The Decline Of The Middle Class Is Causing Even More Economic Damage Than Realized

[BertramN]

The article at the link below concerns yet another study proving conservative economic policies designed to serve the exclusive wants of the very rich are destroying the middle class.



But there is no point explaining this to the right-wingers, they are convinced the Reagan “Trickle Down” has been great for everybody for the past four decades. Their confidence in Ronny’s“supply-side voodoo” has blinded them to the facts that the very rich are getting much, much richer while the rest of us lose financial ground each year.



Of course, in the demented and illogical minds of the right wing, the scapegoats responsible for all that is wrong with our economy are: the “welfare queens” Reagan told them of, regulations to protect our environment, regulations to protect working people, regulations to protect consumers, etc. To the clueless conservatives, these are the culprits hurting the middle class and causing the growing poverty. To the ignorant righties, the unbridled greed of the fat cats is good for all.



Evidence of the conservatives' typical idiocy will be seen in their responses to this OP and the article below.



The decline of the middle class is causing even more economic damage than we realized





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[Boss]

You, along with most liberals, seem to think the "middle class" is a static group of people who exist in a bubble. and they remain in that group always. This is just plain ignorance and you should try to overcome it.

You see, people are constantly moving in and out of the "middle class" all the time. Poor people start doing better and bump up to "middle class" and upper middle class do better and bump up to wealthy. Some wealthy lose their fortunes and rejoin the middle and some in the middle fall on bad times and drop to the poor. It's constantly fluid and changing.

In many ways, the "middle class" is like a neighborhood. So let's take an old neighborhood in my hometown as an example. Close to where I was raised is Avondale. In the 60s, it was mostly middle class families, blue collar, mostly white. The homes were nice, the streets were clean, it was a pretty typical middle class American neighborhood.

In the mid-60s, white families began to move out to the suburbs and black families began to move in. The average family was lower income and the condition of the houses and streets began to decline. By 1980, it was a crime-infested place you wouldn't dare go at night and didn't like to be in the day. Now, in "bubble world" where everything remains the same, there could have been studies and articles about the drastic decline and damage to the neighborhood and all sorts of things could have been blamed. In reality, it was simply a matter of economics.

Jump ahead to 2000, young white hipsters, Asians and Latinos began buying and remodeling the dilapidated houses and fixing the place up. Now, Avondale is a thriving little hot spot. You see, things don't happen in a bubble, they happen in cycles and waves. The same is true with the middle class. As people become more wealthy and leave the middle class, poor people break in to the middle class. So you look at the middle class and it appears it's not doing as well as it was a decade or two ago, but that may be because many have moved on and upward.

Here is a graph that shows the changes we've experienced in the various income levels of families through the years. As you can see, the middle-income families are declining but where are they going? The lower-income families are relatively unchanged, maybe even slightly lower. It's clear, they are becoming part of the upper-income families. So is this a bad thing for the "middle class" or a good thing?

 

[owebo]

Democrats have decimated the middle class as they struggle to repopulate their plantation.....

 

[ScienceRocks]

Here is why it is collapsing
1. Unions that built it are going away. Workers can't bargain for more money so all the money goes to the top.
2. Anti-trust laws have been watered down...Big corporations buy out smaller small businesses within the same market place or drive them out of business in other ways.
3. Far less investment into education at the college level from the federal government = less people educated to start well paying jobs.
4. Systems rigged for the biggest corporation as they get sweet deals that allow them to pay very little taxes or offshore. Does the small guy get this?

And yet people wonder why are middle class is dying?

 

[Boss]

 

[initforme]

Decline of unions definitely hurt workers....wages, benefits, decline in response. There's nothing a worker has in their corner now and a strong work ethic gets a person kicked in the throat. The company has all the power. Neither candidate cares for the middle class which I believe is defined at about 120 thousand Healy household income. Anything lower is poor.

 

[Manonthestreet]

The era of Reagan is over.....libs tol me so,....take responsibility for your own parties actions for once eh

 

[Boss]

Decline of unions definitely hurt workers....wages, benefits, decline in response. There's nothing a worker has in their corner now and a strong work ethic gets a person kicked in the throat. The company has all the power. Neither candidate cares for the middle class which I believe is defined at about 120 thousand Healy household income. Anything lower is poor.

Nahh.. 120k ain't shit once you have it. You really need between 700-900k per year to live right. Of course, when everyone is making that, it will need to double or triple every few years to keep up with inflation.

 

[initforme]

A corporate shill trying to dispense sarcasm.

 

[Silhouette]

The article at the link below concerns yet another study proving conservative economic policies designed to serve the exclusive wants of the very rich are destroying the middle class.

But there is no point explaining this to the right-wingers, they are convinced the Reagan “Trickle Down” has been great for everybody for the past four decades. Their confidence in Ronny’s“supply-side voodoo” has blinded them to the facts that the very rich are getting much, much richer while the rest of us lose financial ground each year.

Der...ya thunk?

I started this thread back in January 2016, but was talking about it long ago.

Trickle-Up Recession: The 1% Getting Real About the Permanent Fix for the Economy

Apparently the rich were schooled in excellent schools that neglected to teach basic mathematics. When your wealth depends on the consumption of the masses and you take away the masses ability to consume (excess regular income stripped away by unemployement or private healthcare costs...either way leading to middle class bankruptcy), you cut your own throat.

Took 'em THIS LONG to figure that out eh? I guess they were too busy wearing their greed-goggles to get a good look in their crystal ball.


Here's the 1% (on both sides of the aisle BTW, Clinton signed NAFTA) "waaaaaaaaaaaa!!! where's all the money gone we used to shovel in our fireplace to keep warm by???!!!

Aw....little dear hearts...It's OK You ate all the cookies in the jar with no one to stop you and now there are only crumbs left at the bottom. Every wide open cookie jar always has a bottom dear...

 

[Silhouette]

Here is why it is collapsing
1. Unions that built it are going away. Workers can't bargain for more money so all the money goes to the top.
2. Anti-trust laws have been watered down...Big corporations buy out smaller small businesses within the same market place or drive them out of business in other ways.
3. Far less investment into education at the college level from the federal government = less people educated to start well paying jobs.
4. Systems rigged for the biggest corporation as they get sweet deals that allow them to pay very little taxes or offshore. Does the small guy get this?

And yet people wonder why are middle class is dying?

You forgot the #1 bankrupter of middle class families: private healthcare costs for even a minor or moderate family health issue; (which happens to every family). Jimmy has a compound fracture in his arm from tipping his bike? Hello foreclosure and chapter 11. That's how close to the knife's edge the middle class is from month to month. I've seen it everywhere around me.

THAT is what is destroying our country. I've laid out a plan to remedy it here though: post #383 Trickle-Up Recession: The 1% Getting Real About the Permanent Fix for the Economy

 

[Silhouette]

*crickets*

 

[Boss]

Apparently the rich were schooled in excellent schools that neglected to teach basic mathematics. When your wealth depends on the consumption of the masses and you take away the masses ability to consume (excess regular income stripped away by unemployement or private healthcare costs...either way leading to middle class bankruptcy), you cut your own throat.

Which is exactly why I wonder why liberal progressives believe that's what they want to happen.

Like you point out, it makes no rational sense that "the rich" want to screw poor people. Most of the wealthy people I know are big philanthropists. They contribute a lot of their wealth to charity and various outreach programs. Walmart, as much flack as they catch, probably give more money to the communities they are in than any other business in America.I know the community I live in, they participate in Partners in Education, a program that pairs business with schools to purchase equipment and build tennis courts or playgrounds.

And for the very reason you point out, Conservatives aren't about helping the rich at the expense of the poor, as liberals often claim. We just have a different opinion of how you help people. In order to do something that actually has an effect, it has to create motivation. Just handing someone a check they have to do nothing for, is counter-productive. But that's exactly what liberals and Democrats want to do.

Of course, they do this because it creates a dependency on the party to keep the checks coming, and thus, they are purchasing votes. Conservatives prefer encouraging success and rewarding effort. That's the best way to help people at the bottom.

 

[owebo]

Boss....you are on the plantation....

 

[ABikerSailor]

Decline of unions definitely hurt workers....wages, benefits, decline in response. There's nothing a worker has in their corner now and a strong work ethic gets a person kicked in the throat. The company has all the power. Neither candidate cares for the middle class which I believe is defined at about 120 thousand Healy household income. Anything lower is poor.

Nahh.. 120k ain't shit once you have it. You really need between 700-900k per year to live right. Of course, when everyone is making that, it will need to double or triple every few years to keep up with inflation.

Guess nobody in the military lives right, because they will never see that kind of money while serving, even if they make it all the way to the highest rank of the enlisted which is E9.

If they have a college degree, and manage to come in as an officer, they still won't make it to 700k per year.

Me? I retired as an E-6 over 20 years and was only making 36,000/yr my last year in.

 

[Boss]

Decline of unions definitely hurt workers....wages, benefits, decline in response. There's nothing a worker has in their corner now and a strong work ethic gets a person kicked in the throat. The company has all the power. Neither candidate cares for the middle class which I believe is defined at about 120 thousand Healy household income. Anything lower is poor.

Nahh.. 120k ain't shit once you have it. You really need between 700-900k per year to live right. Of course, when everyone is making that, it will need to double or triple every few years to keep up with inflation.

Guess nobody in the military lives right, because they will never see that kind of money while serving, even if they make it all the way to the highest rank of the enlisted which is E9.

If they have a college degree, and manage to come in as an officer, they still won't make it to 700k per year.

Me? I retired as an E-6 over 20 years and was only making 36,000/yr my last year in.

Ah... well, we all just get a protest sign and demand it... right? I mean, that's what works! We start whining and moaning about it and keep demanding it on message boards, beating people down who oppose it, accusing them of being racists and bigots, destroy opposition on all levels, get some politicians on board through our activism and hey.... we can make this happen!

I'm simply making the point that $100k a year is chump change once you have it. You'd be surprised just how quickly you would blow through that and then you look around and here's this guy over here making a million dollars a year... it's not FAIR. So forget about $100k being a reasonable living... let's go for $700k... or $900k... or why not just say $1mil? Why not man?

 

[Freewill]

The article at the link below concerns yet another study proving conservative economic policies designed to serve the exclusive wants of the very rich are destroying the middle class.



But there is no point explaining this to the right-wingers, they are convinced the Reagan “Trickle Down” has been great for everybody for the past four decades. Their confidence in Ronny’s“supply-side voodoo” has blinded them to the facts that the very rich are getting much, much richer while the rest of us lose financial ground each year.



Of course, in the demented and illogical minds of the right wing, the scapegoats responsible for all that is wrong with our economy are: the “welfare queens” Reagan told them of, regulations to protect our environment, regulations to protect working people, regulations to protect consumers, etc. To the clueless conservatives, these are the culprits hurting the middle class and causing the growing poverty. To the ignorant righties, the unbridled greed of the fat cats is good for all.



Evidence of the conservatives' typical idiocy will be seen in their responses to this OP and the article below.



The decline of the middle class is causing even more economic damage than we realized





.

out of the last 24 years has not the US and the economy been controlled by democrats for those 16 years? the last 8 being Obama? And yet you seem to not be able to grasp the concept of doing more of the same will result in the same ending. Hillary is more of the same, at least Trump will be something different. But since liberals are alphabet voters it won't matter the damage they have done and will do. Power baby that is all they are after.

 

[SwimExpert]

You, along with most liberals, seem to think the "middle class" is a static group of people who exist in a bubble. and they remain in that group always. This is just plain ignorance and you should try to overcome it.

You see, people are constantly moving in and out of the "middle class" all the time. Poor people start doing better and bump up to "middle class" and upper middle class do better and bump up to wealthy. Some wealthy lose their fortunes and rejoin the middle and some in the middle fall on bad times and drop to the poor. It's constantly fluid and changing.

In many ways, the "middle class" is like a neighborhood. So let's take an old neighborhood in my hometown as an example. Close to where I was raised is Avondale. In the 60s, it was mostly middle class families, blue collar, mostly white. The homes were nice, the streets were clean, it was a pretty typical middle class American neighborhood.

In the mid-60s, white families began to move out to the suburbs and black families began to move in. The average family was lower income and the condition of the houses and streets began to decline. By 1980, it was a crime-infested place you wouldn't dare go at night and didn't like to be in the day. Now, in "bubble world" where everything remains the same, there could have been studies and articles about the drastic decline and damage to the neighborhood and all sorts of things could have been blamed. In reality, it was simply a matter of economics.

Jump ahead to 2000, young white hipsters, Asians and Latinos began buying and remodeling the dilapidated houses and fixing the place up. Now, Avondale is a thriving little hot spot. You see, things don't happen in a bubble, they happen in cycles and waves. The same is true with the middle class. As people become more wealthy and leave the middle class, poor people break in to the middle class. So you look at the middle class and it appears it's not doing as well as it was a decade or two ago, but that may be because many have moved on and upward.

View attachment 91586
Here is a graph that shows the changes we've experienced in the various income levels of families through the years. As you can see, the middle-income families are declining but where are they going? The lower-income families are relatively unchanged, maybe even slightly lower. It's clear, they are becoming part of the upper-income families. So is this a bad thing for the "middle class" or a good thing?

Holy shit. That was a long winded way of saying that the middle class is "declining" because those people are just moving into the "upper class" thus leaving fewer people in the "middle class" range.

Which is, without a doubt, one of the dumbest fucking things ever said. For the love of fucking god, would someone please remove this moron from the fucking ventilator. He's obviously too fucking stupid to breath on his own. No good is coming from the wasted electricity that's being spent on you.

 

[Boss]

You, along with most liberals, seem to think the "middle class" is a static group of people who exist in a bubble. and they remain in that group always. This is just plain ignorance and you should try to overcome it.

You see, people are constantly moving in and out of the "middle class" all the time. Poor people start doing better and bump up to "middle class" and upper middle class do better and bump up to wealthy. Some wealthy lose their fortunes and rejoin the middle and some in the middle fall on bad times and drop to the poor. It's constantly fluid and changing.

In many ways, the "middle class" is like a neighborhood. So let's take an old neighborhood in my hometown as an example. Close to where I was raised is Avondale. In the 60s, it was mostly middle class families, blue collar, mostly white. The homes were nice, the streets were clean, it was a pretty typical middle class American neighborhood.

In the mid-60s, white families began to move out to the suburbs and black families began to move in. The average family was lower income and the condition of the houses and streets began to decline. By 1980, it was a crime-infested place you wouldn't dare go at night and didn't like to be in the day. Now, in "bubble world" where everything remains the same, there could have been studies and articles about the drastic decline and damage to the neighborhood and all sorts of things could have been blamed. In reality, it was simply a matter of economics.

Jump ahead to 2000, young white hipsters, Asians and Latinos began buying and remodeling the dilapidated houses and fixing the place up. Now, Avondale is a thriving little hot spot. You see, things don't happen in a bubble, they happen in cycles and waves. The same is true with the middle class. As people become more wealthy and leave the middle class, poor people break in to the middle class. So you look at the middle class and it appears it's not doing as well as it was a decade or two ago, but that may be because many have moved on and upward.

View attachment 91586
Here is a graph that shows the changes we've experienced in the various income levels of families through the years. As you can see, the middle-income families are declining but where are they going? The lower-income families are relatively unchanged, maybe even slightly lower. It's clear, they are becoming part of the upper-income families. So is this a bad thing for the "middle class" or a good thing?

Holy shit. That was a long winded way of saying that the middle class is "declining" because those people are just moving into the "upper class" thus leaving fewer people in the "middle class" range.

Which is, without a doubt, one of the dumbest fucking things ever said. For the love of fucking god, would someone please remove this moron from the fucking ventilator. He's obviously too fucking stupid to breath on his own. No good is coming from the wasted electricity that's being spent on you.

Holy shit. That was the best Cenk Uygur impersonation I've ever heard on a message board! Too bad you couldn't actually refute my informative post.

Yes, the middle income families are declining. They are becoming part of the upper-income families. The data is from the US Census.

One thing you liberals fail to understand is how people in general want to improve their lifestyles. They want more out of life and they're not content remaining "middle class" so they strive to be more. Some take on second or third jobs, spouses go to work and they may take on a second or third job. What they don't seem to do is sit there feeling sorry for themselves or turning themselves into victims demanding government make things "fair" by confiscating and redistributing wealth of others.

Here is your problem... All of your Marxist rhetoric was designed to work in societies where people are born into a class and never leave. Under rulers and kings of a feudal system, that was the case across much of Europe and Asia where Marxism cut it's teeth in the 19th century. But in America, people are free to attain wealth, they are not confined to a "class" ...we don't have "classes" in America, we're all ONE class... Americans.

 

[rhodescholar]

The article at the link below concerns yet another study proving conservative economic policies designed to serve the exclusive wants of the very rich are destroying the middle class..

Idiot, what makes you thing that conservatives do not support the middle class?