Reply With QuoteThese statistics are retarded and meaningless. This is pathetic doomsdaying.
America's Shrinking Middle ClassFrom The Business Insider
Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nations wealth.
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
This is where an awesome Mark Twain quote would be, but Apolyton says it would be too many lines. :(
These statistics are retarded and meaningless. This is pathetic doomsdaying.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Bah, 90% of that is the direct or indirect result of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. Thanks, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd!
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So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
This idiot is anti-trade. Trade moves goods from those who can most efficiently produce it to those who can most efficiently consume it and vice versa.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
So? Most people keep money in the bank, which then winds up invested.
61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
There are people in my dad's law firm who make more money than most people know what to do with, and even THEY manage to live paycheck to paycheck. Don't ask me how, they must be retarded.
66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
...So we have this system where the most productive people are a few orders of magnitude more productive than the average. This doesn't mean the middle class is dying.
36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
Well that's a choice, but says nothing about the reason why they aren't contributing anything. Most people are short-sighted, it could just be stupidity.
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
Ditto above.
24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
This is because the STOCK MARKET WENT DOWN, so they have less savings. It has nothing to do with the middle class dying.
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
This has more to do with the housing bubble than anything else, iirc.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
This doesn't seem to be economically possible. Someone can feel free to correct me but I'm calling BS on this one.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
HOUSING MARKET CRASHED DERP DERP
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
So the value of a really awesome CEO has gone up. We also have fewer workers than before, more people than ever are white collar.
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
ROFL.
The stock market recovered quite a bit in 2009. 2008 was an awful year. What they're saying is the ECONOMY IMPROVED.
In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
This is just because the federal pay scale is retarded and they are getting paid too much.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
Well duh, we're in a recession.
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
But service jobs are better because they're more stable. You don't have inventory with service jobs, which is why they've grown more or shrunk less during the recession.
[q]
This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
Because chinese labor is almost worthless. american labor is worth a TON.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
They keep raising the poverty line for convenient statistics like this.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
That's similar to that bonus statistic. Probably related. Derp.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Mr.Fun:
Even if the gap between rich and poor is greater than it was in let's say 1960, that doesn't mean that the entire population, rich and poor, has not moved together to the the richer side; in other words, even if the gap is greater, everyone has become richer.
However, I recall reading some research several years ago that found that people's happiness is not tied to an absolute appraisal of well-being but rather a relational appraisal; people are less happy the greater they feel the disparity is between them and others in things associated with general well-being (which is more than income and wealth though those two play a big role).
It is fairly paradoxical and illogical but the research seemed to indicate that people have self-evaluated themselves as happier when they are absolutely poorer but do not have considerably less than the next man than when they are much richer but have considerably less than someone else. Basically, someone given a dollar when everyone else is given a dollar is happier than if he were given five dollars and others given a hundred dollars.
But I suspect all this has less to do with national gini coefficients and more with what the Jefferson's next door have.
1% of the population? Do they actually mean entities such as pension funds and insurance companies which is far from the same thing?Originally Posted by MrFun
Capitalisation - The difference between helping your uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse
Grammar - The difference between knowing your $hit, and knowing you're $hit.
Spelling - The difference between being literate, and being Dinner.
I assure you, Americans are not shrinking.
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain
Its called going into debt.This doesn't seem to be economically possible. Someone can feel free to correct me but I'm calling BS on this one. Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
that was my first thought as well.
x-post: was responding to wezil
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
That doesn't necessarily mean the poor are better off with an expanding gap than they would be if they gap remained the same or shrank.
Yeah but one could argue that to artificially correct this disparity through income re-distribution would have prevented the mutual increase in living standards.
This is just because the federal pay scale is retarded and they are getting paid too much.
Actually, it's probably because federal jobs are disproportionately white-collar and require college degrees. So what?
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
This is incredibly stupid. Service jobs are also often high-paying. What you're seeing is that as low-wage countries develop manufacturing industries, the low end of the developed-world manufacturing industry goes away and is replaced with service jobs, while the high end remains (because low-wage countries can't compete in that space) and fuels the observation bias that makes people think manufacturing = high wages, service = low wages.
Also, any statistic that compares over the 2007-2009 range to look for a general trend is utterly retarded.
Remember when Ben tried to troll with this revelation that federal workers get paid more now than private sector workers?
HC, go check that thread again:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=191567
Matter fact, don't check it out because it was a Ben thread and it ended up threadjacked into something bizarre. Just read Imran's reply:
One could argue that the economy will grow just fine if the wealthy are taxed more than they are now.
Anyone else find people like this very xenophobic or even racist? This idea that American workers are somehow more important than Cambodian workers... Really, MrFun, I'm shocked. I would've thought you were more 'brotherhood of man' than this.
The income disparity stats they put up are completely meaningless because they almost never include the cost of health insurance.
possible. Regardless, it's not all clear cut as Mr. Fun wants to make it seem. Just because the disparity is greater than in the past doesn't mean that's necessarily a bad thing or that people are worse off than any other alternatives.
Also, oh noes if the American less-absurdly-affluent weren't getting EVEN RICHER as fast as the American more-absurdly-affluent. Over the same time period that they've allegedly stagnated, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD have been raised out of complete destitution and given some measure of basic comfort and security, largely due to the policies that are supposedly destroying our middle class.
MrFun is a racist
You ever notice that the Klan is all pro-protectionism?
http://www.kkk.bz/program.htm
Party Platform...
This is from Imperial Klans of America:Repeal the NAFTA and GATT treaties.
These "laws" given to us by the Democrats and Republicans is damaging to the American worker and will eventually put millions upon millions into desperate poverty.
Now, not saying that a broken clock can't be right twice a day or that those who agree with some things of the Klan are racist... just something to consider.Do away with free trade that harms the American worker, and employ a policy of protectionism. We need to put America first, before any other country. Most countries already do this, we don't.
Also,
I always knew Neo-nazi groups were environmentalist but it's still funny to see it.Cut off trade with countries that refuse to establish strict environmental laws.
We should promote a fair system that allows for a clean environment in our own country and does not interfere with the free enterprise system. We also promote an aggressive search for and use of non-polluting and clean energy sources such as solar energy.
Pretty much the giveaway that the author just cherry picked aggregated statistics to try and make a 'shocking' theorem a fact.statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
And of course, he picks the number one fallacy of international trade.It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations.
Firstly, a slightly factual issue. When the Seattle round of WTO talks collapsed back in 1999, one of the reasons (among many) was fears by poorer countries that labour standards on poorer countries would lead to closure of those markets.
Then, of course, the tragic assumption that middle class American workers are of equal productivity and equal skill as poorer countries. Presumably, he's just mixed up 'middle-class' for 'low-skilled' but never mind.
It's certainly arguable that workers vulnerable to offshore-outsourcing in the developed world suffer increased volatility from increased globalisation; the labour supply is more elastic. That doesn't mean that overall the entire middle class will lose all their jobs apropos of nothing to developing countries. It's a nonsense argument. You can't imagine Roche moving wholesale off to Mali.
When I worked at Super Target a few years ago, I was paid minimum wage. So you must be talking about mid or upper level management positions in the service industry.
This is where an awesome Mark Twain quote would be, but Apolyton says it would be too many lines. :(
Examples of service industries:
* Government
* Healthcare/hospitals
* Public health
* Waste disposal
* Education
* Banking
* Insurance
* Financial services
* Legal services
* Consulting
* News media
* Hospitality industry (e.g. restaurants, hotels, casinos)
* Tourism
* Retail sales
* Franchising
* Real estate
You seem to think service = retail.
MrFun:
There are many different types of service jobs and you know that. Service jobs run the full gamut of McDonald's employees to barbers to lawyers to stock brokers. Nor does it make any sense to say that somehow manufacturing jobs pay more (if they truly paid more, then wouldn't the Chinese garment workers be making more than Americans?). The few manufacturing jobs left in the US pay more either because of unions or because they actually are skilled positions.
The fact is, working at Target for minimum wage you're working in an unskilled labor position. Do you think you were making less than an unskilled laborer in manufacturing? Now think about a skilled laborer in service whether something like a barber (who makes more money than you'd think) or something a bit more advanced like a financial advisor? How do they compared to an equivalently skilled laborer in manufacturing?
And this minimum wage thing is crock now. I worked at minimum wage when it was only $5.15 (as late as 2006, it was $5.15) and it took only a few months to rise up the ranks. Now, the minimum wage is ****ing $7.25, which I suspect is a bigger increase than the rise in inflation ($2.10/hr increase in 3 years! That's a 40% increase!). And then factor in the fact that unless you're lazy you can move up to a supervisory position in a few months at most... Who cares about minimum wage?
Compare the wages of Chinese garment workers to other chinese workers. Manufacturing does yield higher wage jobs on average.
Are the other Chinese workers farmers or are they modern service workers?
You'd have to compare the wages of Chinese garment workers with Chinese working in retail or something... then, I doubt the garment workers make much more than the retail salespeople.
The service industries employ over 75% of the labour force in the US IIRC. They don't all work at Super Target, and they can't all lose their jobs to Yae We Won and We Do Ping.
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