The American middle class, so long a powerhouse of US prosperity, is being crushed as never before.

[Better Believe It]

The Decline and Fall of the American Middle Class
The heart of our political malaise is that the middle class, so long a powerhouse of US prosperity, is being crushed as never before
by Paul Harris
September 14, 2011

The black-and-white facts of the case should stun Americans on both sides of the political divide. At the start of this week, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders published a report on poverty called "Is Poverty a Death Sentence?" It showed that in 313 counties in America, life expectancy for women has actually declined over the last 20 years. It showed six million more people have fallen into poverty since 2004.

Indeed, this week the US Census Bureau has released a survey showing that one in six Americans now live in poverty: the highest number ever reported by the organisation. It also showed that real median household incomes dropped 2.3% in 2010 from the year before, reflecting the decline of the middle class. At the same time, the richest 20% of the US population now controls 84% of the wealth. In fact, so staggeringly unbalanced has America become that the richest 400 American families have the same net worth as the bottom 50% of the nation.

I do not care if you are a Tea Party activist or a Socialist party USA organiser, you should be able to agree on one thing, at least: this is unsustainable. Something has to give. But no one in the current political system looks they have an answer.

Read the full article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/13/american-middle-class-poverty

[ananda]

1. I keep thinking that...

... the rich and elite and corporate among us got very very jealous of
the poor and middle class and just decided to suck as much money
out of us as they could.

I guess the rich and corporate can fund their own private worlds and
leave the rest of us behind to live in the swamp of desperation and
destitution.

[Avalux]

2. 21% of US children live in poverty.

What used to be the middle class, is tumbling into poverty.

[Starry Messenger]

3. The "middle class" is having its true nature revealed:

working class.

[izquierdista]

4. There's nothing for them to do

That's why they fall out of the "middle class" and end up in poverty. Right after world War II, the best days of America, there was plenty to do: nobody had bought a new car since 1941, so there was a lot of demand for cars; all the returning soldiers wanted to get married and have a family, so there was demand for new houses. In addition, there was the new technology of television, so everyone wanted to buy a television and watch programs on it, which created lots of demand for writers, actors, directors, and producers. People also wanted to go places in their new cars, so the interstate highway system was built, providing jobs for planners, engineers, and construction workers.

Nowadays, the situation is different, there's a glut of houses along with large numbers of homeless and foreclosed. There are plenty of cars because it is a necessity in the modern American city of poor public transportation, but many people cannot afford the gas or the car has, after foreclosure, become their house. People would like to buy nice things, but all they can afford is what is unloaded off the Chinese container ship to the dollar store.

The answers are pretty easy, but since it would require those with power and money to settle for less, so it'll never happen:
*Raise the top marginal tax rate
*Scrap free trade agreements and use tariffs to protect native industries
*Unionize, so that workers can get a fair deal from their employer
*A national health care program
*End the foreign wars and occupations

And that's just a start.

[Better Believe It]

8. Notice that Obama and the Republican candidates never say the "working class".

They always say "middle class" and they would like to poorer working class people to believe that they also are part of that so-called "middle class".

[montanacowboy]

5. A tipping point Will Come, especially if the GOP

wins the WH and the Senate; then America will really see what it's made of.

Never ending wars - trillions for the killing machine
More Corporate profits - zero taxes, zero regulation
No Medicaid, No Medicare
End of Social Security
Restrictive police state
Climate Change squared
Pollution from more and more oil spills
Ground water destroyed by fracking
More jails
Higher walls for the bloated millionaires and billionaires
No more food stamps
Homeless people in the streets

Then we will see what happens

[Bonhomme Richard]

6. I don't see any short term solution but a long term solution.......

would start by moving the wealth accumulated at the top back down to the middle. The only way to force that to be done is to tax the wealthy an enormous sum and put it into a massive infrastructure rebuilding program. That would be the beginning. I also read elsewhere here (I can't remember who to give credit to) a great idea. Give tax breaks to foreign companies that build manufacturing plants here in the states. Evidently companies here don't want to spend the money they are hording to help the country so let's give some foreign companies a chance to build and hire people.

[Sherman A1]

10. I agree to a point

I am not in favor of tax breaks to companies to build plants here. I am much more in favor of regulating their backsides into the dirt if needed, revoking corporate charters and sending a few bankers & CEO's to Gitmo (it would only take a few before the rest got the hint... They are greedy, but not stupid).

[Broderick]

7. Time to nationalize the banks, the oil industry, wall street

and the global companies headquartered here that are raping America. Unionize every worker! Storm the gated communities in theory and take back what is every American's stolen property.

[pscot]

9. No one in the current political system looks they have

a clue, much less an answer.

[Johnson20]

11. Things are going

to have to change. Hopefully, it will be by the ballot box and not the ammo box.

[Javaman]

12. it will be amusing to watch the rich twist in the wind when there is no longer a middle class. nt

[kentuck]

13. That means the top 400 families..

have as much wealth as the bottom 150,000,000 Americans... Yep.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

14. And costs keep going up, up, up

Today I went over to Enterprise Rent-A-Car to rent a car for tomorrow. I have an old car that only one mechanic in my area, 75 miles away, is able to work on. So I periodically have to rent a car one-way to go down to pick it up when he gets through working on it. The Enterprise guy told me that yesterday their rates doubled overnight. Doubled! They went from about $35 a day for the cheapest compact to about $77 a day for that same car. And the one-way drop off fee went from about $25 to $40. I asked him why the rates went up and he said it was a question of supply and demand. I thought demand was on the decline in this economy. But I guess they can simply increase demand by decreasing the number of cars on their lot. And he said the other car rental places had also recently increased their prices.

I'm not an economist and I'm admittedly ignorant about the subject. But I don't understand why I keep making less and less money over the past few years (and almost everyone I know is in the same boat) and why the prices of everything keep going up.