Elizabeth Warren: America Without a Middle Class -- It's Not Far Away As You Might Think

[marmar]

America Without a Middle Class -- It's Not Far Away As You Might Think

By Elizabeth Warren, AlterNet. Posted December 5, 2009.

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security.




Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.

Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.

The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144388/america_without_a_middle_class_--_it%27s_not_far_away_as_you_might_think

[Deja Q]

1. And if any pro-small business politician were sincere,

the laws would be changed to benefit small businesses. Not the large corporations who get everything for free and repay such generosity by offshoring and everything else. (That's another reason why people did not vote for McCain.)

Small businesses ARE America's middle class. (Back in 1960...)

President Obama, PLEASE. That is the change people wanted when they voted for you.

[JoeyT]

7. Well, small businesses/manufacturing jobs.

Unfortunately "free trade" did away with most of the latter, leaving the middle class almost entirely to small business owners. Then they broke the backs of a lot of the small business owners by giving massive tax cuts to corporations and forcing the little guys/gals to make up for it.

If they were sincere they'd break out some protectionism and shift the tax burden back to the people that get the most benefit from the infrastructure.

[BridgeTheGap]

18. But they're not big enough to not fail, are they? ;-) n.t

[rurallib]

2. this is the true Reagan legacy

[pokercat999]

8. Policies that President Obama wants to continue with the China

fair trade act. We are headed down, the prescription for failure was written by Ray-Gun and is being renewed today. I can't seem to understand how the courageous, Candidate Obama, became the sniveling coward, President Obama. Was candidate Obama a complete fraud?

[tom_paine]

9. Either that, or what Bill Hicks said was true...

"But there's no hope in Clinton," ... "It's just a handful of people that run everything, and that's provable.... I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist ***** that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'

"...Just what my agenda is."

[mbperrin]

3. Warren is one of the few academics who actually understands what's

happening, and of course, she can't get political traction.

Middle class is mostly dead already. I grew up in a one wage earner household with 3 brothers and sisters. We lived in a 2500+ sq ft home on 2 acres of land. The house was paid for by the time I left for college. We took vacations every summer. Dad's insurance covered everybody right down to prescription allergy medicine. The town itself ranked in the top third in the country for family income.

Now, with 3 grown children ourselves and five college degrees between us and 2 full time and 2 part time jobs, we were able to go on a camping trip for the first time in 5 years this summer. None of our college educated and full time employed children has taken a vacation since they entered the workforce, the first one 8 years ago, the last one 3 years ago. None of us has health insurance except for some catastrophic coverage. The town now ranks in the bottom quarter in the country for family income.

We live worse than my parents. My children live worse than I do. This is not a healthy outlook.

[Deja Q]

4. How do we heal the patient, if the prognosis is so unhealthy?

[mbperrin]

5. It's got to start by restoring reward for work.

3/4 of all corporations in this country pay no income tax at all, and increasing amounts of corporate profit are made by stock and derivatives speculation, rather than by performing any actual work.

Meanwhile, individual taxpayers now pay twice the share they paid 30 years ago, subsidizing the no-pay, no-work corporations.

Top 2% of individuals in the country now own over half the monetary assets of the country as well. Progressive taxation will pay back the infrastructure used, but not paid for, by these individuals.

Shadow transactions, like derivatives, are nothing but gambling. They suck assets away from actual production. Make them illegal. Charge companies an accurate exit tax when they relocate out of this country. They became what they are using the educational, social, and physical infrastructure of the country, and if they are not going to pay their share over time by staying, they must pay an accurate lump sum before being allowed to exit.

Adam Smith noted in 1776 that production is the one thing that creates wealth for nations. We've got to put the incentives back in to do that, rather than the road we've been on since the 70s.

[Peace4us]

6. Why is the U.S. so poor?

We are being systematically bled of our wealth by a banking/financier elite, who have learned how to steal our wealth through inflating the currency, through gamesmanship of the markets, through controlling the issuance of our currency at interest and instigating the conditions where all of our manufacturing has been taken off-shore. Also, the Militaristic bent of our government is no accident. It puts profits into a parasitical class of people who profit from war.

This is not a mistake. There are people to blame. Do some research on the Federal Reserve private banking cartel system and you will understand why we are getting poorer.

[Tansy_Gold]

10. And that in a nutshell is the doom of America as we know it

Each succeeding generation is worse off than the one before it. Not a portrait of a healthy economy, or a healthy nation.



TG

[Alcibiades]

11. I think many, many academics get this

But very few in economics. Most of the folks in political science and sociology certainly understand this, let alone folks in the humanities, who tend to be more liberal than social scientists.

Anyway, it is in part due to the research by academics that we understand as much as we do about the sorry state the American middle class is in today, thanks to 40 years of Republican misrule. A good recent book on the subject by an American academic is Larry Bartels' "Unequal democracy: The political economy of the new gilded age."

[Hestia]

12. Instead of playing their game, why not come up with a 3rd way? They hate us, laugh

at us, and yet we come back like abused children, asking for more. We've got to start working on the microcosm before even thinking of healing the macrocosm. We need to starting learning who and listening to our neighbors instead of globalists. Local is heart-beat of everyone's economy and we need to start working there. Instead of anxiously awaiting the next new shiny-pretty from somewhere overseas, what can local artisans and manfacturers create? Create cooperatives for local/state everything. We need to quit waiting for someone else to come up with the brilliant ideas. There is a niche market out there and I think I have found a way to tap into it locally here. It's small but there, willing to pay top price for this particular avenue. I know I do, and I cannot be the only one, since the market exists. Now it's time to round up investors.

I don't know about y'all but I am sick to death of someone else dictating my hours and my money stream. I want to develop another way of living. Happiness is a key component to living, and even with all HCR possible, who wants to live longer in order to work longer for someone else who doesn't even live in my state, let alone my country?

We need to get off of our collective asses and do something before it is legislative to death. Surely there are others out there too who are tired of begging for permission to simply live. I know I am...

[pokercat999]

13. Please explain why you think the powers that be will allow

you to do any of the things you write about?

The will not, they simply will not allow you to live outside their system unless it is in abject poverty. How ever what they don't realize in that direction is their undoing. When we as a people have nothing left, nothing left for them to take we will finally be free and brother.....look out then.

Remember this, it is against the law of nature for someone to "give" you rights, they can only take them away. So the question is how hard will you fight to stop others from taking your rights? You MUST answer this question honestly and completely before you can act. My guess is, like the rest of us, your answer is, you will not fight much, if at all.

[pscot]

15. Turn off the television

The silence is empowering.

[pokercat999]

16. Great response. You attack me instead of providing

information. Typical. I watch very little TV as I work and spent a lot of "off" time playing poker, both online and live. I do not watch TV while playing poker.

[pscot]

17. Sorry. It was just a generic comment

offered to the world at large. I did not mean it as a personal attack or a reflection on your habits. I understand your ire, and I apologize.

[burning rain]

14. Anyone have a link to the Guardian (UK) article on this same subject?

I lost track of it. It was really well done. Thanks.

[vinylsolution]

19. Every president since Reagan....

... has been furthering the Reagan agenda.

The elites' 30-year war on middle class families is almost complete.

[katty]

20. if mc keeps bleeding-waitl til 2011/12-ain't seen nuthin' yet

I am not a career counselor, but I would suggest to college grads to try to find viable work in another country they would enjoy and/or at least tolerate for awhile in order to make a living.