July 16, 2010 "The Business Insider" -- 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.
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.
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My wife is from Honduras. When she lived and worked there, she was paid 24 cents an hour to make Osh Kosh jeans, you know, those little overalls for kids that sell in retail stores for 30-40 bucks. I figured the material, labor and shipping cost was less than 5 bucks each.
ReplyDeleteIf the plan is to wipe out the middle class, who is going to buy these imported products, that are sold at a 500% markup?
I can't see any logic is killing off the middle class. To truly "kill us", will reduce the population and then the rich will have no slaves.
I'm prepped, locked and loaded. If have to go out, I'm not going out alone.
lol I remember the old feminist claim that "women make 75 cents on the dollar" and wondering why a company didn't just hire only women and just destroy the competition because of lower cost. Obviously the claims were false, and actually studies generally show women make more when you compare total hours worked and years of experience. Fuzzy feminist argument even tried to claim nurses should be paid the same as or more than doctors (some actually are since doctors don't make OT) because otherwise it was discrimination, but Posner shut that down hard.
ReplyDeleteIn the real world, companies will always hire the cheapest labor they can. So yes, that means paying some crack team of personnel out in India $2 a day is the preferred business model for anyone that can swing it. Most major corporations can.
So India generally got as much of the white collar jobs that could be outsources. Factory work has gone to poor countries in Southeast Asia, for about the same or less wages. The US really only has very high level work left or retail, mostly just jobs that you have to have someone in person. If technology ever gets good enough, watch for even that to no longer be a requirement, and your doctor will just be some guy from India (well, he was probably already Indian, but actually in India now) on video conference operating robotic arms to treat you.
The middle class is getting wiped out as all the high paying jobs have been shipped out of the US. Why is this a surprise? People that were awake in the 90's when NAFTA got passed knew what was coming - now it has arrived in FULL FORCE. And 'we the people' that allowed our Representatives to pass that legislation are to blame due to our absolute apathy. And we are still asleep as a nation. The new legislation on financial reforms just passed will continue to drive business out of the US and cost more job drains. But as usual, just move on, nothing to worry about here.
ReplyDeleteWhat American middle class?
ReplyDeleteThe US once had a middle class and a working class. Profits were made in manufacturing and in other physical commodity new wealth creating sectors ,like jobs in housing and Agriculture.
The unproductive workers in America in services and product distribution like at Wall +Mart now exchange their labor at a subsidized pay level selling mostly foreign made goods from the third world and no longer deliver a profit to capital from their own labor. (They get "high wages" from a cut from the profit mark up ,see above on cheap labour goods from hondurus or China ) They have become an un –exploitable for profits high waged labor aristocracy.
A shopping mall economy is not a productive economy.
America was turned into a “services based” economy and de-industrialized .
Under the dollar hegemony ‘free trade” system in world trade and finance,US paper that appeared to be a strong currency useful for wealth storage and investment was exchanged for real imported oil and other commodity things from the third world.
For a few decades trillions of dollars flowed into America for investing in US property , shares ,and bonds .
A gigantic property bubble was created by lending easy to get credit to Americans.
In the end the banksters turned the whole finance sector into a dud bond scam for exporting US debt and derivative bet casino capitalism .The whole US economy into a giant Ponzi .But ,with a declining in value dollar , the banksters proved unable to pay its promised dividends and profits to its foreign investors in real constant value.
Once the sub prime property bonds collapsed in value the jig was up for the Great Ponzi. Its banking sector imploded and were bailed out by government socializing their losses and by printing money handouts in order to stimulate a now dead Ponzi with fictional paper “profits”. With a dead Ponzi down, the only source of profits left in a now unproductive America is bankster loot.
All I see now ,as a foreign observer , is the end result , a population of enslaved by finance usury, debt peons. Whose growing mountains of now un-payable debts ,will be passed on to the coming generations and never paid off. Thereby forming a national class of hereditary debt Peons enslaved and now being looted of their assets by capital .Enforced by ‘austerity” to pay off past debts –private and public by a Corporate State.
A country with a government that bails its finance usurers losses as “too big to fail” So,as a result of past debts for militarism and wars and now more for bailout debts, an insolvent hopelessly failed capitalist state.
An America with a captured by a finance Elite government that has signed over its own future tax revenues to the Treasury and other income earning bondholders.
All this debt collection including the looting of the middle class assets and savings is facilitated and coordinated by the Fed debt spider that issues US money as debt .
This secretive Fed bank at the center of this usury debt web has a monopoly of issuing debt paper as US dollars, is said to be a private company owned by national and cosmopolitan international banks. But , who knows who owns this debt spider?
Its enough to grab conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork! After all it refuses all audits and accountability to the American people on grounds of “national”security interests !
But which nation or group of American and cosmopolitan banksters interests is unknown.
Middle class ?All I see are a class of dumbed down hereditary debt Peons in love with their banksters and flag waving demanding : “Please whip me with ‘austerity”.
With a gov't like ours, who needs enemies?
ReplyDeleteGood. The Middle Class is what has allowed this shit sandwich to perpetuate for as long as it has. There is nothing more dangerous to Humanity and the Universe, or Universes, than the Average Man. And let's face it, the Middle Class is the embodiment of the Average Man.
ReplyDeletethere is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
Charles Bukowski
the long
ReplyDeletenow the short
treason greed traitors
are in washington to think waterbording is not torture
we will collapse and the sun will rise again
live prepare buy gold pray
good luck
People in their 40s, 50s, and 60s raised a generation of skanks, sluts/whores, submissives, rapists, abusers, pussies, addicts, retards, thieves, alcoholics, and dysfunctional freaks who can't go 30 minutes without watching television or clicking a button.
ReplyDeleteI am really getting sick and tired of reading this crap. You 20 year olds want some one to blame look at the corrupt Lame Street Media it was there job to tell the public what was going on. But they wasted the last 4 decades telling you about one Fake Endangered species after another that in the end put MILLIONS of people out of work. Still happening to this day.
Millions of us have been trying to tell the people what was going to happen for decades but it like talking to a robot with no brains they just say cute little sound bites and ignored the facts. NAFTA and GATT screw this country and Bush with 2 wars. So both parties are guilty.
You just going to blame the baby boomer instead of learning the facts this country was set up to fail by the Bankers and the Federal Reserve but don't learn those facts no it is the baby boomer fault. What a crock grow up and do the research and find out who the real enemy is Federal Reserve and Big Corporations.
All your name calling just makes you look like an immature spoiled brat throwing a fit.