Good Bye Middle Class Americans

1. 68

   MikeNVposted 14 years ago

   I was going to link to this... instead I figure it's so worthwhile that I should just cut and paste it.
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   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.

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2. 68

   MikeNVposted 14 years ago

   Just wanted to put emphasis on this:
   
   •    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.
   
   And who is going to buy these houses?
   
   I can not place all the Blame on Obama for this... nor just the Democrats.  I can state they are destroying jobs at a record pace... but Republicans have sat by and watched this happen.
   
   Who is fighting for the American Citizen?

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3. 0

   ryankettposted 14 years ago

   Why can't Americans fight for themselves? Nothing like a good riot when things go wrong. If you don't like the system in which you live, then rise and fight against it. Or emmigrate.

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   1. 0

      Home Girlposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Emigrate where to? I think all World is running towards North America and you advise to emigrate. To go to the third world? To starve? To work for one dollar a day salary? To live without running water and with shortages of everything? I don't think so.
      Americans (canadians too) cannot riot. Thay are not hungry enough.

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      1. 0

         ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Well then things aren't bad enough just yet then are they
         
         Seriously people, it is a recession. They are big, bad, nasty things. Unpleasant for a lot of people.
         
         But you will not live your lives in one big nasty recession, it may not seem like it, but things will get better.
         
         I have just come out of university, well a year ago now, into one of the worst UK recessions in history. I am managing to remain positive enough, if anything I think that it will make me a better person.
         
         When the good times come round again, whether that is 5 years or 10 years, I will know not to take it for granted. Perhaps many people needed that, a realisation that you cannot live within eternal optimism and way beyond your means.
         
         The jobs will come back, its not exclusive to America, the whole world is feeling it. It has to end sometime.
         
         I'm not running towards America, the only two places in America which I would like to live in are Las Vegas or NY state. The former would probably leave me lying in a gutter in a pile of my own poop and vomit, without a penny to my name. The latter gets far too much snow in the winter

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   2. 56

      niall.tubbsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
      1. 0

         ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Well my first solution is perfectly viable. If you don't want to increase the gap between the rich and the poor, then stop being a customer to the corporations. Rebel against them.
         
         Stop buying from Amazon, stop shopping at Walmart, reduce your internet usage and go to the cheapest package, stop drinking Coca-Cola, stop eating in chain restaurants, stop buying Microsoft Office packages.
         
         It is the little man who is generating profit for the big man. Stop giving the big man his profit. Buy off of eachother, set up markets, get some chickens, buy a generator, move to a small home so that you can live mortgage free. Stop using credit cards, the interest is like a second tax.
         
         Only YOU as a collective can prevent the problem of people getting far too rich. Personally, I am trying to find my way by selling the material crap to those who wish to continue making money for the corporations. Personally, I buy very little. When I do buy stuff, I often buy it reclaimed or secondhand, or from the 'little man'.
         
         Coca-Cola, my Hewlett Packard computer, and my BlackBerry phone are amongst a few exceptions. Whats the guessing that MikeNV is sitting here moaning about the rich getting rich whilst logged in on an Apple Mac or an Apple iPad? Taking the occassional few minutes out to call somebody on his Apple iPhone?
         
         The middle and lower classes are seen by the upper classes as 'consumers'. We are of course all consumers. But you don't necessarily have to be THEIR consumers, you can be each others consumers.

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   3. 78

      sabrebIadeposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I've been waiting to see that happen, haven't yet.
      The Brits seem to have more will to do that than Americans do now.
      234 years really changes things doesn't it?

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   4. 68

      MikeNVposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      That's a terrific idea.  And under Martial Law it will only take a single Government Sanctioned bullet for you to realize that "fighting" wasn't the best course of action.

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