The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

[tabatha]

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

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.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Recommend.

If every, if even half, of the voter out there understood these facts we might have a greater chance of seeing change.

Great post.

:kick:

[Gold Metal Flake]

2. R. More facts not trumpeted on the big-three evening news shows on the "liberal media".

This is Reaganism.

[AzDar]

3. K & R

:kick:

[MrMickeysMom]

4. Interesting that our paper talked about the uber rich today...

They have "special" communities outside of Disney World for their world, which is growing, to be pampered.

Yes, here come the super rich. Aren't you happy for their trickling down economic ability, guaranteeing service industry jobs for those not able to live in their zip code?

Come on...

[tabatha]

5. Of course, someone had to unrec this.

[Maine-ah]

10. either a mistake or they're in top 1%

[HillbillyBob]

6. The Drizzlin Shitz economy by to us by the neokons

starting with runnyraygun, I know it really started earlier sh----n down on us.

I was USN Air traffic controller (trainee but in the field), but got outed and could not get a civilian FAA job because of the admin that hated fags so much that I could not get hired even after spending a small fortune training me and even after RR fired the union. I was almost homeless and living on 15 hrs a week in a pizza place @ minimum wage and eating pots of beans with the scrap bacon that Winn Dixie used to sell for a 1$ for 2 or 3lb.

The elite class live in gated developments(can't really call them communities) They are not as secure as they would like to think unless it is like Jupiter Fla where they have bunkers underground on the Island, near Hobe sound. Now those wealthy folks are moving to The mountains and setting up those gated communities and takin their teabagger nonsense to places like Ashville NC which was a haven for arts and hippies.

We are the kind of folks that were brought up to respect Mother Earth. We grew up if not poor we were pretty close. Subsistence farms where our parents had to have jobs, not great paying jobs, we had to grow food to eat..and here we are right back where we started from..ex
We are sort of homesteaders, not completely out of choice. Then again it was our choice. We made it our choice, we examined and explored to find the best way to survive. Cut budget, move to a cheaper place and that it should have room to grow food, and we are able to afford it and partner can get to work in a reasonable distance and time. We did this as our choice of limited choices.
Hoping we can hang on. I feel that this is going to not just be a recession but a depression. We have seen and understood that the middle class was under unrelenting attack, has been and likely always will be until there is no middle class. they don't care, they want it all. I would like to believe Karma eventually will come back to them.

[OHdem10]

7. Diminishing middle class means diminishing Democracy.

Aristocracy on the rampage.

[txlibdem]

8. Not an accident

All part of the fascist plan. Once the middle class is dead the rich will have no reason to continue the farce of allowing us to cast votes. We will be the permanent under class of surfs and vassals in service to our "lords" the rich.

[Selatius]

11. They may succeed for a time, but people snap eventually. Look at the history books.

France, 1789.

[SpiralHawk]

9. "Ha ha. Too bad about you little people. Smirk." - Republicorporate FatCat Overlords