My observation is every technological/economic/societal change has hurt the middle class and redistributed income to the capital owners and overseas. For example, the so-called Robber Barons created industries that employed millions while a firm like Google I believe employs directly something on the order of 10,000 workers.
I grew up in the '50s and '60s. Each and every year my Dad moved up the chain a little bit w/o big promotions, etc. Over a few decades, he went from struggling to being comparably awash in disposable income. Over the last 10 years, I have been lucky to maintain status. The Left calls this "progress".
Destroy the Middle Class and they will effectively destroy Freedom as we once knew it.
Well, we have a President who is a fumblebutt. The Democrat Party is run by leaders who talk bad about the country. Why would anyone build factories in this country?
The middle class is being destroyed by the leftists on purpose
Big government is the biggest drag.
Doesn’t solve any problems (in fact, has a vested interest in prolonging them) and makes everything cost more.
For at least 50 years our democrat and republican politicians have sold our industry down the tubes for financial contributions and kickbacks while lying to us, telling us how hard they are working to save our jobs and economy.
They have repeatedly passed free trade agreements like NAFTA and given tax breaks and financial aid and assistance to other countries to help them compete with us and eventually kill our own industries.
Finally, we now have squatting in the White House, the only politician who has been somewhat honest about his true objective.
Barack Obama has told us that his goal is to fundamentally transform America.
That is what he is doing and he is being aided and abetted in his efforts by democrats and republicans.
It’s a gross oversimplification to try to blame healthcare cost increases for this. When your dad and mine were working in the 50’s and 60’s, only a small percentage survived a heart attack, and breast or colon cancer was an automatic death sentence. You’d end up with a new wheelchair instead of a new knee or hip and people died or suffered from a host of diseases we don’t even hear about nowadays.
On the other hand there have been many other factors affecting paychecks. Not the least of which is the flattening of the world resulting from advances in transportation, logistics, and communications. I can sit here in American designing things in collaboration with a colleague in Europe that will be built by a factory in China and sell them anywhere in the world through a website that costs less than what people in the 50’s and 60’s spent on their landline phone bill.
The challenge for America is to apply the spirit that has made us the greatest nation on earth, using the assets and capabilities we now have to create the next growth curve of prosperity. But it’s a lot easier to sit around bitching and moaning about how things aren’t the same as they were 50 years ago.
I’ll take policies which dictate energy prices necessarily skyrocketing for $500, Alex.
And the princess and the prince discuss, what's real and what is not.
50 YEAR OLD CARTOON PREDICTS THE FUTURE !!! NWO !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_se8c-wN35M
Importing over a million legal permanent LEGAL immigrants a year since 1990 and 640,000 guest workers annually provide a surplus of labor that takes jobs from American workers and depresses wages. It is as simple as that. The labor participation rate is the lowest since 1978. Immigration, legal and illegal, is destroying the American middle class and the American worker.
The War on Poverty™ defeated the middle class.
This WaPo article is automatically dismissed by me because not once does it mention illegal immigration and idiotic free trade deals like WTO and NAFTA
“the middle class is being destroyed by the leftists on purpose”
Don’t blame the Democrats. Blame the Democrats and the Republicans. Ross Perot warned us and we didn’t listen.
The GOP has been enthusiastically supporting sending manufacturing overseas, for a couple of decades. And look how GOP is standing up to Obama on amnesty for low-wage illegal immigrants here at home (they AREN’T standing up to him!).
Don’t blame the Democrats. Blame the Democrats and the Republicans. Ross Perot warned us and we didn’t listen.
the jobs required to sustain the middle class went overseas with the push from bjclinton and walmart
the result will be a few at the top managing the workers and everyone else fighting over the few jobs they will permit us to have.
if you try to start a company, therefore employ some people, the dems will do everything in their power to snuff you out.
People who are $15-20 dollar an hour ($31,200-$41,600) workers feel they need to be paid 25-30 ($52,000-62,400) an hour these days. They have this entitled attitude. I deal with it every day...they are not any better than 15-20 an hour yet they demand it or leave when they don’t get what they want...they lack skill sets, education and work ethic. But dammit, they deserve more money regardless!
AND these are the same people driving the 25k vehicle, with I Pads, I phones, computers, living in 150k houses....over extended and in debt.
Yep. In the last 4 years our monthly premiums have more than quadrupled and our deductible has gone from $500 to $5,500. We are swimming in medical debt and slowly going under.
EPA, NRLB, OSHA, NBLM, FTC, FDA, NIOSH, ICC, federal income tax, FICA employee, FICA employer, disability tax, federal unemployment tax, Mediacre tax, state income tax, local income tax, school income tax, property tax, local sales tax, gas tax federal, gas tax state, etc...
THAT NAMES JUST A FEW!!!
Now list the alphabet soup of benefits available if you don’t work.