The Future For Most Americans: Pathetic Jobs, Bad Debts And A Crappy Economy



September 7th, 2011
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Sorry to break this to you, but the future for most Americans is going to be pretty crappy. Unless you are independently wealthy, the chances are good that you will have a low paying job, that you will be drowning in a sea of bad debts and that you will have to go on government assistance at some point. Most American families are completely dependent on their jobs for income, and right now good jobs are disappearing at a frightening pace. Over the last couple of decades, millions of high paying manufacturing jobs have been shipped out of the country and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs. Small business creation is being absolutely crushed by the federal government, and millions of illegal immigrants have been allowed in to the country and they are now competing for the limited number of jobs that are still available. The vast majority of the money and the vast majority of the power in this country are now in the hands of either the big corporations or the government. Together, the big corporations and the government are absolutely crushing everyone else. If you are not part of the "privileged class", there is a good chance that your job is serving them. Perhaps you are bringing them lunch or cutting their hair or stocking shelves for them. Once upon a time, America was "the land of opportunity", but now that has all changed. Tomorrow morning, millions of Americans will get up and go to pathetic, low paying jobs and millions of others will wonder why they can't find anyone to hire them. Sadly, if nothing is done to reverse the long-term trends that are destroying our economy, the number of "working poor" is going to continue to increase.

Our founding fathers never intended for this to happen. Our founding fathers intended to set up a capitalist system in which the power of the central government and the power of corporations was greatly limited. The idea was that individuals and small businesses should be given the chance to grow and thrive in a free market system.

But that is not what we have today. Instead of capitalism, what we have today is much more aptly described as "corporatism". There are very few areas of the economy where the corporations and the government do not totally dominate.

For a while things worked fairly well because the big corporations were providing millions and millions of good jobs for American workers. But now the big corporations have figured out that they don't really need expensive American workers and they are shipping millions of our jobs out of the country.

But the mainstream media keeps insisting that everything is going to be okay if we all just have a positive attitude.

I had to laugh when I read the following line in an article posted on USA Today recently....

Chances are your negative state of mind has a lot to do with the double-dip crowd's Weather Channel-like warnings of another catastrophic economic storm bearing down on the USA.

Look, chanting positive affirmations over and over is not going to zap good jobs into existence out of thin air.

Right now there is intense competition for any good jobs that happen to become available. For example, last month approximately 17,000 people applied for 600 jobs that came open at Ford's Louisville Assembly Plant. So those that applied were facing 27 to 1 odds.

The sad thing is that those jobs only paid 15 dollars an hour. Back in the old days, a job at a Ford plant could easily support an entire family. One of my grandfathers worked at a Ford plant for years. Now, such a job will barely get you out of poverty.

But those Ford jobs are far better alternatives than working at Wal-Mart or flipping burgers down at the local Dairy Queen.

When I was growing up, they told us in school that we were becoming a "service economy". At the time I had only a vague idea what that meant.

Now I know that it means lots of crappy, low paying jobs for everyone.

The following chart shows the growth of service jobs since 1940. As you can see, we now have almost 6 times as many service jobs in our economy as we did back in 1940....



Now let us take a look at a chart that shows the growth of manufacturing jobs. As you can see, we now have less people employed in manufacturing than we did 60 years ago even though our population has absolutely exploded since then. The decline in manufacturing jobs has become especially pronounced over the past decade....



In general, true wealth is created when something comes out of the ground or when something is made.

So if we are importing far more natural resources than we are exporting and if we are not making much of anything in this country anymore, what does that mean for the future of America?

Every single month, we send far, far more money to the rest of the world than they send to us.

That means that we are getting poorer.

Meanwhile, we are also getting into much more debt as a nation every single month.

That is also a huge drain on our national wealth.

The size of the "American pie" is continually getting smaller, and the people that are suffering the most from it are those on the bottom of the food chain.

Right now, unemployment in the United States is at epidemic levels and the number of "working poor" is absolutely exploding. Last year, 19.7% of all U.S. working adults had jobs that would not have been enough to push a family of four over the poverty line even if they had worked full-time hours for the entire year.

How would you feel if you worked as hard as you could all year and your family was still living in poverty?

Sadly, unless something dramatic is done, the number of working poor is going to continue to increase.

Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

Perhaps you are reading this and you have a low income job.

Do you want to know where your good job went?

It was likely shipped out of the country. The corporations have figured out that they can make much larger piles of money if they make stuff on the other side of the globe where they can legally pay slave labor wages to the workers. The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000, and over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed down since 2001.

But that is only part of the story. The Obama administration recently announced that it will not be deporting most illegal aliens any longer. Only convicted criminals and "security risks" will be targeted from now on.

So now blue collar American workers will have even more competition for the few remaining jobs.

Once upon a time in this country, you could support an entire family very well with the income from one construction job.

Today, that is no longer true. Competition from illegal aliens has massively driven down construction wages in many areas of the country.

But you know what? Large numbers of blue collar workers will run out and vote for Obama once again in 2012.

He may be shipping our jobs out of the country, but he sure does deliver a good speech. The following is from a speech that Obama gave at a union rally in Detroit on Monday....

"That’s why we chose Detroit as one of the cities that we’re helping revitalize in our “Strong Cities, Strong Communitiesâ€