Free Republic

Four in 10 U.S. households are straining financially five years after the Great Recession — many struggling with tight credit, soaring education debt and profound issues related to savings and retirement, according to a new Federal Reserve survey. The wide-ranging Fed study assessing the economic well-being of Americans shows that the economy has made progress to the point where most households said they were "living comfortably" or doing OK financially. But almost 40% reported last fall that their families were "just getting by" or struggling to do so, and more people said their financial situation was worse rather than better...

America’s wealth is concentrating in fewer hands, and while the rich are getting super rich, the once vital middle class is nearing extinction. [SNIP] But today, after decades of expanding property ownership, the middle orders—what might be seen as the inheritors of Jefferson’s yeoman class—now appear in a secular retreat. Homeownership, which peaked in 2002 at nearly 70 percent, has dropped, according to the U.S. Census, to 65 percent in 2013, the lowest in almost two decade. Although some of this may be seen as a correction for the abuses of the housing bubble, rising costs, stagnant incomes and a...

America, the former “land of the free, home of the brave” is crony capitalism ruled by an anti-American socialist/Marxist regime “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” - Anonymous My reality today in America, the former “land of the free, home of the brave” is crony capitalism ruled by an anti-American socialist/Marxist regime. I feel like the musicians on the Titanic.

When asked at a press briefing on Thursday why her party’s message is “not resonating with the electorate,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told a room full of reporters, “(W)e need you to be messengers.” […] … “But, apart from that, we have come forward with our middle-class jump start. Over the month of August, we go forward with how the jump start talks about bringing jobs home. The Republicans have tax breaks to send jobs overseas. Democrats want tax breaks to keep jobs here at home.” …

Another Obama record… AMERICANS GETTING POORER – HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH IN DECLINE.The median household net worth under Obama is one-third what it was during the Bush years. Under Barack Obama American households are worth two-thirds of what they were worth under George W. Bush. The New York Times reported: Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only...

It's really hard for a middle class family to buy a house along the California coast.Real estate research and marketplace site Zillow routinely calculates an index of housing affordability. First, they use a proprietary statistical model to estimate housing values in a metropolitan area. Then, they calculate the monthly mortgage payment for a median price house in each metro area. Finally, they calculate the percentage of the median monthly income for each metro area needed to pay that mortgage payment.For example, Zillow's estimate for the median home price in Abilene, TX during the first quarter of 2014 was $98,600. After...

The American Dream has been a focal point and topic of debate since the financial crisis of 2008: citizens and politicians alike are asking whether it's time to redefine what success looks like in the U.S. According to Howard Gold, columnist for MarketWatch and founder of GoldenEgg Investing, the white picket fence and security that hard work can bring is still alive, but it will cost you... a lot. In a USA Today article, Gold calculated that for a family of four living out the American Dream costs just over $130,000 a year. "This isn’t about being rich,” Gold tells...

America's middle class has fallen to mediocre levels — the U.S. median income only qualifies for 19th in the world now, below Japan, Australia and most of Western Europe. The bottom line is that the average Spaniard or Italian — not to mention the typical middle class denizen in 17 other countries — has more to his or her name than the average U.S. citizen does, according to CNNMoney. Using data culled from the latest Credit Suisse Global Wealth report, CNNMoney reported Americans' median wealth is only $44,900 per adult — meaning half have more than that, and half have...

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

Hoping to push their agenda ahead of the presidential election, a group of prominent conservatives has devised a 121-page policy manifesto aimed at giving the Republican Party a message that will attract some of the middle-class voters the party lost in recent White House races.The document, to be unveiled Thursday, features eight essays with proposals on issues including health care, taxes and education. The authors hope the book will help Republicans address the economic anxieties of Americans and nudge the party from its most polarizing positions and constant confrontations with President Obama.“We have to do more than ‘Stand athwart history,...

Who will prove the champion of the little guy and gal? Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — on deck for her party’s presidential nomination should Hillary Rodham Clinton bow out — has become the political leader of choice for those who advocate Big Government as that champion. This columnist is skeptical about Big Government improving the lives of the citizens. Yet … there is a case to be made for Warren. She is, at very least, a magnificently worthy adversary for advocates of limited government and deserves to be taken seriously. America has had a decade of lousy job creation and...

There are four structural drivers behind the soaring costs of the middle class lifestyle. Why have the costs of a middle class lifestyle soared while income has stagnated?Though it is tempting to finger one ideologically convenient cause or another, there are four structural causes to this long-term trend: 1. Baumol's Cost Disease2. Systemic headwinds to the current version of capitalism3. Dominance of global corporate capital4. Financialization The key take-away here is that the first two causes are structural and cannot be changed by passing a law or funding another state bureaucracy. Though many believe they can tax global corporate capital to...

"............................Educated, articulate and well versed in the recitation of neo-Marxist agitprop, [Seattle Council Woman Kshama Sawant]clearly has read many books and been taught many things that aren’t so.Such is the case with Sawant’s core mission of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour because she believes it helps poor people. She is convinced that she can, by decree, override the laws of economics from her perch on Seattle’s city council. “Victory in the fight for $15 an hour will mean a substantial improvement in the standards of living of working people in Seattle,” Sawant...in a recent interview[,]“A real class...

It’s an Obama world. Of 953,000 Jobs Created In 2013, 77%, Or 731,000 Were Part-Time. ... And it’s likely to get worse… Obamacare will kill off at least two percent of the US full-time workforce. ... Obamacare is accelerating the US towards a part-time nation. Even far left Think Progress reported today that most of the jobs added since the recession are low paying jobs.

About one-third of American households live "hand-to-mouth," meaning that they spend all their paychecks. But what surprised the study authors is that 66% of these families are middle class, with a median income of $41,000. While they don't have liquid assets, such as savings accounts or mutual fund holdings, they do have homes and retirement accounts, with a median net worth of $41,000. ... Poor hand-to-mouth households, by contrast, typically have incomes of $21,000 and no assets. Families that don't live paycheck to paycheck have incomes of $51,000 and assets of $116,000. Those living paycheck to paycheck have a tougher...

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades. After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades. After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada—substantially behind in 2000—now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans. The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly...

This is the Democratic Party’s new top-bottom coalition, one in which the traditional middle class—white ethnics, blue-collar manufacturing and trade workers, small business owners, and others—has no part. These “left-outs” are the urban equivalents of Reagan Democrats. Their instinct to vote Democratic may remain, but the economic interests that once bound them to the party have largely disappeared, leaving them politically unaffiliated. They are open to voting for a compelling Republican, such as Rudolph Giuliani—particularly if the city in which they live appears to be spiraling downward. In other words, these independent-minded, urban middle classes are quintessential swing voters. They...

One phenomenon of the modern economy is affluence that doesn’t feel like it. You work, earn and spend quite a lot, yet it seems you’re getting nowhere. Some new economic analysis helps quantify just how many people might be characterized as the “wealthy poor”— and it’s a surprisingly large chunk of the overall population. A new paper by economists Greg Kaplan and Justin Weidner of Princeton University, and Giovanni Violante of New York University, finds that about 70 million Americans may live in families they describe as “wealthy hand-to-mouth” households. These are families that own assets such as homes, cars,...

A bunch of labor unions’ massive retrenchment from directly supporting the passage of ObamaCare to publicly taking the legislation to the woodshed is well documented by now, but yet another big union just came out swinging against the law by levying one of President Obama’s favorite intellectually bankrupt themes against him: Income inequality, of course. Via the Washington Examiner: A national union that represents 300,000 low-wage hospitality workers charges in a new report that Obamacare will slam wages, cut hours, limit access to health insurance and worsen the very “income equality” President Obama says he is campaigning to fix.“Only in...