Where has the middle class gone?

[workingevolutio]

Is it just me, or is the middle class disappearing. It seems that nowadays we have poor people, really poor people, and really really rich people. I was reading an article the other day that said in 2005 or 2006 a millionaire could still be on the Forbes 400. Now, they're all billionaires, and there isn't room for a millionaire. Not to mention poverty is up, employment is down, and most of the people in this country don't have health insurance. Does anyone else find this incredibly wrong?

 

[indago]

Journalists Robin Toner, and Kate Zernike, writing for the New York Times, wrote about the newly elected Democrats, who, having won the majority of the Congress, will now have to produce, dealing with, among other things, "the loss of manufacturing jobs".

I don't know why they will bother with that particular item: they already have. They knew damned well what they were doing over a decade ago when they supported — and right along with the Republicans — the free trade agreements, and the fast track legislation, that gave the President the power to implement them. It would be hypocritical of them to now, after the fact, decide that something must be done, when something has already been done. How are they going to uncreate something that they have created? I am reminded of the scene in the movie "Cold Mountain". Ruby, played by Renee Zellweger, disgusted with the war, lamented: "Every piece of this is a man's bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land, but they made the weather. Then they stand in the rain and say: shit! It's raining!"

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Ignoring all the other pap, provide evidence that employment is down. Perhaps a chart to show us unemployment during the last 7 years.

Ohh and a reminder, 6 percent and less unemployment is considered FULL employment.

 

[indago]

I can't post links here...

 

[RetiredGySgt]

You can in 10 posts.

 

[Shogun]

indeed, employment rates probably say all kinds of things about the shrinking middle class, eh duder?

You are not purposefully ignoring a variable here, are you?

 

[indago]

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-12, Measure U-6. Unemployment Rate September: 8.4%

Journalist Geraldine Fabrikant reported for the New York Times 13 February 2007:

MTV Laying Off 5.5% of Staff

Journalist Claudia Deutsh reported for the New York Times 9 February 2007:

Kodak Cuts Another 3,000 Jobs ... on top of the 25,000 to 27,000 it had already said would be gone by the end of 2007.

Journalist Ian Austen reported for the New York Times 8 February 2007:

Nortel to Cut Another 3,900 Jobs ...About 1,000 of those positions will be shifted to lower-cost operations in Mexico, China and India.

Journalist Andrew Pollack reported for the New York Times 23 January 2007:

Pfizer said yesterday that it would cut 7,800 workers, ... The new layoffs are in addition to 2,200 that Pfizer announced last month, when it cut its American sales force by 20 percent.

It just goes on, and on, and...

 

[indago]

Journalist Steven R. Weisman reported for the New York Times 14 February 2007:

The United States ran a record trade deficit in 2006 for the fifth consecutive year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday in an announcement that quickly reignited the dispute between the Bush administration and Democrats over the value of past and future deals lowering trade barriers. The bureau said that the trade deficit, or gap between what the United States sells abroad and what it imports, reached a new high of $763.3 billion last year, a 6.5 percent increase over the year before. The deficit was fueled by the continuing American need for foreign oil and imports of consumer goods from China and other countries.

Journalist Peter Jackson reported for the Associated Press 15 February 2007:

Hershey plans to cut work force by 1,500 -- ...moving a bigger chunk of its production to Mexico.

Bloomberg News reported 15 February 2007:

Masco will have cut 8,000 jobs by the end of the first quarter, including 1,000 salaried positions, the chief executive, Richard A. Manoogian, said in a conference call.

Reuters reported 14 February 2007:

Coca-Cola Enterprises, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola, said yesterday that it planned to cut about 3,500 jobs

Journalist Micheline Maynard reported for the New York Times 14 February 2007:

Chrysler to Announce Job Cuts, Plant Closings -- ...The plan is expected to include the elimination of about 11,000 blue- and white-collar jobs along with the closing of one and possibly two assembly plants

It just goes on, and on, and...

 

[indago]

OhioRebel posted on ePluribus Media™ 10 December 2006:

The season's greeting that 700 workers in Ohio received Friday is that their jobs will be gone by this time next year. Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. said it plans to close two plants in western Ohio and move the jobs to operations in Mexico or outsource the manufacturing to third-party suppliers, the Associated Press reported.

Journalist Matthew J. Malone reported for the New York Times 6 December 2006:

The submarine builder Electric Boat, a division of General Dynamics, plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs next year, the company announced yesterday.

Journalist Charlie LeDuff reported for the New York Times 30 October 2006:

You may have seen Don Rackley before. You see people like him every election cycle. The human prop, he calls himself. He says it with a ring of bitterness.

He is the sort of man you see on television sitting at the counter of a diner in a down-and-out steel town, or a struggling textile town, some American place teetering on despair. The candidates come for the morning, roll up their sleeves, promise changes. The cameras snap the pictures. Then everybody leaves.

In February 2004, John Edwards, the senator from North Carolina and a White House hopeful, was that candidate in this part of the country, a place of chicken pens and cotton fields in the triangle of Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga. The region was once humming with factory jobs paying $15 an hour to start, with benefits and vacation. ...the Carrier Corporation, an industrial air-conditioning manufacturer and the financial anchor of Warren County, had just announced it was shutting its profitable plant and shipping many of the 1,300 jobs to Mexico, the latest in a string of closings in the area.

Bloomberg News reported 4 October 2006:

The Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s largest appliance maker, said yesterday that it would dismiss about 1,200 workers in Arkansas and Indiana and shift some of its production to a lower-wage factory in Mexico.

It just goes on, and on, and...

 

[indago]

Journalist Alex Berenson reported for the New York Times 29 November 2005:

Merck & Company, the third-largest American drug maker, plans to close five manufacturing plants by 2008 and lay off 7,000 employees

The Associated Press reported 5 October 2005:

The Georgia-Pacific Corporation, maker of Brawny paper towels and a variety of other paper and lumber products, said Tuesday it was cutting more than 1,000 jobs in a broad revamping intended to save $100 million a year.

The Associated Press reported 21 September 2005:

Federated Department Stores said on Tuesday that it was planning to eliminate up to 6,200 jobs beginning in 2006 and would drop the landmark Marshall Field's name next fall from 62 stores it acquired this year as part of its takeover of the May Department Stores Company.

Journalist Jennifer Bayot reported for the New York Times 16 September 2005:

Newell Rubbermaid, whose products include Calphalon cookware and Rubbermaid containers, said yesterday that it would cut 5,000 jobs and close a third of its 80 manufacturing plants by 2009 to focus on its most profitable and promising items.

Journalist Eric O'Keefe reported for the New York Times 23 July 2005:

Kimberly-Clark said on Friday that it would cut 6,000 jobs and close or sell 20 manufacturing plants by the end of 2008 as part of a broad-based strategy to reduce costs.

It just goes on, and on, and...

 

[indago]

Journalist Paul Blustein reported for the Associated Press 4 July 2004:

Report Urges U.S. Firms to Outsource Jobs -- A report by an influential consulting firm is exhorting U.S. companies to speed up "offshoring" operations to China and India, including high-powered functions such as research and development.

On the date 27 September 1992, 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley reported on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a taxpayer funded agency that promoted the movement of manufacturing in this country to foreign lands -- El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, China, and etc. This agency actively advertised to the American companies that they could get low interest loans to close down their American manufacturing interests and establish manufacturing overseas, and at labor costs of 57 cents per hour.

Journalist Elisabeth Malkin reported for the New York Times 13 November 2006:

The Perot Systems Corporation, which manages information technology for companies, is setting up a technology center in Guadalajara where it expects to employ 270 engineers by the middle of next year. ...a company spokesman, Joe McNamara, said that lower pay for engineers was only one of several reasons Perot Systems decided to set up in Mexico.

Journalist Julie Creswell reported for the New York Times 27 October 2006:

Law Firms Are Starting to Adopt Outsourcing -- ...While certain law firms hired companies to handle travel or records storage, most drew the line at sending client billing or confidential documents out of their offices, let alone out of the country. A number of large law firms, though, are starting to tiptoe onto far-flung shores. The latest is Clifford Chance, one of the largest law firms in the world with 29 offices in 20 countries, which will announce plans today to consolidate and move big chunks of its administrative functions like accounting and technological support to an operation in Delhi, India, by next spring. ...While corporate America has embraced sending clerical, customer and technical support functions overseas, law firms have been much more reluctant to do so. Their chief concern is that confidential client documents or information could be leaked, stolen or simply lost.

Journalist Lynnley Browning reported for the New York Times 15 February 2004:

IT is one of the best-kept secrets among tax preparers: a growing number of accountants across the nation are using workers in India to prepare tax returns for clients in the United States. This year, at least 100,000 returns, both federal and state, will be prepared by Indian citizens in places like Bombay and Bangalore, according to L. Gary Boomer, the chief executive of Boomer Consulting, a technology consulting company based in Manhattan, Kan., that has 250 accounting firms as clients. That number of returns is four times larger than last year, and many more times the several thousand just two years ago, said Mr. Boomer, who is also a certified public accountant.

Bloomberg News reported 14 September 2006:

Foreclosures on prime adjustable-rate mortgages rose to a four-year high in the second quarter, a sign that more homeowners with good credit ratings are having trouble paying their bills. The share of the loans entering foreclosure, which occurs when a lender tries to seize property, climbed to 0.27 percent at the end of June, from 0.21 percent three months earlier, according to a report yesterday by the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Yet you can not provide a simple unemployment figure? I wonder why?

 

[ReillyT]

Yet you can not provide a simple unemployment figure? I wonder why?

indeed, employment rates probably say all kinds of things about the shrinking middle class, eh duder?

You are not purposefully ignoring a variable here, are you?

You probably have to address Shogun's statement if you want to make any traction with your unemployment argument.

 

[indago]

Hedrick Smith, reporting in a FRONTLINE program, noted: " When trade agreements were signed between the U.S. and China in the 1990s, bringing China into the World Trade Organization, American political and business leaders embraced the idea. China's 1.2 billion people were viewed as an enormous untapped market for American-made goods. The reality, experts say, is the opposite. China's exports to the U.S. have skyrocketed."

In the report, it was also noted: "Yvonne Smith, the communications director at the Port of Long Beach, literally sees the imbalance in U.S.-China trade. She reports that through Long Beach alone, the U.S. is importing $36 billion in goods yearly from China and exporting just $3 billion. By her account, the mix of products is very unfavorable to the U.S.

"We export cotton, we import clothing," Smith reports. "We export hides, we bring in shoes. We export scrap metal. We bring back machinery. We're exporting waste paper, we bring back cardboard boxes with products inside them."

Overall, the U.S. trade deficit with China reached a record $124 billion dollars in 2003 and the figure is headed even higher this year. Today, U.S. imports from China outpace U.S. exports to China by more than five to one, and the deficit shows no signs of abating."

William Greider, a political journalist writing for The Nation, wrote: "For decades, globalization advocates insisted, for example, that the solution to America's trade deficits was more "free trade." Each new trade agreement has been heralded as a market-opening breakthrough that would boost US exports and thus move toward balanced trade. That is not what happened -- not after NAFTA (1993) and the WTO (1994), nor after China normalization (2000). In each case, the trade deficits grew dramatically. (Yes, it's true that since the early 1970s US export volume has grown by more than five times, but import volume has grown by eight times.) Economists have also claimed that ending deficit spending by the federal government would eliminate the trade gap. Yet when the federal government's budget did finally come into balance in 1999, the trade deficits were exploding. This discredited explanation is nonetheless being recycled, now that huge federal deficits have been spectacularly revived by the Bush Administration."

Chantell Taylor, writing for the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, wrote: "Throughout his presidency, President Clinton has given lip service to labor organizations at home while surreptitiously selling out American workers in trade negotiations abroad. In his 1999 State of the Union address, President Clinton told America that: "we ought to tear down barriers, open markets, and expand trade. But at the same time, we must ensure that ordinary citizens in all countries actually benefit from trade - a trade that promotes the dignity of work, the rights of workers, and protects the environment." Yet the President has aggressively continued to push the status quo free trade agenda, chartering new accords that replicate the existing failed model and refusing to change one iota of substantive obligations that protect labor at home and abroad." It was also noted: "President Clinton sold the NAFTA to skeptical American workers by promising to condition his support on the signing of a labor side agreement, then betrayed labor when he ultimately caved in to the dissent of Mexico by deleting from the NAALC "provisions that provided the possibility of trade sanctions and monetary penalties for a persistent failure of a party to the NAALC to enforce its own labor laws . . . ." The deletion essentially removed all teeth that the NAALC may have had to enforce workers' right to collective bargaining and freedom of association".

Noam Chomsky wrote, in an article on NAFTA: "When the bulk of the American (and Mexican) people remained opposed to NAFTA, Clinton bought Congressional votes with pork barrel concessions and promises of trade relief. Thus Rep. Johnson (D-Tex) traded her vote for $ 1.7 Billion in additional govt aircraft production and Rep. Pickle got a trade center built in his district. Critical votes of the Florida delegations were changed by promising protection for citrus and vegetable growers. Protection for Florida and Midwest beet sugar growers was also included in the implementing language in exchange for more votes. Almost 20 of these deals that swung votes in the critical House vote are discussed in ref 3. Some of the promises were kept, but many, like the agreement to protect Florida's tomato growers and U.S. broom corn growers were not."

President Clinton did a lot of arm-twisting in the Congress to get the NAFTA passed, and now we are living with the results.

 

[midcan5]

Kinda hard to come up with exact figures as location matters. A New York city worker makes a great deal more than most rural areas. What seems to be happening is the middle class is pretty stagnant except near the top. There is no question under republican governance the rich get richer and the poor work harder for less. That has always been the case trickle down is really grab the money and run. Under Bush these stats can only be worse.


"Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459."

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/midclass/midclsan.html

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/faq.html

5. What is the latest median household income in the US by race and Hispanic origin?

The Census Bureau released income based on the CPS for calendar year 2001 on September 24, 2002. Median household income for all households is $42,228; for White non-Hispanic households $46,305; for Black households $29,470; and for Hispanic households $33,565. These data are also available for families and people. For more information on this and other income subjects, access our main income page at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html; our section on detailed income tabulations at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/dinctabs.html; or our historical income tables at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/histinctb.html.

6. What is the income of the "middle class"?

The Census Bureau does not have an official definition of "middle class." We do, however, derive several measures related to the distribution of income and income inequality. You may access more information on income inequality (middle class) at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/midclass/midclsan.html or general income distributions through our detailed income tabulations at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/dinctabs.html.

 

[indago]

In his State of the Union Message, 28 January 2003, President Bush said: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations." So, who does he think is going to pay for all this? We all know that our posterity will be bearing the brunt of the costs. It will bear upon our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children, and...

The W. R. Grace Company had aired a rather bleak outlook advertisement depicting the outcome. The scene was an abandoned factory with some bleachers set up inside. Some small children were huddled together; raggedy clothes, old worn out blankets, dirty, bleak faces. Up front was a table set up with a teen-age judge. The prosecutor was a teen-ager also. He was asking the defendant, who was an old man, the question: "And when you saw what was happening, what did you do?" The old man looked out at the children, then hung his head and said: "Nothing".

On the television program Adam Smith, aired 8 October 1992, Adam Smith proposed a scenario for the year 1995: "It's 1995 in America and something terrible has happened. You've lost your job. Your company has closed. They've canceled your credit cards and your bank has failed. And the money in your pocket is practically worthless. Why? Because we, the American people, allowed the national debt to go on rising and now it's out of control. ...The coming debt crisis is the one issue that politicians would rather not talk about. Collectively, they produced this terrible mess."

Interviewing two young people who have formed a coalition to prevent further damage to the economic future of the young people, one of the individuals, Rob Nelson, noted: "We're at the beginning of what could become a generational war. Our generation, those that follow us are being denied the opportunity to dream big. We're being denied the resources to invest in our future. We're being left a legacy of debt, and that is a scandal."

John Cowan, another member of the coalition, noted, concerning the present generation: "What they have done is mortgage their children's future and that's nothing less than fiscal child abuse. Four trillion dollars of debt could be $8 trillion of debt in the next 10 years. They've mortgaged our future and it's going to have to stop."

Has anything changed??? NO! Life goes on…

Only now, the "fiscal child abuse" is worse. The young people have their elders to thank for the mess that has been created, a shameful legacy to pass on to our posterity.

 

[Psychoblues]

Exactly.

 

[indago]

Back in 1992, my Congressman, William D. Ford, Democrat, Michigan, sent out a flier to his interested constituents about the pending free trade agreements in the Congress, requesting our views on the legislation. I wrote back: "It is well known in this country that the United States has a well advanced economic system and society; advanced beyond the economies of some of the other countries with which we trade. Our working people are protected in the workplace by legislation which requires a safe workplace environment. Our manufacturers are required to clean discharges into the environment to limit pollution. Many working people have contracted with employers a retirement program, and health insurance. Compensations for labor have advanced commensurate with the liberties and freedoms of the Americans, allowing Americans to have a more autonomous lifestyle. The United States is being invaded by goods from foreign countries that have provided a haven to our manufacturers who wish to avoid the costs of a clean environment, and a free people. Some of these countries have manufacturers of their own who avoid these responsibilities. The Americans cannot compete on this type of "free trade" basis. To compete, the Americans would have to regress back fifty to one hundred years, a move hardly acceptable by the American people.

According to the Constitution of the United States, the United States Congress was granted the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". The Congress was also granted the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations". With these powers, the Congress, and their staff, have the capacity to determine, for instance, an equivalent automobile, comparing one from a foreign manufacturer to one of our own, and, considering the price differential between the two, lay a tax upon the imported good to balance it with our own. In this way the money could be used to "pay the Debts and provide for the ...general Welfare" of all of the States of the United States, rather than harassing the States' inhabitants with unconstitutional direct taxes, and the accompanying grief."

I mentioned also the writings of Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson. Adam Smith, a British economist who has been quoted by American legislators and statesmen, and Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, wrote, in his book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, "If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether...". He noted that "two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation." Mr. Smith had studied under Professor Francis Hutcheson, who had written, in his book System of Moral Philosophy, in the chapter Of the Nature of Civil Laws and their Execution: "Foreign materials should be imported and even premiums given, when necessary, that all our own hands may be employed; and that, by exporting them again manufactured, we may obtain from abroad the price of our labours. Foreign manufactures and products ready for consumption should be made dear to the consumer by high duties, if we cannot altogether prohibit the consumption;..."

What Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson are saying is: If you do A, then B will happen.

A — Eliminate duties and tariffs on goods imported into this country from the lesser developed countries.

B — Manufactures will increase in the lesser developed countries, and will decrease in this country; some manufactures here will close down; they will move their businesses to the lesser developed countries; workers in this country will lose their jobs; the economy in this country will shrink.

Well, the Congress did A, and B happened. They well knew what would happen and they did it anyway.

Congressman Ford voted against the free trade and fast track legislation, but too many of his fellow Democrats voted in favor of the legislation, as did the many Republicans. The changes didn't happen overnight, but they did happen, and will continue to happen; and now we are reaping the harvest of this shame. Good, solid tax bases have left the country, and States are struggling with their fiscal responsibilities, and passing the burden onto the inhabitants of the States by raising taxes: BLAMING THE VICTIM

 

[Working Man]

You spend too much time on this board if you have to ask.

Pick up Lou Dobbs book, War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back (Hardcover)




Most people on this boad don't believe that anything is wrong with the US economy. Maybe I am wrong, so then it must be the people who call themselves "citizens" that are at fault for allowing themselves to be bent over and poked.

Is it just me, or is the middle class disappearing. It seems that nowadays we have poor people, really poor people, and really really rich people. I was reading an article the other day that said in 2005 or 2006 a millionaire could still be on the Forbes 400. Now, they're all billionaires, and there isn't room for a millionaire. Not to mention poverty is up, employment is down, and most of the people in this country don't have health insurance. Does anyone else find this incredibly wrong?

 

[indago]

RetiredGySgt wrote:

Yet you can not provide a simple unemployment figure? I wonder why?

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