Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens

Witchit

Gold Member
Jun 18, 2014
3,077
626
245
TARDIS
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.
 
Terminating the Empire is not in the interests of the ruling class. As such, enormous sums of money must be spent on foreign intervention and war, to enrich and empower the ruling class. The resulting consequences to a majority of Americans, is of no concern.
 
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.
It is sort of inevitable when you allow people from shit holes to pour into the country. Enough is enough!
 
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.
It is sort of inevitable when you allow people from shit holes to pour into the country. Enough is enough!

Buy the book but don't forget to read it cover to cover. The Wealth of Nations is interesting read by Adam Smith. The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler is also interesting read. These would make nice coffee table books.
 
Last edited:
Why are we importing poverty?
The Democrats are demanding that:::
We can’t control our border crossings.
We can’t control our immigration.
We can’t deport illegal alien criminals.
We can’t stop non-citizens from voting in our elections.
 
From the article:
Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States
Well, there's a key structural/methodological failing with Temin's study (Is his book truly the publication of a study? I don't know.). Using that model to assess the nature of the U.S. economy is tantamount to using a geiger counter to tell whether one has a broken bone. The model isn't designed to evaluate mature economies; thus what it yields, while interesting as an abstraction, is of no practical policy making merit.

Lewis' model is called the dual-sector model. It is useful for analyzing developing economies. It has some key assumptions that simply aren't applicable to the U.S., yet all of which, as with any scientific model, must hold true. One can find them succinctly listed even on Wikipedia, for crying out loud.
  1. The model assumes that a developing economy has a surplus of unproductive labor in the agricultural sector.
    • This isn't even close to true in the U.S. Were it true, we wouldn't be in a situation whereby the agriculture industry opposes immigration limits. There isn't a labor surplus in the U.S. agricultural sector. [1]
  2. These workers are attracted to the growing manufacturing sector where higher wages are offered.
  3. It also assumes that the wages in the manufacturing sector are more or less fixed.
    • No wages are, in the U.S., fixed. The fact that they increase or decrease or hold constant is not the same thing as their being fixed. The reality is that manufacturing wages in the U.S. move in accordance, often enough, with union agreements and individual worker wage negotiations, along with periodic increases. Additionally, as a percentage of COGS, wages increase and decrease, all the more so as entrepreneurs trade labor for capital as has been, over the past 40 years, happening increasingly with the advent and implementation of of robotics in manufacturing.
  4. Entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector make profit because they charge a price above the fixed wage rate.
    • While this is an assumption in Lewis' model, it's also an assumption that one finds in every econometric model that involves an economy having a manufacturing and agricultural sector.
  5. The model assumes that these profits will be reinvested in the business in the form of fixed capital.
    • This assumption makes sense in a developing economy. Entrepreneurs in such an economy have to thus reinvest their profits in order to secure and grow their market share. No surprise there because most firms in developing economies are closely held. In a mature economy, however, firms return profits to firm owners -- owners who, unlike owners of closely held firms, do not subsist solely or mostly on those profits -- by way of stock dividends or they use profits to buy buck outstanding shares ownership so as to increase both the market value of the remaining shareholders and in turn return to them higher dividends. Yes, mature economy firms also reinvest profits in the firm, but the key distinguishing factor is that reinvestment isn't the primary use of profits. [2] Quite simply, the business and economic management of the two genre of manufacturers are divergent in key ways that make the dual-sector model contextually inapplicable to the U.S.
  6. An advanced manufacturing sector means an economy has moved from a traditional to an industrialized one.
    • Such an observation and one of enduring maintenance of an industrial economy is is indicative of an economy/nation having thus transitioned, but that is not the end of the rainbow, so to speak. Take, for example, Malaysia, a country that has, because the computer chip and high prices elsewhere has made "catching up" far easier (less expensive and more rapid), evolved from its agrarian commodity-based economy to establish a manufacturing base from which it, in turn, is parlaying into membership as part of the community of information economies.

      Four+Phases+of+Economic+Growth.jpg

So, yes, it's interesting to come by and consume academic exercises such as Temin's; however, one must also recognize them for what they are. While one may as a result of such an analysis find similarities between their predictive outcomes resulting from the misapplication of "this or that" model, because those predictions derive from a model that doesn't fit the situation/structure of the economy they've been used to analyze, those similarities are of no real value and cannot be relied upon. That said, such studies may, for some, be fun to read. [3]

Another thing worth noting is that the Lewis model evaluates the growth of a developing economy, not the "opposite of growth" of any economy. Yet the "opposite of growth" in a mature economy is precisely what Temin has used the model to predict.

Note:
  1. In economics, a "surplus of labor" and a "surplus of unproductive labor" are the same things because excess labor is always unproductive. It is unproductive because consumers of labor don't purchase labor for which they have no use.

    The terms "surplus labor" and "surplus unproductive labor," as economists use them, are somewhat like their use of the term "demand" in that its lay meaning and connotations are not quite same as they are in economics.
  2. To understand the qualitative economic difference, consider the business-economic (operational and financial) profit reinvestment behavior, motivations and needs of, say, a family owned manufacturing firm and that of a widely held firm like Caterpillar or GM. One simply cannot compare a economy powered in large part by "mom and pop" manufacturers and one comprised predominantly of multinational manufacturers.
  3. One may wonder why an academic economist might undertake such a study. Well, there are several plausible reasons, all of which have mainly to do with pursuing knowledge for its own sake. One reason may be to validate the legitimacy of the model by testing it against a scenario/situation for which it's not intended to work. Another reason is to, for much the same reason, test a model's precision rather than "top level" legitimacy. Those are just two examples.

    As for why the results of such an undertaking will appear as a book rather than as a paper in a top journal...Well, that has a lot to do with whether the study found anything that wasn't already known and with the fact that unless the research reveals that the model doesn't work in the instances in which it is intended to work, no journal is going to publish it anyway. After all, how noteworthy is it to publish an economics paper that, with regard to a given economic model, is tantamount to saying, "Well, my study confirms that a hammer isn't very useful as a screwdriver?"

    In contrast, however, one can publish a book and the lay world will "eat up" that sort of thing. And guess what, the author will get paid for having written the book.
Additional References:
 
Last edited:
From the article:
Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States
Well, there's a key structural/methodological failing with Temin's study (Is his book truly the publication of a study? I don't know.). Using that model to assess the nature of the U.S. economy is tantamount to using a geiger counter to tell whether one has a broken bone. The model isn't designed to evaluate mature economies; thus what it yields, while interesting as an abstraction, is of no practical policy making merit.

Lewis' model is called the dual-sector model. It is useful for analyzing developing economies. It has some key assumptions that simply aren't applicable to the U.S., yet all of which, as with any scientific model, must hold true. One can find them succinctly listed even on Wikipedia, for crying out loud.
  1. The model assumes that a developing economy has a surplus of unproductive labor in the agricultural sector.
    • This isn't even close to true in the U.S. Were it true, we wouldn't be in a situation whereby the agriculture industry opposes immigration limits. There isn't a labor surplus in the U.S. agricultural sector. [1]
  2. These workers are attracted to the growing manufacturing sector where higher wages are offered.
  3. It also assumes that the wages in the manufacturing sector are more or less fixed.
    • No wages are, in the U.S., fixed. The fact that they increase or decrease or hold constant is not the same thing as their being fixed. The reality is that manufacturing wages in the U.S. move in accordance, often enough, with union agreements and individual worker wage negotiations, along with periodic increases. Additionally, as a percentage of COGS, wages increase and decrease, all the more so as entrepreneurs trade labor for capital as has been, over the past 40 years, happening increasingly with the advent and implementation of of robotics in manufacturing.
  4. Entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector make profit because they charge a price above the fixed wage rate.
    • While this is an assumption in Lewis' model, it's also an assumption that one finds in every econometric model that involves an economy having a manufacturing and agricultural sector.
  5. The model assumes that these profits will be reinvested in the business in the form of fixed capital.
    • This assumption makes sense in a developing economy. Entrepreneurs in such an economy have to thus reinvest their profits in order to secure and grow their market share. No surprise there because most firms in developing economies are closely held. In a mature economy, however, firms return profits to firm owners -- owners who, unlike owners of closely held firms, do not subsist solely or mostly on those profits -- by way of stock dividends or they use profits to buy buck outstanding shares ownership so as to increase both the market value of the remaining shareholders and in turn return to them higher dividends. Yes, mature economy firms also reinvest profits in the firm, but the key distinguishing factor is that reinvestment isn't the primary use of profits. [2] Quite simply, the business and economic management of the two genre of manufacturers are divergent in key ways that make the dual-sector model contextually inapplicable to the U.S.
  6. An advanced manufacturing sector means an economy has moved from a traditional to an industrialized one.
    • Such an observation and one of enduring maintenance of an industrial economy is is indicative of an economy/nation having thus transitioned, but that is not the end of the rainbow, so to speak. Take, for example, Malaysia, a country that has, because the computer chip and high prices elsewhere has made "catching up" far easier (less expensive and more rapid), evolved from its agrarian commodity-based economy to establish a manufacturing base from which it, in turn, is parlaying into membership as part of the community of information economies.

      Four+Phases+of+Economic+Growth.jpg

So, yes, it's interesting to come by and consume academic exercises such as Temin's; however, one must also recognize them for what they are. While one may as a result of such an analysis find similarities between their predictive outcomes resulting from the misapplication of "this or that" model, because those predictions derive from a model that doesn't fit the situation/structure of the economy they've been used to analyze, those similarities are of no real value and cannot be relied upon. That said, such studies may, for some, be fun to read. [3]

Another thing worth noting is that the Lewis model evaluates the growth of a developing economy, not the "opposite of growth" of any economy. Yet the "opposite of growth" in a mature economy is precisely what Temin has used the model to predict.

Note:
  1. In economics, a "surplus of labor" and a "surplus of unproductive labor" are the same things because excess labor is always unproductive. It is unproductive because consumers of labor don't purchase labor for which they have no use.

    The terms "surplus labor" and "surplus unproductive labor," as economists use them, are somewhat like their use of the term "demand" in that its lay meaning and connotations are not quite same as they are in economics.
  2. To understand the qualitative economic difference, consider the business-economic (operational and financial) profit reinvestment behavior, motivations and needs of, say, a family owned manufacturing firm and that of a widely held firm like Caterpillar or GM. One simply cannot compare a economy powered in large part by "mom and pop" manufacturers and one comprised predominantly of multinational manufacturers.
  3. One may wonder why an academic economist might undertake such a study. Well, there are several plausible reasons, all of which have mainly to do with pursuing knowledge for its own sake. One reason may be to validate the legitimacy of the model by testing it against a scenario/situation for which it's not intended to work. Another reason is to, for much the same reason, test a model's precision rather than "top level" legitimacy. Those are just two examples.

    As for why the results of such an undertaking will appear as a book rather than as a paper in a top journal...Well, that has a lot to do with whether the study found anything that wasn't already known and with the fact that unless the research reveals that the model doesn't work in the instances in which it is intended to work, no journal is going to publish it anyway. After all, how noteworthy is it to publish an economics paper that, with regard to a given economic model, is tantamount to saying, "Well, my study confirms that a hammer isn't very useful as a screwdriver?"

    In contrast, however, one can publish a book and the lay world will "eat up" that sort of thing. And guess what, the author will get paid for having written the book.
Additional References:
Yet another illustrative analogy for what I put in the above quoted post....

Imagine that you produce brazzieres and need to evaluate the viability of "this and that" nature of a bra's form and structure. How useful would your analysis be if the model you use for evaluating the bra(s) is a male model? That is, in essence, what Temin has done in his study...he's used the "male model" that is Lewis' dual-sector model to evaluate the "bra" that is the U.S. economy, yet the U.S. economy is undeniably "female" in form.
 
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.

According to the Census Bureau ... 19.4 million Americans live below the Poverty Threshold.
That is 6.1% of the population ... And would not make America a third world nation.

.
 
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.



Manufacturing jobs are the key to reversing that trend.


They were the back bone of the Middle Class and provided upward mobility for people all the way from the bottom to the top.
 
Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens

Clearly neither you nor Mr Temin have ever left the United States.

Are you suggesting Witchit lives in the United States ... I haven't arrived at that conclusion yet ... :dunno:
Not hardcore enough to be a Russian bot ... Maybe like a Greenland or Portuguese bot.

.
 
Last edited:
It seems like forever I've been saying "the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and soon there will be no middle class." And here's this guy, validating me. I'm not actually happy to hear it.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.

/snip

The parallels are unsettling. As noted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking:

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens - The Intellectualist

In checking the link in this last quote (dated April of '17);

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

/snip

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging. If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector, reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and focus on embracing an integrated American population. We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.

This is a fascinating read, and I'm likely to buy the book as well. Something's gotta give. The status quo is no longer working for the majority of Americans.
Thanks, Obama
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top