Posted on 02/20/2014 12:46:02 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The biggest issue facing the American economy, and our political system, is the gradual descent of the middle class into proletarian status. This process, which has been going on intermittently since the 1970s, has worsened considerably over the past five years, and threatens to turn this century into one marked by downward mobility.
The decline has less to do with the power of the “one percent” per se than with the drying up of opportunity amid what is seen on Wall Street and in the White House as a sustained recovery. Despite President Obama’s rhetorical devotion to reducing inequality, it has widened significantly under his watch. Not only did the income of the middle 60% of households drop between 2010 and 2012 while that of the top 20% rose, the income of the middle 60% declined by a greater percentage than the poorest quintile. The middle 60% of earners’ share of the national pie has fallen from 53% in 1970 to 45% in 2012.
This group, what I call the yeoman class — the small business owners, the suburban homeowners , the family farmers or skilled construction tradespeople– is increasingly endangered. Once the dominant class in America, it is clearly shrinking: In the four decades since 1971 the percentage of Americans earning between two-thirds and twice the national median income has dropped from 61% to 51% of the population, according to Pew.
Roughly one in three people born into middle class-households , those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income, now fall out of that status as adults.
Neither party has a reasonable program to halt the decline of the middle class. Previous generations of liberals — say Walter Reuther, Hubert Humphrey, Harry Truman, Pat Brown — recognized broad-based economic growth was a necessary precursor to upward mobility and social justice. However, many in the new wave of progressives engage in fantastical economics built around such things as “urban density” and “green jobs,” while adopting policies that restrict growth in manufacturing, energy and housing. When all else fails, some, like Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, try to change the topic by advocating shifting emphasis from measures of economic growth to “happiness.”
Other more ideologically robust liberals, like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, call for a strong policy of redistribution, something with particular appeal in a city with one of the highest levels of income inequality in the country. Over time a primarily redistributionist approach may improve some material conditions, but is likely to help create a permanent underclass of dependents, including part-time workers, perpetual students, and service employees living hand to mouth, who can make ends meet only if taxpayers subsidize their housing, transportation and other necessities.
Given the challenge being mounted by de Blasio and hard left Democrats, one would imagine that business and conservative leaders would try to concoct a response. But for the most part, particularly at the national level, they offer little more than bromides about low taxes, particularly for the well-heeled investor and rentier classes, while some still bank on largely irrelevant positions on key social issues to divert the middle class from their worsening economic plight.
The country’s rise to world preeminence and admiration stemmed from the fact that its prosperity was widely shared. In the first decades after the Second World War, when the percentage of households earning middle incomes doubled to 60%, it was no mirage, but a fundamental accomplishment of enlightened capitalism.
In contrast, the current downgrading of the middle class undermines the appeal of the “democratic capitalism” that so many conservative intellectuals espouse. In reality, capitalism is becoming less democratic: stock ownership has become more concentrated, with the percentage of adult Americans owning stock the lowest since 1999 and a full 13 points less than 2007. The fact that poverty — reflected in such things as an expansion of food stamp use — has now spread beyond the cities to the suburbs, something much celebrated among urban-centric pundits, is further confirmation of the yeomanry’s stark decline.
How our political leaders respond to this challenge of downward mobility will define the future of our Republic. Some see a future shaped by automation that would “permanently end” what one author calls “the age of mass human labor,” allowing productivity to rise without significant increases in wages. In this world, the current American middle and working class would be economically passé.
One would hope business would have a better option that would restart upward mobility. Lower taxes on the investor class, less regulation of Wall Street, and the mass immigration of cheap workers — all the rage among investment bankers, tech oligarchs and those with inherited wealth — does not constitute a compelling program of middle-class uplift. Nor does resistance, particularly among the Tea Party, to make the human and physical infrastructure investment that could help restore strong economic growth.
Fortunately history gives us hope that this decline can be turned around. The early decades of the Industrial Revolution saw a similar societal decline, as once independent artisans and farmers became fodder for the factory lines. Divorce and drunkenness grew as religious attendance failed. But a pattern of reform, in Britain, America and even Germany, helped restore labor’s place in the economy, and rapid growth provided the basis not only for the expansion of the middle class, but remarkably improvements in its well-being.
A pro-growth program today could take several forms that defy the narrow logic of both left and right. We can encourage the growth of high-wage, blue-collar industries such as construction, energy and manufacturing. We can also reform taxes so that the burdens fall less on employers and employees, as opposed to those who simply profit from asset inflation. And rather than impose huge tuitions on students who might not finish with a degree that offers employment opportunities, let’s place new emphasis on practical skills training for both the new generation and those being left behind in this “recovery.” Most importantly, the benefits of capitalism need be more widely shared if business hopes to gain support from the middle class for their agenda.
What does this mean?
He was writing intelligible English for a while, but then he seems to have switched on his content-free sentence-fragment generator so as to make sure he'd met his quota for bipartisan moral equivalency.
“One would hope business would have a better option that would restart upward mobility. Lower taxes on the investor class, less regulation of Wall Street, and the mass immigration of cheap workers — all the rage among investment bankers, tech oligarchs and those with inherited wealth — does not constitute a compelling program of middle-class uplift. Nor does resistance, particularly among the Tea Party, to make the human and physical infrastructure investment that could help restore strong economic growth.”
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The writer seems to have included that sentence, as a part of the paragraph above (which makes more sense, in total).
The first part of the sentence mentions specific policy views. The second part does not, imo. What does “human and physical infrastructure investment” mean to you?
“The GOP is in part causing this, by shipping American jobs to China.”
Nobody is “shipping” jobs to China. The federal and state and in some cases local governments have made the atmosphere toxic for employers. Any number of federal agencies can shut you down instantly for a raft of reasons, some of them political, like Gibson Guitar. The government will pay an aggrieved employee’s legal bills so he can sue you. (Since they have no incentive to settle you’ll pay whether guilty or no.) Then there are labor laws so convoluted that you’re going to be guilty of breaking at least one. I could go on, but won’t.
If you want jobs back they’d flood back if the various governments got out of the way. But once laws are on the books, once agencies are established they have immortality. They won’t go away. Therefore jobs will never come back.
There is a very simple solution to our “jobs” problem. Get government out of private enterprise....PERIOD!
Next, pay cash to employees each payday. Make them stand in a line at a table with about 15 people sitting at it, each having a duty to collect a fee for some type of government program or tax, and passing the stack of the employee’s dollar bills down the line to the end of the table where they are finally given their money.
When that day comes and each employee actually sees what the government and other leeches take out they will be alarmed enough to finally start voting for those who fight to allow them to keep most of their money.
Exactly. Tort and labor laws along with egregious regulation virtually guarantee many new job openings will be filled by robots, illegals or moved offshore. Anything mechanical can be done better by a robot or cheaper by an illegal or offshore worker and neither will sue you.
I also tell the FR-gruntled that those jobs are never coming back. My advice is take up an analytical and licensed career -something robots and non-citizens cannot do.
“Bring back American jobs now.”
Plunk your magic twanger Froggy.
IMHO
How is the GOP shipping jobs to China?
Consistent with reports of some labor shortages for builders, the number of open, unfilled positions in the construction industry remains at levels last seen five years ago. The number of unfilled positions in the sector for July (100,000) marks six out of the seven most recent months for which this total has equaled or exceeded 100,000. Successfully filling open positions with qualified workers is a top concern for home builders in 2013.
http://eyeonhousing.org/2013/09/10/construction-job-openings/
From 2012
Plenty of jobs, lazy Americans just don’t want them
Some people look at our 8.1 percent unemployment rate and say, there aren’t enough jobs out there. But others say there are plenty, Americans just aren’t willing to do them. One of those people is John Stossel, host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network.
Stossel did a Fox News special called “Out of Work,” where he argues that there are plenty of jobs in the United States, Americans aren’t willing to take them. He points the blame on a more-than-generous government safety net.
“We’ve taught people that in some cases it’s easier to be dependent, and you’re a sucker if you pound the pavement and work at one of those tough minimum wage jobs,” he told host Jeremy Hobson.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/plenty-jobs-lazy-americans-just-dont-want-them
“I also tell the FR-gruntled that those jobs are never coming back. My advice is take up an analytical and licensed career -something robots and non-citizens cannot do.”
I’m 59. I lost my job through sequestration. Despite a spectacular resume I doubt I’ll ever work again. I advise young people to skip college, spend four years in the military to gain some perspective and to read “The Millionaire Next Door.” Then they should work for a tradesman to learn something and then start their own company.
I’ve written 12 novels because storytelling is the thing I do best.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Bern+Pearson&page=1&rh=n:133140011,p_27:Bern+Pearson
That sounds like taxing (or borrowing or printing) and spending. And those tea party radicals are getting in the way of the government doing it for their own good. < /s>
It’s the result of the elites’ class warfare. The only threat to their complete domination is the middle class. They are the ones pushing for ever increasing regulation, moving the jobs over seas, and forcing American workers to compete with illegals for the remaining jobs.
Nobody on the Nationsl political stage even talks about income tax cuts, Reaganomica or fair trade. It isn’t even on the agenda. Both the ‘R’s and the ‘D’s beleive in Keynsian Economics.
“Investment” almost always means taxing and spending. “Physical infrastructure” is roads and bridges, all that stuff that was supposed to be “invested in” by the trillions of dollars borrowed and spent in the last eight years.
What is “human infrastructure?”
Wage differentials with China are more of a factor. Manufacturing is too much cheaper there. You have added other factors on jobs going overseas but it is not all due to over-regulation...as repulsive as those useless eater, porn surfing regulators are
Boy, was that a niave post from you. Typical though. Let me fill you in - US corporations absolutley LOVE regulations and taxes because is squeezes the little upstarts out of the manufacuring market. It also gives them a fig leaf to cover their shamless exploitation of the infinite turd world slave labor pool and gets rubes like you onbaord defending the massive screw job. You are what is known as a useful idiot.
Is this based on individuals or households? If households, the it could be because of the increased divorce rate splitting households. Other reasons could be because of wives taking low end or part time jobs thus being added to the low end. Also it could be because of a general spreading of the bell curve of pay. some move down and out, but others move up and out of the middle class.
Roughly one in three people born into middle class-households , those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income, now fall out of that status as adults.
Interesting choice of the word "fall". No information is given whether the are moving up or down. In fact, if someone moves in either direction then someone else has to move into the 30-70th percentile range. This is strictly about income mobility rather than dealing with whether the middle class is doing well or not.
I moved from probably around the 40th percentile as a kid (Dad was a little below average income at the time) to about 85th now. So according to the author I "fell" out of the range.
Statistics aren't all that tricky, but tricky things can be done with them. And this article has a lot of warning signs that is what is being done.
Usually that’s fancy talk for spending money on education of some type. Not necessarily actually educating anyone, just spending the cash.
One of my “must-read” authors.
It seems as if this author is saying that Tea Party opposition to throwing more money at “education” and at “physical infrastructure” (that never gets built) is bad for the middle class. Does he really believe that, or is he simply required by his contract to criticize the “right wing”?
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