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The U.S. Middle Class Is Turning Proletarian
New Geography ^ | February 16, 2014 | Joel Kotkin

Posted on 02/20/2014 12:46:02 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Nor does resistance, particularly among the Tea Party, to make the human and physical infrastructure investment that could help restore strong economic growth.

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.

21 posted on 02/20/2014 2:55:56 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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To: Tax-chick

“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.”

-

The writer seems to have included that sentence, as a part of the paragraph above (which makes more sense, in total).


22 posted on 02/20/2014 3:03:27 AM PST by Cringing Negativism Network ( http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2013)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

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?


23 posted on 02/20/2014 3:19:53 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

“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.


24 posted on 02/20/2014 3:23:43 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

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.


25 posted on 02/20/2014 3:36:44 AM PST by DH (Once the tainted finger of government touches anything the rot begins)
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To: Gen.Blather

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.


26 posted on 02/20/2014 4:21:42 AM PST by Justa
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

“Bring back American jobs now.”

Plunk your magic twanger Froggy.

IMHO


27 posted on 02/20/2014 4:40:46 AM PST by ripley
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

How is the GOP shipping jobs to China?


28 posted on 02/20/2014 4:40:53 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
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To: CitizenUSA

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


29 posted on 02/20/2014 4:47:02 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
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To: Justa

“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


30 posted on 02/20/2014 4:51:04 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: Tax-chick
. What does “human and physical infrastructure investment” mean to you?

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>

31 posted on 02/20/2014 4:54:12 AM PST by KarlInOhio (Recycled Olympic tagline Shut up, Bob Costas. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

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.


32 posted on 02/20/2014 5:01:29 AM PST by freedomfiter2 (Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

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.


33 posted on 02/20/2014 5:04:25 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: KarlInOhio

“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?”


34 posted on 02/20/2014 5:07:39 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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To: Gen.Blather

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


35 posted on 02/20/2014 5:11:06 AM PST by dennisw (The first principle is to find out who you are then you can achieve anything -- Buddhist monk)
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To: Gen.Blather
Nobody is “shipping” jobs to China. The federal and state and in some cases local governments have made the atmosphere toxic for employers

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.

36 posted on 02/20/2014 5:14:53 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
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.

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.

37 posted on 02/20/2014 5:17:21 AM PST by KarlInOhio (Recycled Olympic tagline Shut up, Bob Costas. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!)
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To: Tax-chick

Usually that’s fancy talk for spending money on education of some type. Not necessarily actually educating anyone, just spending the cash.


38 posted on 02/20/2014 5:19:52 AM PST by KarlInOhio (Recycled Olympic tagline Shut up, Bob Costas. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

One of my “must-read” authors.


39 posted on 02/20/2014 5:20:06 AM PST by Excellence (All your database are belong to us.)
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To: KarlInOhio

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”?


40 posted on 02/20/2014 5:25:13 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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