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After The Fed Crushed The Middle Class, It Is Targeting The American Family

Tyler Durden's picture




 

On a number of occasions this month we’ve drawn attention to the divergent fates of the 80% of American workers whose wages are declining and whose general outlook is concomitantly deteriorating, and the other 20%, whose pay is increasing and who generally feel good about their economic future. We also pointed out that with the correlation between wages and consumer spending now nearly perfect at 0.93, depressed wage growth may indeed drag on US economic output going forward. Given this, we weren’t surprised to learn that the biggest threat to traditional American society is in fact class (i.e. income inequality). This is vividly illustrated in a new work by Robert Putnam (of “Bowling Alone” fame). One key observation: race matters far less than it did in decades past and class matters far more. 

From The Economist

Among the educated elite the traditional family is thriving: fewer than 10% of births to female college graduates are outside marriage—a figure that is barely higher than it was in 1970. In 2007 among women with just a high-school education, by contrast, 65% of births were non-marital. Race makes a difference: only 2% of births to white college graduates are out-of-wedlock, compared with 80% among African-Americans with no more than a high-school education, but neither of these figures has changed much since the 1970s. However, the non-marital birth proportion among high-school-educated whites has quadrupled, to 50%, and the same figure for college-educated blacks has fallen by a third, to 25%. Thus the class divide is growing even as the racial gap is shrinking.

As it turns out, having a vast network of Ivy League educated lawyers, doctors, and financiers is extraordinarily helpful in a bind...

At every stage, educated families help their kids in ways that less educated ones do not or cannot. Whereas working-class families have friends who tend to know each other (because they live in the same neighbourhood), professional families have much wider circles. If a problem needs solving or a door needs opening, there is often a friend of a friend (a lawyer, a psychiatrist, an executive) who knows how to do it or whom to ask.

… and when your parents are alums and probably endowment donors, it boosts your chances of getting into college even when, by virtue of extreme intellectual laziness occasioned by a misbegotten sense of entitlement or simply because you’re not very bright, you cannot pass the eighth grade…

Stunningly, Mr Putnam finds that family background is a better predictor of whether or not a child will graduate from university than 8th-grade test scores. Kids in the richest quarter with low test scores are as likely to make it through college as kids in the poorest quarter with high scores (see chart).

Here’s Putnam summing it all up for MarketWatch

“The most important thing about the experience of being young and poor in America is that these kids are really isolated, and really don’t have close ties with anybody,” Putnam told MarketWatch. “They are completely clueless about the kinds of skills and savvy and connections needed to get ahead.”

*  *  *

The real slap in the face though, has to be the fact that while America's poor are imprisoned for petty drug offenses, the bread winners of the country's elite families can perpetrate multibillion dollar financial crimes and, thanks to the networking opportunities that come with belonging to the 1%, be virtually assured that no real punishment with ever be meted out even if said crimes inadvertently collapse the entire global financial system. As we put it in December, "the government is smart enough to realize that it is more lucrative to 'cooperate' with the world's biggest criminal syndicates than to wipe them out and cut off a major source of funding [and] when one is a criminal syndicate, the largest in world history, paying litigation kickbacks in the hundreds of billions to the government is just the cost of "doing business."

Of course this is perhaps all part and parcel of the Fed's implicit attempt to exacerbate inequality in America by equating the "wealth" part of the term "wealth effect" with financial assets. The result of this, despite Janet Yellen's best efforts at explaining to low income Americans that it's a good idea to have assets, is a growing divide between the rich and the poor and this divide is not only getting wider thanks to the central bank's efforts to inflate the value of the very types of assets that the poor are unlikely to own, but is in fact now destroying the American family. 

 

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Mon, 03/23/2015 - 08:54 | 5917513 hootowl
hootowl's picture

Asians are lumped in as lily-whites in government statistics.

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:50 | 5946358 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Fed + gov = cash & prizes for doing so.

There's racist targeting to keep blacks dependent so they can never be strong and independent. This move is deliberate.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 18:50 | 5916424 Otto Zitte
Otto Zitte's picture

Late to the party, Hanz?

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 19:07 | 5916461 Questan1913
Questan1913's picture

Oh, brother. 

The family was targeted decades ago.  The West has had its little unborn holocaust.  Notice the lack of kids?  Kind of eerie to someone my age.  How many are missing? since 1973?  At least 40 million and still counting, along with all the MIW;s offspring . That has to bring the total to over 100 million. (allow me to err on the conservative side).  Why is that important?  Well , revolution is just not possible if there are few to none young people; a corrupt order is not going to be overthrown by the middle aged and elderly.  They will lead it. intellectually....but not without many young warriors. 

 

Certainly many will reject this line of thinking.  I understand. 

Decades of programming will not allow this heresy to take root in the hive-mind. 

 

The West defends its right to commit self genocide with passionate fervor yet is not passionate on almost any other issue, just these strange newly discovered "rights" that humanity overlooked somehow since the beginning of itself.  Strange that. 

 

 

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:48 | 5946350 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Overabundance of kids, no lack to speak of.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 19:09 | 5916464 Rabbi Blitzstein
Rabbi Blitzstein's picture

Heh heh heh. Goyim thank Rabbi for this. Real headline correctly translated reads – “After Jewdom Crushed Foundations Of White Christian Western Culture, It Is Targeting The White Christian Male.” Kosher organized collaboration to continue import low IQ (68) and extremely violent non-whites (mostly negros) to finish the goal. White males have no money left over to build White families. Why? Kosher dominated levers of power make you goyim hand over money (taxes) to fund our proxies. Oy Vey!!

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 19:55 | 5916559 yrbmegr
yrbmegr's picture

This was all fine up until the cognitive quantum-leap from poverty to the Fed.  There is no data to support this leap, so I don't believe the assertion that the Fed is to blame for all our troubles.  I would humbly suggest the unequal taxation of earnings from capital and earnings from labor bears a large portion of the blame for depressing workers' salaries.  Because the tax system, on average, taxes earnings from capital less than earnings from labor (by my calculations about 3 percentage points), every incremental dollar has strong incentive to seek capital assets rather than hire labor.  So we have all kinds of paper being made and traded with little actual economic value, because the tax system makes it profitable.  If we could, without increasing money extracted from the economy, level the taxation of earnings from capital and earnings from labor, lots of incremental money currently chasing silly bits of paper would flow toward hiring labor to do useful things.  I suggest we just remove the distinction from the tax system and treat earnings from capital like regular income.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 20:27 | 5916638 Chipped ham
Chipped ham's picture

The Fed has been increasing inflation since 1971. Wages cannot and haven't kept up with inflation for most people. Therefore wealthier people have more time to devote toward prosperous things than less wealthy people. Over a long enough time, the gap widens significantly between haves and have nots. We are there.

It is the Fed. Period.

Btw, the tax and other policies you mentioned are in place to keep the Feds Ponzi scheme going.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 21:27 | 5916807 yrbmegr
yrbmegr's picture

So you agree that if we removed the tax advantage, the Fed would be unable to continue propagating this Ponzi scheme.  Let us proceed, then.

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:47 | 5946344 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Must also remove the legal power to issue currency as a monopoly.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 20:02 | 5916581 papaswamp
papaswamp's picture

Nonono.... The Fed isnt targeting the middle class per se... It is targeting one race for success and the rest...not so much.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great...

Notice the Fed and corprate QE effect:
"Also, financial assets, such as stocks, have recovered in value more quickly than housing since the recession ended. White households are much more likely than minority households to own stocks directly or indirectly through retirement accounts. Thus, they were in better position to benefit from the recovery in financial markets."

Now notice the MBS and forced low interest rate effect:
"All American households since the recovery have started to reduce their ownership of key assets, such as homes, stocks and business equity. But the decrease in asset ownership tended to be proportionally greater among minority households. For example, the homeownership rate for non-Hispanic white households fell from 75.3% in 2010 to 73.9% in 2013, a percentage drop of 2%. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate among minority households decreased from 50.6% in 2010 to 47.4% in 2013, a slippage of 6.5%."

Yep...its racist...

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:12 | 5916921 Monetas
Monetas's picture

Double fuck your racist bilge .... see my comment below !

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 07:42 | 5917503 hootowl
hootowl's picture

Do you count in your specious statistics illegal aliens who don't report their earnings and members of the Black Scourge that spurn educational opportunities in favor of thugging, drugging, and mugging?

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 20:03 | 5916582 papaswamp
papaswamp's picture

...ooo double post

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 21:32 | 5916817 El Hosel
El Hosel's picture

Looks like its us against them and us are not interested in fighting bag.... Pathetic.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 21:55 | 5916876 rejected
rejected's picture

Another race article... joy.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:07 | 5916909 Monetas
Monetas's picture

A family on welfare .... has the equivalent of a trust fund .... valued in the millions .... with no risk .... no sweat .... no stress .... when negative interest rates arrive .... it will be hard to calculate .... the value of each welfare family trust ! So don't give me that shit .... that poor people don't own stock in America !

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 07:38 | 5917497 hootowl
hootowl's picture

The biggest risk the welfare state faces is the ruination and bankruptcy and general destruction of the producer class which is the source of the energy (funds) and services upon which the parasitical welfarians feed.  That includes political and corporate welfarians.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:01 | 5916890 Monetas
Monetas's picture

Churchill warned that an Iron Curtain .... was descending accross Europe .... now, we have an Iron Iron Ironing People .... into one flat, uniform, grey existence .... that's all the Socialists .... want to do .... spread misery and mediocrity !

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:14 | 5916929 TheObsoleteMan
TheObsoleteMan's picture

This is supposed to be something new? This has long been a plan for the destruction of western nations: Defile the culture. Through feminism and "Affirmative Action", sow the seeds of disunity between a man and his woman by use of competition between them. Promote homosexuality as just another lifestyle, no better and no worse than the traditional heterosexual family. Introduce "swinging" as an exciting and liberating experience for married couples.  By these means, the family is weaken and destroyed. To quote Josef Stalin: "Destroy the family, you destroy the nation". Every despot since days of old has known this time and again proven tactic. it is how government can come in and fill a vacuum, and become "Big Daddy".

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:38 | 5916989 Monetas
Monetas's picture

Excellent comment .... this is why primitive Islamic cultures .... are invading the soft underbellies of the West .... they have a violent quasi-religion .... and strong, albeit harsh, family values .... and they are invading at will .... financed by our own government .... and the Islamic despots that encourage them !

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:43 | 5946326 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Are you daft? Homosexuality happens even with other mammals, plenty of them. It's not a choice so it's not a lifestyle but you can't force someone who is not to be just for your entertainment. It has no effect whatsoever on your life or mine so why care?

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:36 | 5916985 Bumbu Sauce
Bumbu Sauce's picture

Hey, this is what they have been willingly and freely voting for.

Let them have it.  It is time for the stupid people to learn the only way they are able to...by experiencing real motherfucking pain.

Bring it on.

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:41 | 5916999 Monetas
Monetas's picture

Love your posts, too .... Bumbu .... Sauce ?

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 22:55 | 5917038 robnume
robnume's picture

OMG!!

Sun, 03/22/2015 - 23:31 | 5917113 WillyGroper
Sun, 03/22/2015 - 23:47 | 5917135 DipshitMiddleCl...
DipshitMiddleClassWhiteKid's picture

this is true

 

if you're lower or middle class and your dad isnt in corp america, even if you go to college you arent getting a job

 

so..if you're a polish/irish/sicilean kid you'd be better off getting a roofing job than trying to pass freshmen algebra

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 00:10 | 5917177 Ginsengbull
Ginsengbull's picture

The Polocks and Sicilians are okay, but we don't want no Irish.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 00:37 | 5917215 DipshitMiddleCl...
DipshitMiddleClassWhiteKid's picture

the irish and scottish are more or less the working class anglo saxons

 

but the elite whites from the UK dont like them.

 

 

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 07:39 | 5917500 Ginsengbull
Ginsengbull's picture

Would an elitist from UK say "We dont want no..."?

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 00:12 | 5917179 Promethean
Promethean's picture

Via the YKW led Franfurt School of Cukltural Marxism (Google it and see for yourself) the white, American, middle class family has been under attack for the last 30 or so years.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 08:50 | 5917487 hootowl
hootowl's picture

That should be for the past 130 years, beginning with the mass immigration of the progressive proponents of the Frankfort School of Marxism in the 1880s and 1890s.  By the 1920s the progressives had already brought us the FED (the unlimited source of progressive power)  and the income tax and WWI and were seated on SCOTUS, bought-up the publishing and news companies, and infested many federal judgeships and federal political offices and controlled the bureaucracies.

We have been a doomed nation since that infestation occurred.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 00:15 | 5917185 enloe creek
enloe creek's picture

Listen the fuckin problem is people like to fuck and chicks go for it a lot more.  So dudes get a chick knocked up and they have child support if they work but to avoid that they finds some knocked up chick that they can mooch off of see. So you got knocked up chicks with they babies daddy not paying child support and some other babies daddy living with them.  Great system huh. 

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 07:24 | 5917479 hootowl
hootowl's picture

Vaginaectomies, ovarial extraction, and castrations of the Black Scourge at birth would solve much of the welfare, economic decline and social savagery problems we have in the U.S.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 00:31 | 5917203 devo
devo's picture

No worries. MyRa bonds will get them over the top.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 01:51 | 5917289 Magooo
Magooo's picture

And the middle class would be starving and dying if the Fed was not printing trillions of dollars to prop up this dead motherfucker of a horse

 

THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)

The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 07:20 | 5917474 hootowl
hootowl's picture

Er....uh....Do you suppose fiat money and fractional reserve banking issued and controlled by stateless psychopaths just might have something to do with the unraveling?

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 02:35 | 5917311 dogismycopilot
dogismycopilot's picture

The family unit is a very poweful entity.

The problem is that money challenges can tear it apart very easily in this day and age.

You want to fight the system? Stay married and raise your kids come hell or high water.

 

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 03:25 | 5917340 eddiebe
eddiebe's picture

Yes, we know. The problem remains: What are 'we the people' going to do about it?

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 06:27 | 5917408 eddiebe
eddiebe's picture

What's with the bible-thumping on this site??

The bible, especially the old testament is a race history of the Jews. That is it. It has no more meaning or validity than any other history of any other peoples who lived around the globe somewhere. The new testament was written 60 to 80 years after the death of the person now referred to as Jesus;a who knows how much of it is actually factual? And really why should it matter now? 

People would be a lot better off to think for themselves and live according to the golden rule of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' Yes I know these words were supposedly uttered by Jesus, but they are really a universal admonition.

Filling our heads with fables and ancient history is of little value, except maybe for those of us who are not willing or able to face facts.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 09:25 | 5917749 Toolshed
Toolshed's picture

Face it, there is no escape from the "true belivers". Hard times brings the " faithful" out of the woodwork in droves. Even though the Bible has been re-written many, many times, (and we all know what happens when humans with an agenda re-write things), there is an abundance of weak minded and weak willed humans who regard the Bible as the absolute word of God. It would be laughable were it not so sad. The human species needs to go exticnt and allow another life form to evolve to the top of the pile. The planet Earth will not mourn our passing I can assure you. Nor will anyone else, for that matter. Humans suck.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 10:19 | 5917890 Grinder74
Grinder74's picture

Why pick only on the Bible?  There are hundreds of other "holy scriptures" that are just as fantastical if not worse.

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:28 | 5946253 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Seems like ZH still has a huge number of duped Conservi-tard Religious Right nutbars here.

Too bad, that's like the one real stain on the site besides the super-tards that pretend there is no global warming, as if thermometers all magically work different ONLY in America, the ONlY place on Earth in denial of global warming

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 08:20 | 5917582 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

The emphasis on connections in the article highlights that we are less a meritocracy and more a caste system than ever before.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 08:32 | 5917604 MickV
MickV's picture

What do you think "gay marriage". Women's right to vote, feminism, and 18 year old's right to vote are all about?

Cloward Piven against the family unit.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 10:18 | 5917887 Grinder74
Grinder74's picture

I've never understood why someone can be allowed to vote for an office they themselves can't hold.  If the minimum age to be a Representative is 25, then why can under-25 vote for it? 

 

Besides, isn't it 25 or 26 that people's brains are fully mature?  Why would anyone want an immature brain electing government?

 

#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmm

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:27 | 5946244 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Why can they be drafted by law to be kidnapped into the army and die or murder based on lies, or prison for refusing?

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 10:16 | 5917879 Grinder74
Grinder74's picture

"Hebrews 10:26-29New International Version (NIV) 26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left"

Shhh. Don't tell teh gheys about that verse. It might be "intolerant".

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 10:19 | 5917880 Imagery
Imagery's picture

I WAS a true beliver....until last week.  Truthfully, my CHURCH turned on me in a case against CitiCards where the TBTF WS Bank has clearly engaged in illegal activity related to Permanent Credit issuances that they gave in writing and never reflected on my balance, then charged hundreds of dollars in usury interest and fees on the same Permanent Credit - among another similar issues.

The Church said i was being unreasonable, involved my closest Church friends who apparently can not think for themselves, and came after me iwth God's Fury.  Their argument was nothing more than cover for TBTF WS Banks, why i know not.  

BUT, i do know, nowhere in God's Bible is EXPEDIENCY encouraged at the expense of MORALITY and JUSTICE.  Further, I would argue that carried to the logical extreme, a society encouraged by a Church to engage in EXPEDIENCY at the expense of JUSTICE and MORALITY is a society which is in full on decay and full of actors who would use that IGNORANCE against you to their benefit at your expense.

Welcome to 'Murica and US Organized Religion.  I was ALL-IN.....I'm now ALL-OUT.  It is a CULT taht will harm you financially and worse. 

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 10:53 | 5917967 Rikky
Rikky's picture

Wow look at that one of the key institutions God put in place for humanity to thrive (the family) has a lot to do with being prosperous.  Better not let the progressive, liberal wankers a sniff of this they're heads are likely to explode.

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 21:11 | 5920247 just thinking
just thinking's picture

Canada is now home to its first publicly-traded recreational marijuana company, despite the fact that pot for non-medical use is illegal in this country.

Toronto-based Nutritional High International Inc. began trading Monday on the alternative Canadian Securities Exchange.

The Toronto-based company closed its initial public offering earlier this month after raising $1.6 million, and its stock closed trading Monday at 8.5 cents per share. It was by far the most active stock on the exchange, with more than 9 million shares changing hands. That was half of the total number traded on the entire exchange.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03/23/nutritional-high-recreational-marijuana_n_6926356.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business#comments

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 15:23 | 5946223 MeelionDollerBogus
MeelionDollerBogus's picture

Family background helps predict a child's future?

HOT DAMN, now that's nooz!

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