Posted on 07/25/2010 10:26:23 PM PDT by sfwarrior
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
“Anything, we make, they make cheaper.”
But they have to get it here. And THAT we can make very expensive.
Protectionist laws won’t fix the problem. We need to make the US more competitive by reducing corp tax, reducing the capital gains tax, increase depreciation allowances and encouraging new investment in plant and equipment. We suffer a disadvantage with labor costs, but these are less and less of the cost of manufacturing goods.
The Dems are far worse but the RINOs have to go. Americans gave up their liberty so the idiots can watch TV. The elites/liberals control america through TV. The fools paying for sat and cable TV give them the power. Stupid serfs who watch TV.
A small or declining middle class.
A lottery.
Low or falling morals.
Bribery is normal practice.
Some people around here live to sellout their country wholesale while calling anyone who disagtrees with them a commie.
the rich are getting richer, richer, richer....
I am so tired of those who claim that the rich are the "producers"....they are not....mostly, they are the manipulators...the connivers....
there is built into the system ways to keep the rich rich, and the rest of us scurrying up behind just trying to catch up....with a few exceptions, most won't be able to....
think of all the taxes the middle class is burdened with...property,income,SS,Medicare,fees for this and fees for that...
the rich avoid income tax, their contribution to SS in relation to what they make is tiny and they write off every fee and property taxes on all their ownings..
when they start taxing "golf" business trips instead of claiming it as a business "expense"...I'll know we're finally getting serious...
The middle class is shrinking because there is a bunch of Marxists in charge.
Marx HATED the middle class. He came up with ways to get rid of them. If you adopt his ideas, you get a middle class that disappears.
The Middle Class is paying the taxes to support the poor which are taking all the government hand outs.
Meanwhile the rich can afford to buy influence in our government.
This is the plan:
You cannot have Tyranny until you DESTROY the middle class.
The dems are not asleep .. they are willingly participating because it keeps them in POWER. If we are destroyed .. they don’t care.
Welcome to Tyranny .. and we have 100 days to make the best fix we can until 2012.
Same old stupid chauvinism. American knowhow has already been sold. Jobs and industrial productiaon has been sold or given away. The space industry gravity center now resides in UAE ownerwise, same for the airline tech business. Your universities are owned by one arab or another, and your federal lands - including landmarks - also. Military hardware developers on the bleeding edge has been and are being sold to China for pennies on the dollar. The US is very rapidly devolving into a third world nation, complete with an oogabooga strongman on top and a gazillion adoring TV-sheep at the bottom.
I've got news for you: everything "they" needed to get from there, they've already bought - be it people, real estate or technology. Or haven't you noticed that you're really on the path to having to buy smartbomb kits from China?
Not even a mention of immigration? That’s got to be a sizable part of it since so many of the jobs middle class Americans used to do are being done by illegals, ammnestied former illegals and the relatives they’ve brought in through chain migration.
These type of articles always talk about “American households” and “Americans” when they speak of the rich-poor gap and the expanding lower class.
They never adjust for the fact that we have 20-30 million illegals in the country.
If you add the “legal” immigrants of similar socio-economic status, such as the “anchor babies” and chain migration from third world countries, we probably have added in excess of 30 million people at the bottom of the scale in the last 25 years.
On average (there are of course many exceptions) this is a low-skilled, low-educated population with a 70% high school dropout rate and a 50% illegitimacy rate.
Unlike waves of immigrants in centuries past, the follow-on generations are not, on average, climbing the ladder through succeeding in the educational system and attaining middle class careers.
Also, this population does not add to the tax base, and much to the contrary costs taxpayers in excess of $100 billion every year, and that is probably a significant underestimate, and also does not include the tens of billions sent out of the country in remittances every year.
The competition in the labor force drags wages down dramatically for native-born Americans, costing hundreds of billions in lowered wages and pulling millions of native-born from the middle class into the lower class.
This is not to discount the substantial effect on the middle class of companies moving millions of jobs overseas to avoid unions, taxes, regulation and litigation.
And the third effect is the fact that the government subsidizes a growing underclass. Unmarried poor women are essentially “paid” by the government to have as many babies as they can, by whomever and however many fathers, and having the babies entitles the women to government support. The vast majority of these children are growing up in a culture that dooms them to lower class status, if not a prison cell.
These three effects together are crushing the native-born middle class.
We are beginning to become what the authors of “The Bell Curve” predicted, a society consisting of rich or upper middle class knowledge workers and a large lower “caste” that requires a huge expensive nanny state government (they called it a custodial state) to care for them from cradle to grave.
Actually, I would switch the pictures of Hitler and Lenin. Lenin’s message was more focused on the hope he offered to the poor, whereas Hitler’s message was focused more on a Change from the disaster of the Weimar Republic. Plus, the pictures are chronologically correct then too.
This has been going on for a long time before Obama came along. He is simply throwing gasoline on the fire.
Robotics and AI.
That’s the only way we are going to survive another century.
The Dems aren’t asleep at the wheel. They know EXACTLY what they’re doing. Empowering unions and Gov’t workers ensures a strong army with which to fight the “formerly middle class” when the civil unrest begins. Throw in a few million illegal aliens, the black population and the national civilian security force comprised of Hitler youth and you’ve got a protected Marxist dictatorship. We’re not there yet, but it’s taking shape all around us. The relentless news coverage of the black panther polling incident and the Sherrod event is just one phase (of many) in the grand plan to bolster specific groups’ hatred towards the middle class. The irony is, the middle class is now powerless and unemployed but that’s not good enough for the blossoming Marxist power elite to survive.
No it’s not, when was the last time you overpaid for anything at Walmart. Nothing there is made in the USA.
A lesser tax rate is paid on capital gains because the money used to buy stocks and later sell them (hopefully for a capital gain) has already been taxed. The money is being effectively double-taxed. Don't blame the rich, blame the government.
there is built into the system ways to keep the rich rich, and the rest of us scurrying up behind just trying to catch up....with a few exceptions, most won't be able to....
Not everyone will be rich, because the new age we live in values intelligence in disproportionate weight to work ethic.
Gone are the days where a hard-working person of average intelligence could work at a unionized factory job 60 hours per week and make $80K per year. Now you need to be in the right-hand portion of the IQ bell curve, because technology has increased the pace and the IQ-demand at which we work. Those of average/below-average intelligence are getting pummeled now, because the muscle work is being farmed out to China. Brain work is what pays nowadays and by definition, few people are in the top 20% of the IQ bell curve, which is where the high-paying jobs are now.
think of all the taxes the middle class is burdened with...property,income,SS,Medicare,fees for this and fees for that...
Those who make six figures pay every fee that the middle class pays, and more. We have a progressive tax system, i.e. the more you make, the more the government takes. My tax bill makes me gag every year. I am particularly nauseated by those who pay no taxes and get refundable tax credits.
the rich avoid income tax, their contribution to SS in relation to what they make is tiny and they write off every fee and property taxes on all their ownings..
I make the maximum contribution to SS each year. It is well-documented that high-earners pay way more into SS then they get out. My property taxes are written off only to an extent. Once your income gets above $150K or so, many of your deductions (including property tax) are reduced. Trust me, the top 10% of earners are paying 50% of the tax bill in this country. Now, how could that be the case if they get to "write everything off"?
when they start taxing "golf" business trips instead of claiming it as a business "expense"...I'll know we're finally getting serious...
Well, I don't play golf and the rules for expensing business items are pretty strict. You need to vote Democrat to teach all the "rich" a lesson. Nancy Pelosi is your ticket to vengeance.
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