the Irish middle class is stuck in a debt trap.

On top of this, we face the prospect of huge increases in taxation in all sorts of areas in the next few years, and we are using a currency which is far too strong for our enfeebled economy.

Regarding the currency, what our conventional wisdom peddlers don’t realise is that a strong currency makes weak economies weaker. In fact, no country in history has ever got out of a debt/deflation spiral without changing the value of its currency.

Meanwhile, the argument that euro denominated debts would just rise if were to have a new currency, while accurate, is not particularly compelling – because the ability to pay back debt is a function of being competitive.

This means generating a cash surplus from whatever you do for a living to pay back the debt.

This dilemma remains the case, irrespective of what currency you choose to pay yourself in.

The challenge is to get that economic surplus first and then translate it into hard currency – not get the hard currency first and hope to translate it into an economic surplus.

But there is little point explaining this basic economic truth because we will not leave the euro: the political establishment just won’t countenance it.

This leaves us with the prospect of the Irish middle classes overpaying themselves in an overvalued currency that bears little relation to the economic facts on the ground.

So the insiders who pay themselves in the hard currency, the euro, but don’t actually generate the surplus, get a huge subsidy from those who have to go out and actually generate the surplus in the first place.

This policy choice is a recipe for what we saw last week – much higher levels of unemployment.

This is what our government appears to tolerate.

The ‘insiders’ who have jobs will try to protect themselves, and the ‘outsiders’ – the ones who lose their jobs, or are already on the dole – have to make do.

It was the same in the 1980s and the 1950s. History is just repeating itself.

As in the 1980s,unemployment has now begun to rise dramatically among white collar workers.

This spreading of unemployment is always the way it happens. Initially, the jobs in construction go, but gradually, as demand evaporates, unemployment seeps into other areas which were initially thought to be immune.

In the 1980s, the middle class responded by emigrating. Atypical emigrant in the late 1980s was three times more likely to have a university degree than one who stayed at home.

This trend will probably repeat itself, and the fiscal situation will deteriorate as unemployment rises and tax revenue falls. Ireland is on course for a failed fiscal adjustment – all the indicators are pointing to it.

The state will then try to get its hands on cash from wherever it can.

This is why a tax on savings is likely to be introduced, as are all sorts of other charges and stealth taxes.

All the while, the position of the middle class – which seemed to be so strong a few years back, when the property scam blinded people – will become more and more edgy.

This is exactly what Warren documented in her book.

So what are the alternatives? Whether we like it or not, with the balance sheet shattered, some form of debt restructuring for Ireland’s private sector is a given.

Time will tell how this will work out.

Also, given an anticipated last-gasp, smash-and-grab exercise from the state, the middle classes will take some of their cash out of the country and the Irish banks.

This is what happened in Latin America for decades when capital flight was endemic.

The Irish middle classes have a choice. Either they vote for massive and radical economic change – if a new party emerges which advocates such a manifesto – or they will experience slow but gradual impoverishment.

The issue isn’t about the direction of the move; just the speed of getting there.

Every company must make more money then the year before
if they make less, they say they didnt make profit (they did, but less)
(if they dont, there shares=company are less valuable)

Governments also ( in the Netherlands its 3 %) gotto make profit
Remember, 3% of a billion is a lot.
every year the profit must increases, 3% of a billion (1.000.000.000.000)=
1.003.000.000.000 (??)
is a year later 3% of a 1.003.000.000.0000
etc. ect..

One day, the bubble goin tha burst......

[Oldsoul Profile]

I agree, and it will burst soon I'm afraid. People don't want to admit that the tool of money has been compromised and must be removed. We will return to the barter system. The problem is the information on what a barter system is, and exactly how it used to work, have been removed and replaced. People think that 'useless eaters' as I've heard expressed, will not be welcome because they do not 'provide' anything. The truth is there are really no useless people in a barter system. They labor under the idea that a career or labor...something physically produced by physical work...are the only ways to measure things or that this is what means a 'successful' life. They also are mistaking that this will lead to 'lazy' people getting away from puting in their 'fair share'. They are worried that if they don't or aren't capable of 'producing' that they will have nothing to trade for food. That is incorrect. Under a real barter system, there is no power cut off from anyone, there is no food cut off, or medicine cut off. None of that. Under a real Barter system, everyone does what they really want to do, with out the '9-5' stress and counting hours or doing without vacation time. All the current shortages are created deliberately, even the power shortages. And all the people that are not working, want to work but cant find any because the business cant afford to hire, not because they do not need help. The infirm, elderly, and those who choose to work in the arts still have everything they need or want.

[Lighthouse Profile]

I agree, and it will burst soon I'm afraid. People don't want to admit that the tool of money has been compromised and must be removed. We will return to the barter system. The problem is the information on what a barter system is, and exactly how it used to work, have been removed and replaced. People think that 'useless eaters' as I've heard expressed, will not be welcome because they do not 'provide' anything. The truth is there are really no useless people in a barter system. They labor under the idea that a career or labor...something physically produced by physical work...are the only ways to measure things or that this is what means a 'successful' life. They also are mistaking that this will lead to 'lazy' people getting away from puting in their 'fair share'. They are worried that if they don't or aren't capable of 'producing' that they will have nothing to trade for food. That is incorrect. Under a real barter system, there is no power cut off from anyone, there is no food cut off, or medicine cut off. None of that. Under a real Barter system, everyone does what they really want to do, with out the '9-5' stress and counting hours or doing without vacation time. All the current shortages are created deliberately, even the power shortages. And all the people that are not working, want to work but cant find any because the business cant afford to hire, not because they do not need help. The infirm, elderly, and those who choose to work in the arts still have everything they need or want.

I fully agree with you Old Soul, we have been using barter to some extent here in our local community in Sweden, money changes hands as little as possible, we exchange fruits and vegetables, we exchange labor, but also advice and support, like taking care of the kids or the dog, or explaining an article to someone, it can be anything.

I am also convinced that if people were really free to do what they liked, everyone would contribute meaningfully in their own way and we would be amazed by what some people can do if they are genuinely given the opportunity and the appreciation.
It will need to be our future anyway, our current financial system is rife with fraud (usury and debt enslavement) and is on the brink of collapse.