The U.S. Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out

[SandEagle]

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...ically-Wiped-Out:-Heres-the-Stats-to-Prove-It

"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."

http://www.businessinsider.com/22-s...are-in-the-hands-of-1-percent-of-the-people-1


the slideshow sucks balls, but the information is downright disturbing. 43% of Americans have < 10K in retirement? the average federal worker makes 60% more than their private sector counterpart? heh, i bet everyone wishes now they worked at the state/federal level. this country's falling apart with no relief in sight.... :thumbsdown:

 

[charrison]

The middle is being destroyed. However most people are moving upward, not downward.

Once employment turns around that trend should continue.

 

[SandEagle]

The middle is being destroyed. However most people are moving upward, not downward.

Once employment turns around that trend should continue.

did you have stupid for breakfast or are you blind? i don't know which country you're referring to, definitely not here.

 

[glenn1]

Whatever. I don't have a duty to ensure someone can make a living in an obsolete unskilled manufacturing job at above market rates. You're not owned anything just because you're an American, and it's not my fault if you can't bother yourself to create a personal skill set to command a job position better than something that can be done by someone with a 1st grade education in Bangaladesh.

 

[charrison]

did you have stupid for breakfast or are you blind? i don't know which country you're referring to, definitely not here.

Compare our standard of living to that of 30 years ago and get back to me.

Houses are significantly larger.

The one car family is gone and was replaced by the two car family and that is being replaced by the 3+ car family.

damn near everything is cheaper today( health care and education being exceptions)

the good old days are today.

 

[HendrixFan]

Compare our standard of living to that of 30 years ago and get back to me.

Houses are significantly larger.

The one car family is gone and was replaced by the two car family and that is being replaced by the 3+ car family.

damn near everything is cheaper today( health care and education being exceptions)

the good old days are today.

Your post is true, but it is missing the point. The middle class is better off now than compared to generations ago. I had to argue that point in a thread about globalization a while back.

However, the argument is that the middle class is shrinking, which is also true. The middle class is gauged by the current standards of living and not from how things were a generation or two ago. In comparison to the wealth owned by our country and its inhabitants, the middle class has a much smaller share than in the past. Society is pushing forward and bringing great wealth to us all, but it is concentrating at the top. The numbers in the link bear this out.

The point isn't whether or not the middle class is better off now than in 1970 (or whenever). It is that the middle class is shrinking.

 

[charrison]

Your post is true, but it is missing the point. The middle class is better off now than compared to generations ago. I had to argue that point in a thread about globalization a while back.

However, the argument is that the middle class is shrinking, which is also true. The middle class is gauged by the current standards of living and not from how things were a generation or two ago. In comparison to the wealth owned by our country and its inhabitants, the middle class has a much smaller share than in the past. Society is pushing forward and bringing great wealth to us all, but it is concentrating at the top. The numbers in the link bear this out.

The point isn't whether or not the middle class is better off now than in 1970 (or whenever). It is that the middle class is shrinking.

I think the best way to describe the situation, is that rich are getting richer and poor are getting richer, just at different rates.

We are as a society generally seeing increases for everyone all the time. The only real portion of the society that is getting left behind are the high school dropouts.

 

[HendrixFan]

http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/07/after-our-bubble?page=0,3

In the United States, two-thirds of the income growth during the boom of 2001-2007 went to the top 1 percent of the population. “That is about a 60 percent increase in the average income of that segment of the population, while there was a 6 percent increase for the rest of the population,” he explains. “It is not that things were bad for the rest of us, but they were a whole lot better for the very wealthy.

It isn't a matter of the "The only real portion of the society that is getting left behind are the high school dropouts." 99% of the population is getting left behind. I don't know you, but I can bet pretty reliably that you are also being left behind. Very few are a part of the economic growth the nation has had.

It is a good idea to have a strong middle class. Concentration of wealth isn't a good thing.

 

[charrison]

http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/07/after-our-bubble?page=0,3



It isn't a matter of the "The only real portion of the society that is getting left behind are the high school dropouts." 99% of the population is getting left behind. I don't know you, but I can bet pretty reliably that you are also being left behind. Very few are a part of the economic growth the nation has had.

It is a good idea to have a strong middle class. Concentration of wealth isn't a good thing.

I have done all right over those years and most people I know has done ok for themselves as well. Remember people at the bottom do not stay and bottom and people at the top do not stay there either. This current recession has reduced the number of millionaires and billionaires in this country and I dont think we are better off because of that.

We do have a strong middle class and it is generally moving up not down.

 

[HendrixFan]

I've done okay for myself too. But, the numbers just don't match up with the idea that we have a strong middle class and that class mobility is common.

From the same link:

Unemployment in the country as a whole today is 9.5 percent to 10 percent, but in the bottom 40 percent of the labor force it is 17 percent, while in the top 30 percent it is just 4 percent. &#8220;There is a widespread feeling that the borrowing boom of the 2001-2007 period primarily benefited the wealthy,&#8221; while the impacts of the crash and austerity measures will affect primarily the lower and middle classes, he says. &#8220;This is not an inaccurate perception, and is a formula for a lot of political discontent.&#8221;

The growth exponentially benefited the wealthy and the recession has his the middle and lower classes the hardest.

 

[charrison]

I've done okay for myself too. But, the numbers just don't match up with the idea that we have a strong middle class and that class mobility is common.

From the same link:

Unemployment in the country as a whole today is 9.5 percent to 10 percent, but in the bottom 40 percent of the labor force it is 17 percent, while in the top 30 percent it is just 4 percent. “There is a widespread feeling that the borrowing boom of the 2001-2007 period primarily benefited the wealthy,” while the impacts of the crash and austerity measures will affect primarily the lower and middle classes, he says. “This is not an inaccurate perception, and is a formula for a lot of political discontent.”

The growth exponentially benefited the wealthy and the recession has his the middle and lower classes the hardest.

Guess what? the top 30% are largely college educated and do have very low levels on unemployment.

And guess what? The bottom 40% are often the young, uneducated and lack practical experience. Fortunately people do not stay young and inexperienced, they get skills and move up. Of course we have made it more difficult for these young workers by cranking up minimum wage( to make things fair) during a bad recession and all it has down is to help keep the young and unskilled unemployed(probably a topic for another thread).

 

[sportage]

Actually it&#8217;s true the middle class is on the endangered list. Started with maybe Nixon, surely advanced greatly by Reagan. Face it, the only two industries we have is profiting off the sick and pushing money around. Manufacturing is the middle class, and we all know that went south years ago. What is happening today with foreclosures, wall street bailouts and high unemployment does not exactly take rocket science to figure out. The sad thing is those masses effected think or believe a turnaround is coming or possible. It is not going to happen. More and more will live off long term unemployment, government created jobs and government handouts. Eventually the entire system will collapse. And don't count of some political party or president to come to the rescue. Then the taxes stop coming to pay their salaries, all hell will let loose. Imagine if the tea party found a leader to focus their anger? Some Hitler-type individual. That day is when you should really worry.

 

[charrison]

Actually it’s true the middle class is on the endangered list. Started with maybe Nixon, surely advanced greatly by Reagan. Face it, the only two industries we have is profiting off the sick and pushing money around. Manufacturing is the middle class, and we all know that went south years ago. What is happening today with foreclosures, wall street bailouts and high unemployment does not exactly take rocket science to figure out. The sad thing is those masses effected think or believe a turnaround is coming or possible. It is not going to happen. More and more will live off long term unemployment, government created jobs and government handouts. Eventually the entire system will collapse. And don't count of some political party or president to come to the rescue. Then the taxes stop coming to pay their salaries, all hell will let loose. Imagine if the tea party found a leader to focus their anger? Some Hitler-type individual. That day is when you should really worry.

The reality is manufacturing is going the same way farming did in the last century. 2% of our population can now feed the other 98%. The same is going to happen with manufacturing. And right now on average, the service industry pays more than manufacturing. Remember services are not just burger flippers, but many well paid professions that are required to sustain our standards of living.

 

[Acanthus]

The middle is being destroyed. However most people are moving upward, not downward.

Once employment turns around that trend should continue.

The median income of the united states is in free fall. This is outright false. It hasn't even been close to true for over 30 years.

 

[Acanthus]

Compare our standard of living to that of 30 years ago and get back to me.

Houses are significantly larger.

The one car family is gone and was replaced by the two car family and that is being replaced by the 3+ car family.

damn near everything is cheaper today( health care and education being exceptions)

the good old days are today.

CPI (Lower is better)
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

and

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1005.pdf

While cheap chinese garbage has pushed down prices in some areas, rising energy costs have evaporated any gains.


U.S. Median Income Inflation Adjusted (Higher is better)
http://factfinder.census.gov/servle...1YR_G00_&-_lang=en&-format=US-30&-CONTEXT=grt (current)


Median income is not on the rise (and im sure is down significantly again in 2010).
The median is far more important the than the average because it ignores statistical outliers (people with no incomes and billionaires).

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Compare our standard of living to that of 30 years ago and get back to me.

How about 50 years?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

 

[Darwin333]

http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/07/after-our-bubble?page=0,3



It isn't a matter of the "The only real portion of the society that is getting left behind are the high school dropouts." 99% of the population is getting left behind. I don't know you, but I can bet pretty reliably that you are also being left behind. Very few are a part of the economic growth the nation has had.

It is a good idea to have a strong middle class. Concentration of wealth isn't a good thing.

That is because the economic growth was and is "fake". It was all a bullshit house of cards built purposely by the Republicans and the Democrats. The rich generally do better in these times because they don't have to go "all in" to make money off of the scam (be it the dot com, the housing bubble, etc...) and can often ride out the recession and even make a lot of money from it while the middle class gets flat busted. The uberwealthy own the government (both parties) so they always do well, hell they write the laws half the time.

An anecdotal story: I know 3 guys that were flipping beachfront condos during the bubble. One of them was rich, 2 of them where pretty well off but by no means rich and none of them knew when to get out. I knew something was bound to go tits up fast when they were bragging about making $10's of thousands flipping pre-constructs that they bought and sold on the same day. Today, the rich guy is stuck with 4 condos he can't sell, one of them is his personal place that I guess you can consider not a "hit" (although I am sure he wished he bought it a year later but I doubt he would sell it for what he owes today), the other 3 are worth less than half of what he paid. He just keeps making the notes and rents them out to recoup 20ish% of his yearly costs.

The other 2 guys are bankrupt. They went "all in" and extended their credit well beyond what they could ever dream of affording if they couldn't flip the properties in a relatively short time. They lost all the money they made (100's of thousands, huge sums of money for these guys), the banks finally took the condo's (after a year of non-payment), lost their "weekend" cars, etc... Their lifestyle is roughly what it was before any of it started but they are definitely worse off. Entire savings wiped out, bankruptcy on their record, limited access to credit (maybe not such a bad thing), etc...

My point is that you can make a ton of money in a recession, the rich guy continued to make money buying stocks that had been hammered to hell. He has made a ton of clean doubles in the stock market and purchased a bunch of assets for his company at pennies on the dollar.

The other 2 guys don't have a dime to invest. They are getting by but they damn sure aren't making much "progress". One of the dumbasses even liquidated as much of his 401K as he could to try and "hold on".

Add to that the current Fed policy and even the savers aren't making any headway. You must invest in something in order to move ahead right now and not everyone is able to invest in themselves (start their own company, get a better education in hopes of earning more, etc..) even if they can afford to do so.

 

[StageLeft]

This has been obvious for some time. If the imbeciles who are spoon fed and greedily chomp down on the crap thrown at them about trickle down and all that would grow a brain perhaps something could be done about it. Instead they will parrot on about the free market and evil big gov while their wages are eroded and their quality of life suffers.

Now, in fact I'm not saying anything can be done about it, but absolutely nothing will be until the majority of America finally comes to an honest conclusion that, yes, something bad is happening to the middle class.

It's not enough to say the rich are getting richer and the middle are but at a slower rate. Richness/money simply means your power to have a certain percentage of the pie. Even if the size of the pie increases if your percentage of it is less you're not doing as well as the other guy.

 

[sao123]

The reality is manufacturing is going the same way farming did in the last century. 2% of our population can now feed the other 98%. The same is going to happen with manufacturing. And right now on average, the service industry pays more than manufacturing. Remember services are not just burger flippers, but many well paid professions that are required to sustain our standards of living.

An economy built on service industries alone cannot survive. We need our well paid manufacturing jobs to stay here.

 

[highland145]

An economy built on service industries alone cannot survive. We need our well paid manufacturing jobs to stay here.

This.

As far as h.s. dropouts, S.C. is ~40% which almost guarantees they will have to be very fortunate to get into the middle class.

 

[Greenman]

Whatever. I don't have a duty to ensure someone can make a living in an obsolete unskilled manufacturing job at above market rates. You're not owned anything just because you're an American, and it's not my fault if you can't bother yourself to create a personal skill set to command a job position better than something that can be done by someone with a 1st grade education in Bangaladesh.

The other side of that view is just as valid. Just because someone spent a 100k on an education doesn't mean they are entitled to a high paying job. I also wonder what's going to happen to those very generous government pensions as more and more states become insolvent, and there are fewer and fewer people that actually produce something of value.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I'll say what my thoughts are. I live in conencticut. The entire shore is owned by assholes from NYC and/or retires that don't live here. It seems that way anyways just from driving around in the summer (vacation time) and winter (where did everyone go?). The prices have been driven up by the rich and because of comparative sales being the yard stick for housing prices, I have to pay throguh the nose for a home. I feel like I have to be in the top 1&#37; of wage earnings ($220K/year for dual income families is the top 1%) just to have a nice home with a reasonably nice yard. The top 1% is not middle class. Sorry, where I live the middle class has it pretty crappy. The problem of course is taht my wife will not move to another state.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

The other side of that view is just as valid. Just because someone spent a 100k on an education doesn't mean they are entitled to a high paying job. I also wonder what's going to happen to those very generous government pensions as more and more states become insolvent, and there are fewer and fewer people that actually produce something of value.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't know what hyper inflation is. What it's effects are and what can cause it. The government is going to use hyper inflation to fix things. Just wait and see.

It's an invisible tax on the citizens that has hte side effect of reducing our welath on a global scale.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

An economy built on service industries alone cannot survive. We need our well paid manufacturing jobs to stay here.

i agree but how can you compete in the global market when their standard of living is so much lower?

 

[Narmer]

i agree but how can you compete in the global market when their standard of living is so much lower?

You have to keep educating yourself until you know everything about nothing. Seriously, they will have to get richer and we will have to get poorer. It's been happening in Japan for nearly two decades now and we may be next.