Thread: America's disappearing middle class

THE BEAR'S LAIR
America's disappearing middle class
By Martin Hutchinson

It is already clear that one of the great US election issues of 2008 will be the relative impoverishment of the American middle class, defined in the American rather than the British sense to include well established blue-collar workers with families and mortgages.

Republicans who ignore this problem will find themselves talking only to the winners, the top 1% in the income scale - laughably
inadequate as an electoral base. Democrats who propound the usual socialist nostrums to cure it will find themselves ardent proponents of an economics that doesn’t work. A new intellectual paradigm is required.

The declining share of low and moderate income workers in the American pie is undeniable; the relative share of such workers peaked as long ago as 1973. For those with only high school qualifications or less, their absolute earnings peaked in 1973 and have declined substantially since then. From 1973 to 1995, this appeared to be simply a case of the rewards for skills increasing, with low skilled workers suffering increasingly in terms of earnings and job losses compared to those with a bachelor’s degree or better. Since 2000, however, the paradigm has changed, with all sectors of the workforce losing ground in absolute terms, except for the top 1% who have gained essentially all of the modest gains in employee incomes under the George W Bush administration.

A Center for Economic and Policy Research study released this week shows that the share of “good jobsâ€

Excellent article, so sadly accurate.

Though I have to say that this:

A world in which few if any have security in their livelihood is not conservative, it is anarchist. It is also deeply repugnant to the average voter. That will ensure that, if the noise and struggle of the free market is allowed to become too destructive, it will be replaced by the eternal silence of the socialist tomb.

Has got to be one of the most powerful, succinct, and resonating contemporary quotes I have encountered.

Thank you, I thought there were a number of good quotes and concepts in this article. I especially enjoyed the author's point about misusing the accusation of racism against people who have perfectly 'radional' [his word] reasons for opposing mass immigration that have nothing to do with race. A number of good writers contribute to this publication and sometimes their analysis is better than what we see in the dometic press.

Republicans who ignore this problem will find themselves talking only to the winners, the top 1% in the income scale - laughably
inadequate as an electoral base. Democrats who propound the usual socialist nostrums to cure it will find themselves ardent proponents of an economics that doesn’t work. A new intellectual paradigm is required.

We need a Third Party that understands this and Fights for Us, the American Middle Class!

open borders and cheap labour, foreign wars bankrupting us, socialist and fascist politicans expanding government programs like a fat cow... what do you expect? who will pay for all of this? The middle class.

throw trillions in debt from the war, throw in 20+million illegal immigrants sponging off the social systems... yup. thank our wonderful politicians who just want to line their pockets with cash.

A Revolution doesn't have to be violent. A Revolution of ideas, a new way to approach things....

I just hate the way our leaders seem to think, that we can just shut down the factories, ship out the jobs, buy and hire foreign to our hearts content, but we middle class folks can just absorb whatever they do and never miss anything. We are tapped out!