Bye Bye middle class ;(

[webairalex]

tic toc tic toc..........

http://rt.com/usa/news/workers-usa-middle-class/

The US was once home to the picture-perfect American dream. A house, a car, and a job symbolized the middle class as the core of a prosperous country. Yet for an increasing amount of Americans some or all of these are now out of reach.
?This country was founded on the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How can you be happy if you can?t pay your rent? How is this American in any shape or form?? asked journalist and activist Mike Elk.
The new America is littered with millions of homes lost and abandoned with the unemployed officially numbered at over 13 million still queuing to get a job. Does this mean the middle class is disappearing in the US?



?America has gone from being the most egalitarian nation back in the 1960s and early 70s, to now, where the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in the United States than any of the industrialized nations. So, by every index the middle class is dead in America,? said trends forecaster Gerald Celente.

[Lykos]

That's sad if this really happens... US dream must live

[Juicy D. Links]

[sweetcuties]

Good for me, that means more renters and I can increase rents

[JustJ]

Not Good News

[BlackCrayon]

Good for me, that means more renters and I can increase rents

not when they can't afford it...

[kane]

Not good, but in a way the middle class did a lot of this to themselves. In the 1950's the average person made around $5,000 per year and the average home cost about $7,000. The average guy could get the average job, get married have a kid or two and he made enough money that he could buy his house, a car or two, his wife could stay home with the kids and they could still afford a little vacation every summer while putting money away for the kids to go to college and him to retire on.

Now the average wage is $36,000, but the average home is $186,000. For the first time in history the average wage earner cannot afford the average home. Part of this is because developers and banks realized if they increased the lengths of mortgages (from 15 years to 30 years) people would buy bigger, more expensive homes because the monthly payments would be about the same. All of this caused a lot of real estate prices to skyrocket. Then other companies got in on the game. TV makers used to make the average TV and they had a few high end TVs for those with more money. They started offering credit so that the average guy could now buy the high end TV. This, of course, caused all prices to go up. Over time the middle class has used credit for so many things that those who make it now just advertise it at the monthly payment price not the full cost which makes it next to impossible for someone who makes the average salary to live like they would have back in the 1950's.

Everyone raised their prices and offered credit and the middle class just kept buying away and filling their McMansios and now the middle class, overextended and suffering from high unemployment are buckling under the weight of this debt.

[marketsmart]

i bet that zebra has a huge cock...

and i bet the guy in the zebra shirt is a huge cock...





.

[pornguy]

Not good, but in a way the middle class did a lot of this to themselves. In the 1950's the average person made around $5,000 per year and the average home cost about $7,000. The average guy could get the average job, get married have a kid or two and he made enough money that he could buy his house, a car or two, his wife could stay home with the kids and they could still afford a little vacation every summer while putting money away for the kids to go to college and him to retire on.

Now the average wage is $36,000, but the average home is $186,000. For the first time in history the average wage earner cannot afford the average home. Part of this is because developers and banks realized if they increased the lengths of mortgages (from 15 years to 30 years) people would buy bigger, more expensive homes because the monthly payments would be about the same. All of this caused a lot of real estate prices to skyrocket. Then other companies got in on the game. TV makers used to make the average TV and they had a few high end TVs for those with more money. They started offering credit so that the average guy could now buy the high end TV. This, of course, caused all prices to go up. Over time the middle class has used credit for so many things that those who make it now just advertise it at the monthly payment price not the full cost which makes it next to impossible for someone who makes the average salary to live like they would have back in the 1950's.

Everyone raised their prices and offered credit and the middle class just kept buying away and filling their McMansios and now the middle class, overextended and suffering from high unemployment are buckling under the weight of this debt.

Very true. But you left out the part about the now unemployeed Middle class wont take jobs that are not on the level or just below of what they had. They all seem to think that they deserve better.

They simply dont care about getting the bills paid. They want the Window view office with the secretary and pool car or limo.

[Joshua G]

read a comment on a blog that sums it up best...

the economy is a game of monopoly. Over time, all the wealth eventually concentrates into the hands of 1 or 2 players, while the rest of the players get wiped out. The only way out is to end the game, redistribute the money, & start over.

AKA we need the economic system to collapse in order to start the game over.

[kane]

Very true. But you left out the part about the now unemployeed Middle class wont take jobs that are not on the level or just below of what they had. They all seem to think that they deserve better.

They simply dont care about getting the bills paid. They want the Window view office with the secretary and pool car or limo.

Here is a very good example of this. I have a friend who works for a company that does industrial sheet metal work. He is in a union and has worked his way up the ladder. He started out 13 years ago making $9 per hour. Now he is making around $32 per hour. He works a lot of overtime so he makes around $85K per year (pre tax). He is married and has a couple of kids. his wife works part time and makes around 15K per year. They spend every cent they bring in. They rent a nice, big house, they have a couple of nice cars and literally live paycheck to paycheck. He admits to me that if he ever lost this job he would be screwed because the odds of him finding another job where he made anywhere near this much money are next to zero. So he knows he is living beyond his means, yet refuses to plan ahead.

I ask him why doesn't he downsize their life. Get decent, but cheaper cars. Move from the five bedroom huge house into a 3 bedroom average house and put some of that money away just in case. I tell him they could easily live a decent life on what he makes and put everything she makes away for a rainy day. This way if something were to happen he could likely get a job that could help him maintain the life they had instead of losing everything they have. He says that just doesn't sound good to him. If he were to ever lose his job he would hold out and try to find another at this wage and if, eventually he couldn't then they would just declare bankruptcy and he would start over.

Here is the kicker. He has two kids. The oldest just finished her freshman year of high school. She is a smart kid, straight A's, plays sports and is very good at some of them. All-American girl kind of kid. She is already talking about wanting to go to college. My buddy went to a meeting at the school for parents to get ideas on saving money and getting ready to pay for college and was shocked when the financial aid person told him that his daughter would never qualify for need based grants because he made way too much. When he told her had nothing in savings, she told him he needs to spend less That he and his wife make twice what the average household income in the nation is so they need to shift their priorities so they can help pay for her college. He just shrugged and told her she better get a sports scholarship or something. The idea of downsizing just seems so foreign it is like he feels like he would be losing a contest if he did that.

[ThatOtherGuy - BANNED FOR LIFE]

PornGuy, Kane...

Both wrong.

Problem is Middle Class Jobs are gone. It has nothing to do with Middle Class spending.
Middle Class spending was staple to the economy but since no more middle class jobs are about that spending is now gone from the economy.

Where did Middle Class Jobs go? Off shore.

If politicians were serious about getting the American Economy back on its feet they would pass measure that encourage corporations to come back to America and start manufacturing again. Right now Corporations are virtually paid to go offshore and send the shit into America at nearly no cost using cheaper unsafe, un-insured labor and often slave labor found offshore.

Right now the USA is the biggest and largest consumer of Slave Labor products in the world. Americans have forgotten the pride in what "Made In America" means and stands for and most Americans give two shits less about the cheap TV and how it was made.

When something is Made in your native country there is pride knowing the money you spent to get it went to your fellow people and country. Americans just do not give a shit and happily traded the middle class for cheaper goods.

Coupled with greedy bitch financial industry stoking the fire did not help charging any imaginable thing and while doing outright fraud on a massive scale. The rich and well to do have cannibalised America and still in the process of finding new ways to exploit the people with lobbying efforts to politicians/Law Makers to make it easier to rip us all off.

[buzzard]

i bet that zebra has a huge cock...

and i bet the guy in the zebra shirt is a huge cock...





.

[kane]

read a comment on a blog that sums it up best...

the economy is a game of monopoly. Over time, all the wealth eventually concentrates into the hands of 1 or 2 players, while the rest of the players get wiped out. The only way out is to end the game, redistribute the money, & start over.

AKA we need the economic system to collapse in order to start the game over.

For the middle class they need to have a fundamental shift in ideals. They need to stop financing stuff and demand that car companies make cars that are more affordable. They need to stay out of debt and buy houses that are normal and reasonable. Maybe this housing collapse is the start of it as prices are dropping down to where they are affordable again.

But without some kind of sea change the middle class is screwed.

[kane]

PornGuy, Kane...

Both wrong.

Problem is Middle Class Jobs are gone. It has nothing to do with Middle Class spending.
Middle Class spending was staple to the economy but since no more middle class jobs are about that spending is now gone from the economy.

Where did Middle Class Jobs go? Off shore.

If poiticians were serious about getting the American Economy back on its feet they would pass measure that encourage corporations to come back to America and start manufacturing again. Right now Corporations are virtually paid to go offshore and send the shit into America at nearly no cost and cheaper unsafe, un-insured labor found offshore.

That is a huge part of it. Middle class spending is the engine that fuels this economy. Middle class overspending is a different sort of thing.

In a way it is the perfect storm. Jobs were there that allowed people with just a high school diploma to earn enough money to create a middle class life for themselves. It was all good. Those people then used credit to live a bigger, more extravagant life than they would normally live. They overextended themselves, were up to their eyes in debt and living well beyond their means. So long as they had the job they were treading water. Then the job goes away and the new jobs are being made offshore so those middle class wage jobs are no longer in existence.

[woj]

If politicians were serious about getting the American Economy back on its feet they would pass measure that encourage corporations to come back to America and start manufacturing again. Right now Corporations are virtually paid to go offshore and send the shit into America at nearly no cost using cheaper unsafe, un-insured labor and often slave labor found offshore.

That's never going to happen... if you can get the job done for $5k/year, who in their right mind would pay $50k/year for it? It's ridiculous to even suggest that paying $50k/year for something that is worth $5k/year is the solution...

[Sly]

Here is a very good example of this. I have a friend who works for a company that does industrial sheet metal work. He is in a union and has worked his way up the ladder. He started out 13 years ago making $9 per hour. Now he is making around $32 per hour. He works a lot of overtime so he makes around $85K per year (pre tax). He is married and has a couple of kids. his wife works part time and makes around 15K per year. They spend every cent they bring in. They rent a nice, big house, they have a couple of nice cars and literally live paycheck to paycheck. He admits to me that if he ever lost this job he would be screwed because the odds of him finding another job where he made anywhere near this much money are next to zero. So he knows he is living beyond his means, yet refuses to plan ahead.

I ask him why doesn't he downsize their life. Get decent, but cheaper cars. Move from the five bedroom huge house into a 3 bedroom average house and put some of that money away just in case. I tell him they could easily live a decent life on what he makes and put everything she makes away for a rainy day. This way if something were to happen he could likely get a job that could help him maintain the life they had instead of losing everything they have. He says that just doesn't sound good to him. If he were to ever lose his job he would hold out and try to find another at this wage and if, eventually he couldn't then they would just declare bankruptcy and he would start over.

Here is the kicker. He has two kids. The oldest just finished her freshman year of high school. She is a smart kid, straight A's, plays sports and is very good at some of them. All-American girl kind of kid. She is already talking about wanting to go to college. My buddy went to a meeting at the school for parents to get ideas on saving money and getting ready to pay for college and was shocked when the financial aid person told him that his daughter would never qualify for need based grants because he made way too much. When he told her had nothing in savings, she told him he needs to spend less That he and his wife make twice what the average household income in the nation is so they need to shift their priorities so they can help pay for her college. He just shrugged and told her she better get a sports scholarship or something. The idea of downsizing just seems so foreign it is like he feels like he would be losing a contest if he did that.

So they make double the national family average and rent a home? LOL. I'm not big on the "buy a home" dream but that's just retarded.

[Tom_PM]

Everything Nixon did that got him to resign is now legal too. So a lot of things are different than they were when I was a kid.

You guys, I literally remember when a divorced woman moved into town and it was a SCANDAL and I'm not even kidding. It was totally abnormal.

[Due]

Problem is really the overspending there have been the past years.

People where getting 30 years mortgages with a 5 year arm paying interest only so they could afford more hoping they would make more in 5 years to pay it. If not they could always refinance again.

Then people build up credit card debt of 20K easily and make just the minimum payments. That 20K still mean they are paying 3000-4000 / year in interest alone, to pay it off they'd need to pay 7-8K / year and that would hardly pay it off in 5 years

On top of that add financed cars, you gotta have 2 or sometimes 3 and then all the rest of the car related cost and you are looking at another 7K - 9K / year

Add health insurance 5K / year, after-school activities 3K /year per kid.

Those things alone is easily 20K+ / year in costs.

To that add another 10-12K / year for rent / mortgages.

Now it's 30K+ and there is no food / clothe or other recreational items included to this calculation.

People like that have no way of getting out of their Credit card debt.

This calculation must be wrong somehow ?

[ThatOtherGuy - BANNED FOR LIFE]

That's never going to happen... if you can get the job done for $5k/year, who in their right mind would pay $50k/year for it? It's ridiculous to even suggest that paying $50k/year for something that is worth $5k/year is the solution...

Simple. Raise import taxes, and enforce safe working conditions off shore for all employee's for a business that imports to the USA.
You then close the loopholes and write off benefits that companies use to operate offshore. Since the 1900's America grew only because we made our own stuff. Later down the historical line of events politicians and business men moved in with great ideas like "Free Trade" Which is not free trade whats so ever and began making policies that cheated the American Labor Force by providing benefits to companies to open shop abroad. Things such as tax breaks on imports and in some cases even government grants to build manufacturing off shore. Everything is now akin to the Fox guarding the hen house.

Its all on paper bro, but the average American pays no fucking mind because we have become a dumb and stupid ignorant society.

America should not condone the conditions that offshore labor forces endure. American Politicians should not encourage and provide benefits to companies that import. Politicians are bought off and sold now via lobbying, corporations or rather the small few wealthy now have a check book ready to pay off law makers to grant benefits that further a corporate agenda. In the past it was quite the opposite to when the US government would give all the benefits to companies within the USA.

[Captain Kawaii]

Bone up on non-Texan written books about capitalism. I mean Free Enterprise. Sorry, Texas, don't mean to piss you off.

Ask anyone with a solid education from outside the US about the form of economics and they will confirm that for capitalism to work 5% or less are/must be the mega-rich and 90% are the working class slaves and the other 5% are basically in a knife fight to keep what they once had. FACT.

Our ratios are sliding with peoples ability to pay...Of course they want free porn, they have to have free porn.

[kane]

So they make double the national family average and rent a home? LOL. I'm not big on the "buy a home" dream but that's just retarded.

It is actually worse than that. They bought a house about 6 years ago, but ran up so much credit card debt that they couldn't cover the payments so they ended up declaring bankruptcy. The house they had bought they overpaid greatly for so they were upside down on it and at bankruptcy they gave it back tot he bank.

After that they started renting. They first moved into a small two bedroom place for about 4 months as they got themselves together then they moved into the big place they are in now. The funny thing is they don't have a lease so any day the owner of the house could tell them that they have to move out and they have no money in the bank to pay first/last or deposits on a new place because here they are about 3 years after their bankruptcy and they are up to their eyes in debt again.

[96ukssob]

Here is a very good example of this. I have a friend who works for a company that does industrial sheet metal work. He is in a union and has worked his way up the ladder. He started out 13 years ago making $9 per hour. Now he is making around $32 per hour. He works a lot of overtime so he makes around $85K per year (pre tax). He is married and has a couple of kids. his wife works part time and makes around 15K per year. They spend every cent they bring in. They rent a nice, big house, they have a couple of nice cars and literally live paycheck to paycheck. He admits to me that if he ever lost this job he would be screwed because the odds of him finding another job where he made anywhere near this much money are next to zero. So he knows he is living beyond his means, yet refuses to plan ahead.

I ask him why doesn't he downsize their life. Get decent, but cheaper cars. Move from the five bedroom huge house into a 3 bedroom average house and put some of that money away just in case. I tell him they could easily live a decent life on what he makes and put everything she makes away for a rainy day. This way if something were to happen he could likely get a job that could help him maintain the life they had instead of losing everything they have. He says that just doesn't sound good to him. If he were to ever lose his job he would hold out and try to find another at this wage and if, eventually he couldn't then they would just declare bankruptcy and he would start over.

Here is the kicker. He has two kids. The oldest just finished her freshman year of high school. She is a smart kid, straight A's, plays sports and is very good at some of them. All-American girl kind of kid. She is already talking about wanting to go to college. My buddy went to a meeting at the school for parents to get ideas on saving money and getting ready to pay for college and was shocked when the financial aid person told him that his daughter would never qualify for need based grants because he made way too much. When he told her had nothing in savings, she told him he needs to spend less That he and his wife make twice what the average household income in the nation is so they need to shift their priorities so they can help pay for her college. He just shrugged and told her she better get a sports scholarship or something. The idea of downsizing just seems so foreign it is like he feels like he would be losing a contest if he did that.

I hate to say it but I'm sort of in the same boat. When I lived in LA it would be easy for me to quit at one place and have a job the next day, paying the same if not more amount. Now, I work from my house and know if I got canned, there is NOTHING around where i live and would have to travel at least 90 minutes to a big city.

the problem is, at the time I wanted these nice cars, toys and big house which I was easily able to afford. set money aside for the "just in case" pool but vacations, other bills, etc., is slowly starting to eat away at that savings

[mynameisjim]

The middle class is going through hard times, but you also have to understand that by definition, the middle class will ALWAYS be the most vulnerable during an economic downturn. Most middle class people are middle class by the skin of their teeth, that's just the nature of the middle class. If they had a huge savings, they would be upper class.

When an economic downturn hits, the poor are already poor, you can't really go much lower. The rich have enough of a cushion to ride it out and the rich are the first to make money off of the upswing when things turn around. So it's ALWAYS the middle class that takes the most visible and jarring hit when an economy turns bad. The middle class is the only economic class that really changes during a slowing economy.

On a side note, not sure if the author should use the 1970's as an example of "glory days" when it comes to the middle class..lol!

[JamesGw]

With the value of the dollar falling and everything increasing in price, it goes without saying that the middle class is suffering. People are definitely living beyond their means and are incapable of sustaining themselves indefinitely. And you better believe that once the safety nets fail, we'll see a huge drop off.

[kane]

The middle class is going through hard times, but you also have to understand that by definition, the middle class will ALWAYS be the most vulnerable during an economic downturn. Most middle class people are middle class by the skin of their teeth, that's just the nature of the middle class. If they had a huge savings, they would be upper class.

When an economic downturn hits, the poor are already poor, you can't really go much lower. The rich have enough of a cushion to ride it out and the rich are the first to make money off of the upswing when things turn around. So it's ALWAYS the middle class that takes the most visible and jarring hit when an economy turns bad. The middle class is the only economic class that really changes during a slowing economy.

On a side note, not sure if the author should use the 1970's as an example of "glory days" when it comes to the middle class..lol!

A friend of mine lives in what I would call the very typical middle class neighborhood. The houses are very nice, but not huge. Most of them were selling for between $250K and $300K about 3-4 years ago. Now they are worth about half that. You can almost tell the unemployment rate by the number of empty houses and for sale houses in the development. right now about 1 our of every 10 houses in this neighborhood are either empty and bank owned or for sale. So many of these people bought the houses which made them house poor so when they lost their job they had no choice but to move.

[webairalex]

PornGuy, Kane...

Both wrong.

Problem is Middle Class Jobs are gone. It has nothing to do with Middle Class spending.
Middle Class spending was staple to the economy but since no more middle class jobs are about that spending is now gone from the economy.

Where did Middle Class Jobs go? Off shore.

If politicians were serious about getting the American Economy back on its feet they would pass measure that encourage corporations to come back to America and start manufacturing again. Right now Corporations are virtually paid to go offshore and send the shit into America at nearly no cost using cheaper unsafe, un-insured labor and often slave labor found offshore.

Right now the USA is the biggest and largest consumer of Slave Labor products in the world. Americans have forgotten the pride in what "Made In America" means and stands for and most Americans give two shits less about the cheap TV and how it was made.

When something is Made in your native country there is pride knowing the money you spent to get it went to your fellow people and country. Americans just do not give a shit and happily traded the middle class for cheaper goods.

Coupled with greedy bitch financial industry stoking the fire did not help charging any imaginable thing and while doing outright fraud on a massive scale. The rich and well to do have cannibalised America and still in the process of finding new ways to exploit the people with lobbying efforts to politicians/Law Makers to make it easier to rip us all off.

[mynameisjim]

A friend of mine lives in what I would call the very typical middle class neighborhood. The houses are very nice, but not huge. Most of them were selling for between $250K and $300K about 3-4 years ago. Now they are worth about half that. You can almost tell the unemployment rate by the number of empty houses and for sale houses in the development. right now about 1 our of every 10 houses in this neighborhood are either empty and bank owned or for sale. So many of these people bought the houses which made them house poor so when they lost their job they had no choice but to move.

That has definitely happened all over the country. I just think that even when someone in the middle class buys a home they can afford, they are still somewhat on the edge.

There seems to be this idea that the middle class is the very definition of financial security because it's made up of honest hard working people, but the truth is, they are always the most precarious of any socioeconomic group.

BTW, I'm not blaming the middle class here. Just saying that being middle class is a very dangerous place to be, but for some reason it has always been sold as being very stable.

[Joshua G]

thatotherguy is spot on.

Everything that is wrong with america is exemplified by apple computer. Look at the back of the iphone - "designed in california, made in china" So you got steve jobs making billions, but at the bottom of apple are the chinese wages, & the $12/hour jobs at the apple store.

We need laws that put massive tariffs on products made from dirt cheap labor. If you want to sell to americans, make the shit in america. Also need a law that limits executive pay to a fixed percent above what the little man makes, so you dont have these absurd discrepancies in compensation. The unfettered globalist model is working only for the rich.

the middle class is dying because we are letting the rich kill them.

[$5 submissions]

The use of the word "egalitarian" is your clue that something is wrong with that article.

[Rochard]

It is actually worse than that. They bought a house about 6 years ago, but ran up so much credit card debt that they couldn't cover the payments so they ended up declaring bankruptcy. The house they had bought they overpaid greatly for so they were upside down on it and at bankruptcy they gave it back tot he bank.

After that they started renting. They first moved into a small two bedroom place for about 4 months as they got themselves together then they moved into the big place they are in now. The funny thing is they don't have a lease so any day the owner of the house could tell them that they have to move out and they have no money in the bank to pay first/last or deposits on a new place because here they are about 3 years after their bankruptcy and they are up to their eyes in debt again.

Sounds like some friends of mine.

They both had average jobs and could barely afford an average house. However, as the value of their house nearly doubled in four years they were table to money out on that house. They used this money to finance more stuff - a brand new truck, motorcycle, boat, jeep, and three trikes. They lived high on the hog - They couldn't have cleared more than $80k a year combined, yet they were able to take expensive vacations every few months.

Reality bitch smacked them. He lost his job, and eventually they had to sell everything to keep paying the mortgage. They blew through the cash, and everything they bought they lost a lot of money until they ran out of things to sell. In the end, they lost their house.

[ThatOtherGuy - BANNED FOR LIFE]

RocHard what was "The Reality Bitch Slap"? They lost there jobs?

Thats not a bitch slap. They were expecting to maintain middle class jobs. There jobs crapped out on them and boom, they fail. If you have consistant income the credit would not be the problem. Increased rates on cards could be a problem but arrangements can always be made with creditors so long as income is consistant.

They also have Bankruptcy options.
But the end story being they lose there home, there is more to this story than over spending and gross credit card use. This story requires them to lose employment or take new jobs for less money as middle income jobs dissapeared and forced them to work smaller wages at minor retail. Or one of them got sick or disability and could not afford the medical costs.

amirite?

The system is fucked. Most people live there lives chasing for retirment and then they finally get the retirement they worked so hard for and its slowly drained from them by doctors and insurance companies to the point they have to live in a small box and just simply die but not one minute before every fucking penny is drained from them.

I can go on and on and on about this shit but the short round of it is... Americans are getting ass raped by the wealthy, they are just not mad enough yet to fuck up the buildings and burn cars and kill wealthy fucks and the politicians that are so easy to buy out these days.

Shit will hit the fan soon...
It will...
When people realize the whole system has been altered towards nothing but exploitation of the peoples wealth and the perversion of "The American Dream".

That kid that shot Giffords in the head is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Intermittently, due to economic condition, there have been declines in the working middle class of many Western nations ? this began in the late 1960s ... If you are just realizing this now you're a bit late.

In the industrializing world, in the past 10 years there has been a rise in the worker's compensation value and the formation of a new middle class ? a middle class in name only with real net earnings "middle class" only in proportion to their local standards. e.g., the emerging Chinese middle class.

Henry Ford said, ?One?s own employees ought to be one?s own best customers.?

Even if we could sell one porn movie a month to 250 Million Chinese middle class workers the profit would not replace the loss of revenue in the Western middle class markets.

[ThatOtherGuy - BANNED FOR LIFE]

Even if we could sell one porn movie a month to 250 Million Chinese middle class workers the profit would not replace the loss of revenue in the Western middle class markets.

The Chinese would never buy it, they pirate it, just like they do everything else from Software to hardware. Government China is not even respecting patent laws nor labor laws by anymeans close to American or even international standards that are never enforced anyways nor regulated, they outright steal shit and I do not Blame China for doing such, its the government both US and China that allows it.

You will never sell 2 fucking million DVD's in China... They will steal it from you and copy themselves and sell it to each other. That is what I would do and that is what they do. No law enforcement in CHina regarding this simple problem, and the Government of China will never step up for its own people and be responsible for the labor abuses.

America will keep electing ass clown politicians whom are on the corporate payroll until finally someone wakes the fuck up and starts blowing shit up. We should not trade with countries that exploit its own people and enforce shit for nothing in intellectual property.

[Barefootsies]

Everything Nixon did that got him to resign is now legal too. So a lot of things are different than they were when I was a kid.

You guys, I literally remember when a divorced woman moved into town and it was a SCANDAL and I'm not even kidding. It was totally abnormal.

You must be, or lived around, a lot of Catholics.

[Kiopa_Matt]

read a comment on a blog that sums it up best...

the economy is a game of monopoly. Over time, all the wealth eventually concentrates into the hands of 1 or 2 players, while the rest of the players get wiped out. The only way out is to end the game, redistribute the money, & start over.

AKA we need the economic system to collapse in order to start the game over.

That actually is a good analogy. Giving Walmart a tax break isn't going to create more jobs in the US. Wiping Walmart from the face of the map, so there's new demand for "Joe's Hardware Store" in Smallville, Ohio to get your paint and supplies, is what's going to bring jobs back.

[Agent 488]

unions - which created the middle class in the 20th century - were broken and propagandized against over the last 40 years and the rest of the real wage jobs were shipped overseas.

consumer spending was continued by giving out credit to anyone with a pulse.

of course that was going to end at some point so a large police state has been built up over the last decade to contain the societal chaos and misery.

and in the end the tax payers were on the hook for paying for the con and their own repression.

welcome to 21st century america.

[kane]

Great post. BUT let's consider how the middle class decline mentality started. As mentioned, people in the 50's bought their homes or with low interest rates provided by the government. Most other things they'd purchase like cars and such were straight out paid for.

We've all thought about living back in this simple era, but it's not the picturesque life imagined. I've spent an immense amount of time in Russia and outside the major cities the culture/society is still in the 50-60's and this forced me to recognize how the US has completely lost it's values and way.

How so? -Almost all Russians pay with cash/debit and like the 50's-60's purchase homes and cars with cash. They save money like we Americans use to and more importantly, don't buy things they can't afford. Also, average Russian families don't cart the kids to McDonald's every week or negotiate with their kids demands or excuses etc. Russian people have our old principled value system, earn it.

They don't have unemployment like we do or with huge company unions because they're grateful to have a job and standard laws for employment are more then fair with paid holidays, sick days, etc. Employees don't demand higher wages, company profit percentages, or paid healthcare. In short, just because you have a job with a company doesn't mean they owe you anything other then your salary and If you don't like it, leave.

The benefit of this is very low taxes withholding around 15% in total. These taxes do pay for basic medical and a low pension like SSI, but that's it. Again, they have our old value system and this forces Russians to take complete responsibility for themselves something the middle class Americans abandoned decades ago. The only downside is if you're hurt or disabled and not been saving, you're fucked. - Not so picturesque.

The point is I agree with you because the American middle-class fucked themselves with some sort of inflated entitlement. They want a public/Corporate safety net, lower taxes, and increased wages for being a tool in a machine. There is no fixing this and I firmly agree we all need a big slap in the face to wake the fuck up and look what's happening in the rest of the world.

I don't idealize the 50's, it had is problems like we have ours, I mostly was using it as an example of cost Vs income and the idea of money management.

It seems like most people these days have no sense of self control when it comes to money and they spend first and think later. I know a guy who got divorced about a year and a half ago. He got screwed in the divorce and because of that he was likely going to lose his house unless he could refinance it. Some of us were hanging out one night and tells us about his situation and that he is considering options. He says he is dead broke and will likely not be able to make the next house payment. The very next day he goes out and buys one of those Dyson ball vacuums that cost $600 and he gets a new droid cell phone. Because he had no free upgrade he paid the full $500 for the phone. Three weeks later he says that if he can raise $4,000 he can get a refinance and could likely keep the house. He has some stock he can sell, but that puts him about $2K short. I remind him of the vacuum and cell phone. Had he not got that he would only be about $900 short.

In the end he cashed in his stock, took a trip to vegas and let the bank take his house.

[kane]

wow, hard to take someone serious after that and agree. One of my own friends who lost her job and was also behind on her CC's. Instead of cutting up the cards and calling them to make arrangements she opted to tap them out with the excuse they were screwing her anyway because of the high interest, her reasoning.

The funny part of this was as the the guy was telling us he was $2,000 short from refinancing his house and getting to keep it I know he was, in a way, asking us to loan him the money. Everyone at the table had loaned him money in the past and while he did eventually pay us all back it took forever so nobody was willing to step up and I get the feeling he got the hint because the rest of the night he didn't mention it.

[Rochard]

RocHard what was "The Reality Bitch Slap"? They lost there jobs?

Thats not a bitch slap. They were expecting to maintain middle class jobs. There jobs crapped out on them and boom, they fail. If you have consistant income the credit would not be the problem. Increased rates on cards could be a problem but arrangements can always be made with creditors so long as income is consistant.

No, you missed the entire point. They were "barely middle class" yet they were living like they were multi-millionaires. The only way they could afford to do that was by pulling money of their house every year.

Americans do this all the time - the live beyond their means. Before I went to college I was doing the same trying to maintain a huge car payment plus insurance plus renting a house.

[TheSquealer]

Wow.. people taking an article in Russia Today (a very biased/anti-western news source) pretty seriously. Most of Russias news tends to be about how shitty it is everywhere else. Same as Soviet news. That's how you distract the herd as you continue to rob the state and crack down on freedom.

[phypon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

skip ahead to 5:00

[Joshua G]

nevermind, already posted.

[L-Pink]

Many of the middle class were existing homeowners that were suddenly flush with huge appreciation equity in their homes. Why not tap this with a quick, 24-48 hours in some cases, 2nd mortgage? This was viewed and in most cases spent like the free money it actually was.

Then the housing bubble explodes, jobs are lost not to return, consumer spending of this free money stops, tax bases decline, etc ......

Life as a middle class American is gone forever for a large percentage of our population.

.

[buzzard]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

skip ahead to 5:00

Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Bullets, Bombs and Banks.

Time to end the "A" point bullshit and focus on "THE" point... Following the constitution
.

[shade001]

Well, this is better than everyone calling each other names and asking for bans, I guess. Still, webmasters discussing politics or the economy always gives me a chuckle.

[Bill8]

Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Bullets, Bombs and Banks.

Time to end the "A" point bullshit and focus on "THE" point... Following the constitution
.

I can't see how following the constitution would affect the economy or the middle class, care to explain how it would?

And what spin are you putting on "following the constitution"?

[JFK]

Fitty bye bye's

[12clicks]

tic toc tic toc..........

http://rt.com/usa/news/workers-usa-middle-class/

The US was once home to the picture-perfect American dream. A house, a car, and a job symbolized the middle class as the core of a prosperous country. Yet for an increasing amount of Americans some or all of these are now out of reach.
?This country was founded on the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How can you be happy if you can?t pay your rent? How is this American in any shape or form?? asked journalist and activist Mike Elk.
The new America is littered with millions of homes lost and abandoned with the unemployed officially numbered at over 13 million still queuing to get a job. Does this mean the middle class is disappearing in the US?



?America has gone from being the most egalitarian nation back in the 1960s and early 70s, to now, where the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in the United States than any of the industrialized nations. So, by every index the middle class is dead in America,? said trends forecaster Gerald Celente.

It's so funny watching the idiot left perpetrate this lie.

[12clicks]

Bone up on non-Texan written books about capitalism. I mean Free Enterprise. Sorry, Texas, don't mean to piss you off.

Ask anyone with a solid education from outside the US about the form of economics and they will confirm that for capitalism to work 5% or less are/must be the mega-rich and 90% are the working class slaves and the other 5% are basically in a knife fight to keep what they once had. FACT.

Our ratios are sliding with peoples ability to pay...Of course they want free porn, they have to have free porn.

Olive what lower middle class calls FACT