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US Middle-Class Is Going
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Every wondered why the rest of the world envied the US middle-class? There were many reasons once, a long time ago and one of them was their affluence, their wealth, their ability to be able to afford whatever they wanted. But, that was back in the days when there was a team spirit out there in the US. People were working together not against each other. Today, nobody envies or eyes the American middle-class; it’s poverty-stricken and has turned into the poor workers (if they even have a job). Middle America is so yesteryear. Today, it seems as if it’s fashionable to be poor; at least, we’re all doing it.
The fat cats are grabbing the cream at a faster pace than most other countries in the world, but Middle Americans are doing far from well in comparison with other middle-classes around the world today. For the first time in decades, the American middle class is in decline in comparison with other countries.
It’s the first time in forty years that the Canadian middle-class equivalent family has been better off than the American middle class. That can’t be said in less stark terms. The nineteenth century was characterized by the abolition of the ruling classes to the benefit of the middle classes, growth in wealth and better sharing out of what was in the coffers of our nations. Today, the decline of the middle class in the US is on and it will be mirrored by all other nations in the world in years to come. We have returned to feudal England, the ruling few and the poverty-stricken masses.
But it’s now the Canadians that are doing better than the middle class Americans. The mere fact that it’s Canada is even harder as a blow for the middle-class Americans that laugh at the late-night TV-show jokes that use the guys just over the boarder as the butt of their every joke. It’s middle-class Americans that will have the tables turned on them now. The idea that they still have more income than others in the middle classes around the world is now a thing of the past.
How can the US maintain its position of the superlative-laden economy where things are done best? It can’t in a world in which the Chinese have understood that they need to send their kids to school; Highly-skilled people are now just about everywhere and competing with that is impossible. The US has failed to redistribute the wealth of the nation in a fairer way and it’s the top layer that gets to keep more and more. The lower echelons just slumber in growing struggles to keep their heads above the water. Who gets favored by the tax system in the US? Certainly not the middle class.
Median income in Canada was already on a par with US median wages in 2010. Over the past decade countries in Europe such as the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands are slowly closing the gap in median incomes with the US. Once upon a time, it was the US that was way ahead, now the gap is closing fast.
Per Capita gross Domestic Product (PPP) shows that the USA is not doing so badly. It’s the 8th country in the world today in terms of GDP per capita (PPP):
The USA has the wealth, but it’s not being distributed in a fair-deal way. For the middle class to be suffering like this it means that the money is going somewhere else than to the middle class. Americans that are in the middle class are not managing to keep up pace with their counterparts around the world.
• Median income stood at $18,700 in the US in 2010.
• That’s $75,000 for a family of four after tax.
• This means a 20%-increase in comparison with 1980.
• But, it’s not moved at all since 2000 (after adjustments for inflation).
• In the UK there was a 20%-increase between 2000 and 2010.
• Median Income in Canada rose also by 20% over the same period.
Thankfully, the US is a country of gamblers, a place where there will hopefully be a big-game hunt for the idea that will renew the challenge of the economy. In the meantime, it’s the middle-class American that looks as if it is nearing extinction.
Originally posted: US Middle-Class Is Going
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Rubbish. Utter rubbish. I don't know WHY these guys parrot this "Canadian prosperity" line without ever knowing anything about the place.
Canadians are DEBT JUNKIES. 165%+ debt-to-income. And I've never met a people more in love with insurance, believing in 'professionals', more risk-averse (or risk-ignorant?!) or more trusting in government as my fellow Canadians.
The Canadian middle class is disappearing just as fast as is the U.S.one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpYHrbz6V4c#t=11
OUTRAGEOUS Canadian Base Currency Expansion
- Mike Maloney
Proportionately speaking compared to its population size, Canada has been creating three times as much "money" out of nothing as the USA during the ~previous decade, on another exponential growth curve, which means that Canada was, proportionate to actual population sizes, creating even more fiat money than China! No wonder Canada is still in its bubble, that some experts expect may continue for another year, or so, into the future? And, no wonder the social polarizations are getting dramatically worse there too!
My view is that the vicious spiral back to "neofeudalism" is only a phase towards something way worse, rather than a stable situation. Although there are no good reasons to doubt that the middle class are mainstream morons, that act like Zombie Sheeple, because there are no practical political ways to get the majority of people out of the deeper ruts of runaway social polarization, the BACKGROUND, beyond social polarization, is that money made out of nothing as debts became a treadmill based on strip-mining planet Earth. Since that was driven by the triumph of enforced frauds, rather than anything ever rationally agreed upon, there are no good reasons to expect that high-grading ourselves to hell shall mellow out in any rational way, rather than go through an extreme overshoot, due to strip-mining the planet's natural resources at an exponential rate, enabled by attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance.
Canada IS RELATIVELY one of the best off countries in the world, both now and in most possible foreseeable futures, due to the basic ratio of natural resources to population size, as well as its comparatively comfortable postion within the history of the Anglo-American Empire, that dominated most of the rest of the world. However, everything happening regarding globalization and privatization generally in other countries is happening in Canada too, and at a relatively faster rate.
Canada used to be classed as a country with relatively low income inequality. It is now in the middle, and headed towards becoming like the USA, with higher levels of income inequality. Of course, there is an abundance of social science and historical sources that demonstrated that extreme social inequality and social polarization is correlated, and perhaps causes, many other bad things to happen to a civilization.
HOWEVER, there is nothing in previous human history to compare to the Industrial Revolution strip-mining the whole planet of natural resources, which is something that Canada is deeply committed to, especially because of its continuous colonial past, and colonial mind set. Moreover, in my opinion, the one thing that we can probably count on more than anything else is that the middle and lower classes will continue to be incompetent citizens, who will not do anything effective to prevent runaway social polarization and destruction of the natural world.
The vicious spiral towards "neofeudalism" is due to the basic way that governments enforce the banksters' frauds. It would take a series of political miracles for enough people to understand that enough to be motivated to change it. Meanwhile, in the medium term, one can expect that the Canadian middle class bubble will also pop. The political trajectory may well become that, just like Obama ended up being worse than Bush II, Trudeau II may become a Prime Minister that ends up being worse than Harper.
Canada is similar to the USA in having political puppets in blue, and political puppets in red, both performing on the mass media stage set a Punch and Judy like show, with the swings from the Blue Puppets to the Red Puppets not changing anything important, other than everything automatically getting worse, faster. For all practical purposes, Canada is already integrated into the USA, and whatever happens in the USA will likely happen in Canada later, slower, and in a milder way, because the USA is not merely ten times worse, but many thousands of times worse than Canada in the degree to which it plays hardball politics.
I like to day dream of irrational hopes for some series of political miracles in the USA, through an intellectual scientific revolution, which transforms a Second American Revolution and/or Second American Civil War, into something recovering to become better ... I see that as the only dim hope for Canada, to perhaps be able to later follow?
Thank you KS! Other parts of the world have even worst debt additions than the US. What starts and kills first in the US just moves on to kill elsewhere.
"Going" my ass. It's GONE.
Axe me about Nutrisystem!
The productive middle class is gone. The upper middle class now consists of (IMO, from oberservation, with no empirical data) nothing but those on the 'working' end (using the term working very loosely) of the public dole, including but not limited to:
The rest of us pay taxes so the aforementioned worthless meatbags can have their 80%+ pensions and surf porn or molest children at work without getting fired.
Yup.
Going...going...GONE!
The bedrock of American success and wealth was the White middle class. It's being destroyed and among the main reasons are:
Affirmative action
Dumbing down of everything to accommodate 'minorities'
Mass Third World immigration
The demonization of the White male
"The demonization of the White male"
That is funny. Watch any advertisement appearing on The Corporate Video Entertainment Distribution Conveyance and the male always seems like an imbecilic dolt.
Unless its a truck ad that is. Or a beer ad that trucks appear in or a truck ad that beer appears in.....
When the dog fuckers say "white privilege" or "male", they mean "western civilization". This is a movement to destroy the dominant civilization and replace with something "better". Fabian good, I suspect .
FORWARD SOVIET!
The pussification of America.
Low class ain't so bad.
I am poor and i know it.
canada just needs to thank NAFTA, bitchez!!! America has become just a middleman retailer producing shit for itself. Looks just like the final days of Rome now whereby the only carts full of goods leaving rome is roman human extcrement.
The middle class america is a dead man walking. When this FED inspired fallacy runs its course and the party ends with a riot gear clad bang, the next words will be "where is that middle class"? She's a goner, just the formalities of the funeral are left.
You may think you got "nutthin'" but consider this, Spaulding. It costs about $100k or more per year to hire just one experienced ARMED security under the best of situations. Now if the circumstances for security are desperate, dangerous, deadly and the risk to life is high, then it may take pay exceeding $500k or more. In a suicidal situation, no amount of money will get men-for-hire onto the front lines.
So even if you have no real skills as a hired gun, you likely can shoot or learn to shoot and could be a great shot given a few weeks of training. You could become a million dollar threat.
This is all to say that the ULTRA Wealthy are really only powerful in a system that remains intact to serve the status quo. A handful of angry, armed yahoos can easily force the bag-men to fritter their loot away on protection. And that then is how wealth can get equalized.
Without the current system/mindset of societal acquiescence we will have millions of angry, formerly middle class folks, roaming the streets for PAYBACK, knowledgeable about the raw deal they and their kids have been subjected to for nearly 4 decades. And when that happens, what will a security firm charge the inheritance-Barons when they know that the odds for death or injury for them are so very high?
Spaulding, your personal value or even the value of the hobo-sapiens we see on, seemingly, each and every street corner in the USA might be MILLIONS of dollars given the right circumstance. You might even be priceless, depending on whether you have a bit of "hero" in you.
Good point, good point.
Ok Mr. Red Dawn:
Did you ever notice the lingering white trails in the sky in a grid like pattern? Among other things, DARPA and DOD have been perfecting the technique of distributing "material" in the atmosphere. One of their early successes was the "accidental" killing of a giant sheep herd with anthrax. Weaponizing, packaging, distribution, weather analysis, contagion, all modelled and ready for prime time.
Do you think that the rich guys, hiding behind ARMED security, also has the political clout to get the government to simply change the content of the canisters in those jets? It would be easy to ROUND-UP the angry, armed middle class. In short, you don't have a chance.
It was a somewhat comforting fairytale on first read. The middle class is going to have to organize to push back the genuine evil the appears to be "winning".
"We have returned to feudal England, the ruling few and the poverty-stricken masses."
Just like The Game of Thrones....
Now where can I pickup 3 dragons for my blonde wife to raise?
Boca Raton
That is funny, and so true.