40 Facts that prove the working class is being systematically wiped out

[Jamie_B]

[quote]40 Facts That Prove The Working Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out

Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America.

Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There simply are not nearly enough "good jobs" to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a "long-term structural problem" with the economy.
The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem.

Today wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don't have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich don't really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don't have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore.

Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren't coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.

So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Today, the "official" unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping 272,000 Americans "dropped out of the labor force" in June. The government unemployment figure that includes "discouraged workers" went up from 15.8% to 16.2%. The mainstream media is proclaiming that this was "a horrific report" because most economists were expecting much better news.

Well, guess what?

Things are going to get a whole lot worse.

More job cuts are coming. One recently released report found that the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased by 11.6% in June.
It is also being projected that state and local governments across the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of next year.
Needless to say, things don't look good.

Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on to them.

Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days, so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.
We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since World War 2. Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way....
"Numbers don't lie. Unemployment is pretty high."
Jay-Z certainly has a way with words, eh?

If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.
Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen. In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking.

Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out....


Click here for the facts - http://www.businessinsider.com/end-of-the-middle-class-2011-7#right-now-the-us-government-says-that-141-million-americans-are-unemployed-1[/quote]

[Jamie_B]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/151705/why_the_wealthiest_americans_are_the_real_%27job-killers%27?page=entire

[quote]Why the Wealthiest Americans Are the Real 'Job-Killers'
The top 1 percent takes in more than twice the share of national income today than they did 30 years ago, and that's a big reason why consumers are tapped out.

That the wealthy are “job creators,” and therefore have interests that must be defended by the public at large, is a talking-point that, however facile, is so popular it slips effortlessly from the lips of conservatives every day.

It can be deployed for any purpose – not only in calling for more tax breaks for the rich, but also when opposing public interest regulation, consumer litigation and worker protections. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, even used it to deflect attention from the "gay rehabilitation" services her clinic allegedly offers. When asked about it by ABC News, Bachmann merely acknowledged, “we do have a business that deals with job creation.” When pressed, she stuck with it: “As I said, again, we’re very proud of our business and we’re proud of all job creators in the United States.”

It's also complete nonsense; the opposite of the truth. Sure, the wealthy create a few jobs – people who offer exclusive services or sell them high-end goods. But the overwhelming majority of jobs in this country are “created” by ordinary Americans when they spend their paychecks.

Consumer demand accounts for around 70 percent of our economic output. And with so much wealth having been redistributed upward through a 40-year class-war from above, American consumers are too tapped out to spend as they once did. This remains the core issue in this sluggish, largely jobless recovery. The wealthy, in their voracious appetite for a bigger piece of the national pie, are the real job-killers in this economic climate.

Don't take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that “the main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists” the paper surveyed. That jibes with what business owners themselves are saying. Last week, the National Federation of Independent Businesses released a survey of small businessmen and women that found widespread “pessimism about future business conditions and expected real sales gains.”

New York Times reporter David Leonhardt wrote this week that “We are living through a tremendous bust. It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making.”

The auto industry is on pace to sell 28 percent fewer new vehicles this year than it did 10 years ago — and 10 years ago was 2001, when the country was in recession. Sales of ovens and stoves are on pace to be at their lowest level since 1992. Home sales over the past year have fallen back to their lowest point since the crisis began. And big-ticket items are hardly the only problem.

Leonhardt cites worse-than-expected retail sales and a study conducted by the New York Federal Reserve Bank that found “discretionary service spending” – which excludes housing, food and health care – to have dropped 7 percent, more than twice the decline we saw during previous recessions.

“If you’re looking for one overarching explanation for the still-terrible job market,” Leonhardt concludes, “it is this great consumer bust. Business executives are only rational to hold back on hiring if they do not know when their customers will fully return. Consumers, for their part, are coping with a sharp loss of wealth and an uncertain future (and many have discovered that they don’t need to buy a new car or stove every few years).”

Average American households' economic malaise started long before the current downturn, as those at the top started grabbing an ever-increasing share of the pie in the 1970s. These graphs, courtesy of Mother Jones, tell the tale:

[img]http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1311110782_inequalityp25averagehouseholdincom.png[/img]

Discounting those in the top 20 percent of the pile – according to economists Emanuel Saez and Thomas Picketty it's actually the top 10 percent – Americans haven't seen their real incomes rise in the past 30 years.

Paul Buchheit, a professor with City Colleges of Chicago, crunched some numbers using IRS data and found that “if middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.” In other words, because the share of income going to the top has increased so dramatically, ordinary people have $12,500 less in their wallets today. Studies have shown that when wealthy people grab more post-tax income they're more likely to bank it than to spend it, so much of that $12,500 also represents lost demand, and hence less jobs. Wealthy Americans' avarice is a job-killer.

American households compensated for their flat incomes first by sending millions of women into the workforce – the single-earner household is largely a relic of the past – and then by running up lots of debt. In the 1970s, Americans socked away between 8-12 percent in case hard times hit, but the national savings rate declined precipitously as the top earners started grabbing an outsized share of the nation's income.

As a result, we were among the least prepared citizens in the developed world to handle the crash – we didn't have a rainy-day fund put away.

[img]http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1311110925_sauploadsavingsratebycountry1.png[/img]

Then came the Great Recession. The federal Reserve did a study in 2009 in which it went back and surveyed the same households that had been examined in a 2007 snapshot of consumer finances to see how they were faring during the recession. The study found that between 2007 and 2009, median family net worth fell 23 percent, from $125,400 to only $96,000.

Like income, that continued a longer trend that began as those at the top of the pile began grabbing an ever-greater share of the nation's wealth. As Edward Wolff, an economist at NYU, noted, between 1983 and 2007, only those in the top 5 percent of the income distribution added to their households' net worth (PDF). The rest of us tread water. Economists talk about a “wealth effect,” which simply means that when you have more wealth you tend to spend more freely. So, this concentration of wealth has also impacted demand.

None of this is particularly complex. In 1978, the top 1 percent of the ladder took in just under 9 percent of the nation's income, leaving a bit more than 91 percent for the rest of us. In 2007, the year before the crash, they took in 23.5 percent, leaving just 76.5 percent for the rest of the population to split up.

They banked most of that income, whereas we would have spent it. The fact that we're broke means that businesses are facing less demand for their goods and services than they otherwise would, and have less need to hire a bunch of employees. And that dynamic explains why it's the wealthiest Americans who are the real “job killers.”[/quote]

[|Elflocko|]

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it... "

~Joseph Goebbels

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Elflocko' timestamp='1311294485' post='1002303']
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it... "

~Joseph Goebbels
[/quote]


You arent allowed to call the Rich, Rich anymore, they have to be referred to as "Job Creators"... boy this cake sure is delicous and job creator. LOL

http://www.hulu.com/watch/259534/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-republicans-think-obama-is-obsessed

[Vol_Bengal]

Good information in those charts Jamie...

So what is the answer? Because from 1993-2001, when Clinton was in office I saw no difference in the trending of any group but the wealthiest. The top 1% took a hit in Clinton's second term yet all the remaining groups continued a decline.


Would that imply, then, that neither party gives a damn about the lower and middle class? Because the graphs would make it appear that way.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Vol_Bengal' timestamp='1311336349' post='1002384']
Good information in those charts Jamie...

So what is the answer? Because from 1993-2001, when Clinton was in office I saw no difference in the trending of any group but the wealthiest. The top 1% took a hit in Clinton's second term yet all the remaining groups continued a decline.


Would that imply, then, that neither party gives a damn about the lower and middle class? Because the graphs would make it appear that way.
[/quote]


There are a few answers but none of them will fly because yes by enlarge outside of a few both parties are owned by the plutocracy.

[|Elflocko|]

[quote name='Vol_Bengal' timestamp='1311336349' post='1002384']
Good information in those charts Jamie...

So what is the answer? Because from 1993-2001, when Clinton was in office I saw no difference in the trending of any group but the wealthiest. The top 1% took a hit in Clinton's second term yet all the remaining groups continued a decline.


Would that imply, then, that [b]neither party gives a damn about the lower and middle class[/b]? Because the graphs would make it appear that way.
[/quote]

You answered your own question...

[Jim Finklestein]

[quote name='Vol_Bengal' timestamp='1311336349' post='1002384']
Good information in those charts Jamie...

So what is the answer? Because from 1993-2001, when Clinton was in office I saw no difference in the trending of any group but the wealthiest. The top 1% took a hit in Clinton's second term yet all the remaining groups continued a decline.


Would that imply, then, that neither party gives a damn about the lower and middle class? Because the graphs would make it appear that way.
[/quote]

The only bipartisan issue among the greedy fuckers. They BOTH belong to Wall Street.

[|Elflocko|]

And from an article I read yesterday:

[quote]These so-called “deficit hawks” voted 19 times to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.[/quote]

A pox on both their households...

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Jim Finklestein' timestamp='1311350986' post='1002465']
The only bipartisan issue among the greedy fuckers. They BOTH belong to Wall Street.
[/quote]


Yep

[Vol_Bengal]

OMG...

the first topic in this forum (that I can remember) that every post I can agree with!!!!!!! we're making headway!

Don't anyone tell kenneth about this one though!! j/k...