Posted on 03/16/2014 12:50:18 PM PDT by rickmichaels
WASHINGTON For years, many Americans followed a simple career path: Land an entry-level job. Accept a modest wage. Gain skills. Leave eventually for a better-paying job.
The workers benefited, and so did lower-wage retailers such as Wal-Mart: When its staffers left for better-paying jobs, they could spend more at its stores. And the U.S. economy gained, too, because more consumer spending fueled growth.
Not so much anymore. Since the Great Recession began in 2007, that path has narrowed because many of the next-tier jobs no longer exist. That means more lower-wage workers have to stay put. The resulting bottleneck is helping widen a gap between the richest Americans and everyone else.
Some people took those jobs because they were the only ones available and havent been able to figure out how to move out of that, Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart U.S., acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press.
If Wal-Mart employees can go to another company and another job and make more money and develop, theyll be better, Simon explained. Itll be better for the economy. Itll be better for us as a business, to be quite honest, because theyll continue to advance in their economic life.
Yet for now, the lower-wage jobs once seen as stepping stones are increasingly being held for longer periods by older, better-educated, more experienced workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.financialpost.com ...
Higher taxes and government policies made it impossible. O and Michelle railed against the American dream in 2008, they called it middle class-ism and told people to stop trying to earn more and become volunteers, work at non-profits and stuff.
Remember when Pelosi hectored Bush because his 5% unemployment rate was only because Bush was creating “McJobs”?
In the Era of Baraq, McJobs are the new middle class standard.
Just raise the minimum wage to $15.
Then we can all struggle harder yet.
Here are our jobs;
the socialism of obama and democrats doesn’t work
I am in complete agreement with your post.
We currently run (as of last year) a larger than 300 billion trade deficit with China.
We export approximately 122 billion to China.
We import on the other hand, approximately 440 billion from China.
That is a massive, and growing trade deficit.
We need to make, and to export, far more.
Bring back American jobs.
Wait till they start screaming about middle class taxes!
What an amazing statement from the ChinaMart pig.
He’s happy to see his people leave, and has no intention of trying to reward them for skills and longevity.
Nope. He and the richest family in America will still take advantage of the absence of trade barriers against the great Slave Nation known as Communist China.
The little people? A few pittances, some scraps from the Walton’s table while they luxuriate in Jackson Hole on land protected by the sons and daughters of people they have nothing but contempt for.
What nauseating filth.
This is how a nation declines. It’s slow. And normal keeps shifting. After ten years people just sorta say, “what happened”. If they even notice.
I remember in 2006 I commented on Seattlebubble.com that real estate could go down as much as 20%. It sounded, even to me, like crazy talk and I was ridiculed for it. But it went down ~50% in many areas and people just shrugged it off.
I swear humans are even more adaptable than cockroaches.
Translation: That’s why the Left wants $15 per hour minimum wage pay so all the illegal aliens can join the “middle class” of slave laborers.
Translation: That’s why the Left wants $15 per hour minimum wage pay so all the illegal aliens can join the “middle class” of slave laborers.
I saw this article in the local Sunday newspaper. Sad but true. It affects a lot of fields, too; it’s pretty hard to find full-time work as a librarian around here, too.
Good luck middle class. Your current government, the Obama regime, is seeing to it you will never achieve anything other than what they allow.
Thing is, they got you all fooled into thinking that government can make the impossible, possible. LOL
Globalization, illegal immigration and automation destroyed jobs in the US. Globalization killed off many high paying blue collar jobs while illegal immigration destroyed many low paying blue collar jobs. Now with the push for H-1B guest tech/skilled workers, corporate America will finish off upper middle class white collar jobs. Big business has played a role that many freepers ignorantly ignore and choose to concentrate only on big gov. Both big business and big gov have been the enemies of middle America. WTO, NAFTA, MFN etc etc has been equally devestating as EPA, ACA taxes and regs.
I hear that a lot. Just how do you propose we go about it? The reality is that Americans won't (and can't afford to) work for Chinese wages. So with American high labor costs figured into the cost of goods, who's going to buy American-made products when the Chinese sell the same thing at half price or less?
Maybe we can export more commodities like natural gas and timber products but unless we're willing to take manufacturing jobs at minimum wage or less I don't see how we can compete. There are American high-tech jobs available but the sad truth is American workers aren't trained to do them. Worse, many American workers are unfit to take existing middle class jobs because they're functionally illiterate, undisciplined, very badly educated and unwilling to take direction.
It’s been going on for over 40 years. Some of Nixon’s favorite constituents were pushing to shift manufacturing overseas long before plans were put into actions. There was no real recovery from any of those “recessions” since the late 1970s. For now, those with lower incomes in government positions are being laid off (mostly clerks in regulatory offices, with administrators requiring engineer stamps on everything and simply collecting fees for their larger incomes). Building, producing and saving money on energy continue to be illegal for common Americans in many ways.
I hear people on FR demanding a Smoot-Hawley style tariff to fix everything, almost every day. I’ll bet this post generates one or two.
Year | Unemployment rate |
---|---|
1923-29 |
3.3 |
1930 |
8.9 |
1931 |
15.9 |
1932 |
23.6 |
1933 |
24.9 |
1934 |
21.7 |
1935 |
20.1 |
1936 |
17.0 |
1937 |
14.3 |
1938 |
19.0 |
1939 |
17.2 |
1940 |
14.6 |
1941 |
9.9 |
1942 |
4.7 |
Gross Domestic Product (ref. 1929 dollars in millions) Year GDP 1929 101,444 1930 91,513 1931 84,300 1932 70,682 1933 68,337 1934 74,609 1935 85,806 1936 95,798 1937 103,917 1938 96,670 1939 103,736 1940 112,961 1941 126,237 Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Series 08166.
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