The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking.

[frigidmagi]

Frigid is Not Yahooing to this, Frigid is actually damn unhappy.

And why won't the damn Url tag work. Fucker I'll have you shot with the damn CEO's!

The 22 statistics detailed here 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.

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.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

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 10 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 six 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.

It took me a while to actually post this. Half of the reason is frankly I didn't want to believe the mess was that bad. It is. The other half is everytime I looked at the screen I started grinding my teeth.

You know in the 1950's your standard family had 1 guy working an 8 hour shift, 5 times a week, and he was able to provide for a family of 5. Today we have 2 people working 9 to 12 hour shifts often 6 days a week if not more and we're fucking drowning! Is it me or did someone rig the game while I wasn't looking?

If I see a teabagger this week, I'm gonna make the damn news.

[Cynical Cat]

Its old news really. In real wage terms, it peaked for the average American family in the mid 70s, slid down until the 90s, stayed level under Clinton (but didn't get better) and then slid more under Bush. Now you have a serious economic crisis. Of course it looks ugly.

[The Minx]

At the risk of sounding controversial: the teabaggers are ironically not too far off the mark, even though they don't really know what they're talking about.

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.

The article itself concludes that it is rules and regulations which government passes that help make the US worker less attractive to their competitors overseas.

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 10 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.

Econ 101 tells us that it is not the price of a worker that counts, but the comparative advantage he holds over his competitor. If that weren't the case, far more operations would have been pulled out of the country leaving next to nothing behind.

I don't dispute the data the article presents, but the conclusion is another matter. On the one hand the article says that the American worker is too expensive, and in the very next paragraph it implies that the solution is to penalize the corporations who want to find a more economical venue for their operations. That will only make matters worse, IMHO.

[Cynical Cat]

In today's world capital is very mobile and labour isn't. That means the money can go where labour is cheap. Add in short term, next quarter thinking for large corporations and you have considerable incentives to export industrial jobs even if local conditions (corruption, horrible quality control, rampant organized crime, etcetera) make those decisions bad in the long term because being cheaper (on paper) is a comparative advantage.

The article says that its government rules and regulations that make things bad for the American worker, but it offers no support to that conclusion. Regulations have been slashed away since the 80s and things have gotten worse, not better. The issue of the death of the well paid industrial worker and the export of the nation's industrial infrastructure isn't even touched on.

[The Minx]

While the article doesn't make any justification for its claims about regulations, it doesn't make much justification for its other claims and conclusions either.

I really don't know how much of corporate thinking is of the short-term next-quarter sort, but if they wouldn't have comparative advantage in the long term, they wouldn't stay there in the long term.

I think I've posted elsewhere about the myth of the shrinkage of US industry: it has actually grown at 1.5% per year for several decades, it's just that it has grown more slowly than other sectors of the economy.

[Cynical Cat]

The tickers in the link fuck up the tags, but if you get to the actual stats, they are sourced and referenced.

I really don't know how much of corporate thinking is of the short-term next-quarter sort, but if they wouldn't have comparative advantage in the long term, they wouldn't stay there in the long term.

That depends doesn't it? They take a big enough bath and they just go under. Take a smaller one and they just don't make the money they expected and moving costs. As it stands a lot of the downsides to moving offshore are hard to see (corruption, organized crime, crappy power grid, etcetera) while the upsides (low wages, few regulations) are much more visible. That can't help but affect decisions in an world with few restrictions.

I think I've posted elsewhere about the myth of the shrinkage of US industry: it has actually grown at 1.5% per year for several decades, it's just that it has grown more slowly than other sectors of the economy.

The population has grown as well. Is that with inflation taken into account? How's it defining industry? Sources? Either way that's still shrinking as a part of the economy and its part of the economy that pays its workers well.

[The Minx]

The tickers in the link fuck up the tags, but if you get to the actual stats, they are sourced and referenced.

I wasn't disputing the stats, merely the conclusions he draws about it. :)

That depends doesn't it? They take a big enough bath and they just go under. Take a smaller one and they just don't make the money they expected and moving costs. As it stands a lot of the downsides to moving offshore are hard to see (corruption, organized crime, crappy power grid, etcetera) while the upsides (low wages, few regulations) are much more visible. That can't help but affect decisions in an world with few restrictions.

But most of the big players remain strong in the long term :/ And they're not that stupid, word tends to get out about these things.

The population has grown as well. Is that with inflation taken into account? How's it defining industry? Sources? Either way that's still shrinking as a part of the economy and its part of the economy that pays its workers well.

Of course if the population grows faster than industry, the share of industry as a part of the economy will go down, that's just the flip side of the same coin. But I'm not as sure that this is necessarily a disastrous thing per se, agriculture shrank too back in the day, these things just change as the economy and technology evolve. Not all service sector jobs are low wage either, nor are all industrial jobs high paying. We should instead be concerned about wages within each sectors and with living standards with both wages and benefits included. As it is, the US tax isn't that much lower than elsewhere in the west, it's just that it doesn't pay for universal health care or things like that.

[Destructionator XV]

I edited the link tag for you. The apostrophe in there was messing it up: you can replace ' with %22 and it works for the tag.