Gone to foreclosure……gone to food stamps….gone to unemployment…..every one…..and the sad part of the saga is that it will most likely never return…..nothing being offered up by the government will protect or strengthen the middle class…it is a dying breed….it is dying slowly and most painfully…
I have heard economists and economic journalists say that part of the problem is the rise of China….this I agree with…..then they say that jobs are sent overseas because labor is cheaper and more profit can be made…..I also agree with this….but then they lose me….they say that the answer to our diminishing middle class is education….and education is the only way to save our faultering economy and middle class….sorry, no matter how I say it…….I can only hear the word BULLSH*T!
Still if they all believe that education is the answer……try to find an explanation for me…..how would a more educated people be a way to save jobs from going overseas? Would that not make more jobs flee? I mean with the cost of education and the cost of living in the US so high….jobs would still be sent overseas….a more educated middle class would not bring jobs back and would not make for a stronger economy….what business needs is less educated workers….why?….they will work cheap….that would help bring jobs home….
The Middle class is disappearing thanks to the politics of the country….why?……Massive national and personal debt. The US national debt has risen more in the last five years than in the entire history of the country. Even worse than the debt are the unfunded obligations of the US government in future years. Trump and Kiyosaki say that the unfunded obligations for Social Security are roughly $10 trillion, and those of Medicare are roughly $60 trillion. They compare these to the estimated value of the entire New York Stock Exchange at $35 trillion. These massive obligations are the result of unfunded promises to the large generation of baby boomers who are approaching retirement age. There is simply no way out of this morass that is without significant pain. Second, personal debt is also at an all-time high. One of the reasons for so many home mortgage foreclosures was homeowners using their home equity as a “piggy bank” to fund cars, vacations, luxury items, home improvements, etc. When the housing bubble burst, many of them could not keep up with their mortgage and credit card debt.
All the above causes are directly the fault of the politicians and their attitudes toward the people….absolutely NO ONE in Washington is working to sure up the middle class….banks got it….auto makers got it…..workers got diddly. The Middle Class will be a course taught in grad school for economics……
I think that education probably is the answer – sadly that’s not what these jerks in power mean by education and they’re clearly not capable of delivering even that which they do mean.
The “middle classes” were just what the name implies – a large and vast majority of people with a whole raft of differing opinions and beliefs, but who all broadly fell into the category of “middle of the road”, sometimes referred to as “moderates”.
These middle classes are mostly not all that interested in politics and simply want those that are to do what they have been elected and are paid for – to deliver a good standard of everything. They are generally not in favour of politics or anything else for that matter that is “too far” in one direction or another.
Sadly, the current trend towards polarisation and the financial failures that have driven the once stable middle classes into the arms of that polarisation has simply destroyed that centre ground altogether and, if you’re right and it doesn’t return, we may be witnessing the beginnings of the demise of our societies in the West, or at the very least in the UK and the US.
Perhaps that’s some conspirator’s aim? 😈
I agree that nothing is more important than education and that none of the loss jobs will return….ever…..but would not education make the workers demand more for their time? In doing so even more jobs will go overseas…..I mean profit is the main reason they went in the first place…..
Well, I think the theory is that a sufficiently well educated workforce can expect BETTER jobs requiring more expertise and training than the overseas workforce can offer. It’s usually a fallacy, of course, because overseas countries are often already ahead of us technologically these days and frequently drive the RD throughout much of the world anyway.
But then again, unless you are going to attempt to create a communist utopia where price and value don’t matter (sadly quality automatically goes the same way, which is a big part of why such systems always fail), then you cannot pay people more than the job is worth. Even your own citizens will always want the best, cheapest and latest products and they will always come from an innovative overseas source if you have a high priced labour supply at home.
If profit is not the motive, then you are left with communism (and protectionism is both self destructive and pointless in the longer term). There are currently no alternatives that I know of. I suspect you may suggest socialism as an alternative, but socialism spawned communism to a large degree and they suffer from exactly the same problems – mainly lack of any desire to do the job well and efficiently.
In truth, I have no answers. Unless humanity changes out of all recognition in the future, I don’t see a solution being possible.
There are always winners and losers and, as I think you know, a nagging voice inside me keeps on telling me we a witnessing the beginnings of the failure of the US/UK culture – maybe that’s really the whole English speaking culture. The unanimity and commonality of purpose required to change that seems unlikely to me to occur.
Maybe global warming that forcibly re-aligns everything in the world would actually turn out to be a good thing for humanity – in two or three or five hundred years time.
A great comment…..and I am thinking the same thing….the Western culture as we know it is slowly disappearing…..now I ask wil 2012 be the end?
QUITE POSSIBLY – after all, Palin looks more and more possible as a presidential candidate and that always did look to me like a ticket to Armageddon for all of us. 😈
I am working on yet another Palin post…..watch for it…it is a cool one…..
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