Middle class share of America's income shrinking

The middle class is receiving less of America's total income, declining to its smallest share in decades as median wages stagnate in the economic doldrums and wealth concentrates at the top.

A study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights diminished hopes, too, for the roughly 50 percent of adults defined as middle class, with household incomes ranging from $39,000 to $118,000. The report describes this mid-tier group as suffering its "worst decade in modern history," having fallen backward in income for the first time since the end of World War II.

Three years after the recession technically ended, middle class Americans are still feeling the economic pinch, with most saying they have been forced to reduce spending in the past year. And fewer now believe that hard work will allow them to get ahead in life. Families are now more likely to say their children's economic future will be the same or worse than their own.

In all, 85 percent of middle class Americans say it is more difficult now than a decade ago to maintain their standard of living. Some 62 percent say a lot of the blame lies with Congress. A slight majority say a lot lies with banks and other financial institutions. Just 8 percent blame the middle class itself.

The socialists and Marxists will say that it is because the top 1% is hoarding the money.

But the hard facts are that the loss of industry to China and other nations has taken the opportunity to climb the economic ladder away from the middle class.

Economics 101: If you want to bring in the bucks, SELL SOMETHING.

We have become a nation of buyers, not producers and sellers.

Our Country cannot afford 4 more years of the pretender in chief. There are many stories of people who are genuinely hurting. My mother-in-law could not afford her COPD medicine after losing her job. My retired neighbors lived without a furnace last winter after theirs broke. I knew of several homeless families that lived in campgrounds in the area over the summer. Dont know what they will do with winter coming. This is not the America I grew up in.

>>We have become a nation of buyers, not producers and sellers.

Hmmm.

"...In 1977 Barbara Ehrenreich and her then husband John defined a new Marxist class in United States as "salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor...(is)...the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations"; the Ehrenreichs named this group the "professional-managerial class".^[16] This group of middle-class professionals are distinguished from other social classes by their training and education (typically business qualifications and university degrees),^[17] with example occupations including academics and teachers, social workers, engineers, managers, nurses, and middle-level administrators.^[18] The Ehrenreichs developed their definition from studies by André Gorz, Serge Mallet, and others, of a "new working class", which, despite education and a perception of themselves as being middle class, were part of the working class because they did not own the means of production, and were wage earners paid to produce a piece of capital.^[19] The professional-managerial class seeks higher rank status and salary,^[20] and tend to have incomes above the average for their country.^[21]
Compare the term "managerial caste".^[22]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class

"those people are uneducated and ignorant, they deserve to be taken advantage of"
--Manager of Application Support, Argent Mortgage - circa May, 2007.

"COMMERCE BETWEEN MASTER AND SLAVE IS DESPOTISM"
--Thomas Jefferson, Manager of the Declaration of Independence - circa July, 1776

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