“Complaining that wages don’t keep pace with the cost of living while politicians (especially obama) permit illegal invaders to enter the country and to work - and then not being able to recognize that as a big cause of collapsing wages - well, you might be a democrat.”
There are three major reasons for the decline of the middle class:
1) Deindustrialization of the United State starting with the globalization/free trade policies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO) and perpetuated under George W. Bush and Obama. These policies put US manufacturing labor (and the middle class incomes it supported) in direct competition with third world wages and government subsidized factories. Other government policies (regulations, tax) encouraged the movement of investment capital outside the US to Asia.
2) Open immigration policies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Millions of undocumented workers allowed to flood the market, competing with American middle class workers for low end jobs.
3) Federal Reserve money printing to keep interest rates at artificially low levels in order to prop up the housing market, keep interest rates on government debt low, and support undercapitalized banks. Ten years of interest rates on savings below the rate of inflation, plus the rupturing of the real estate bubble, have decimated the savings of the middle class.
We should be honest. Obama is merely perpetuating the anti middle class economic policies of his Republican and Democrat predecessors. Both political parties have strongly supported open borders, globalization, free trade, low interest rates, the movement of capital to third world countries, and a weak dollar for over 20 years. The beneficiaries have been the multinational corporations, Wall Street, the entitlement classes, and the government bureaucrats.
We’ve now reached the point where the 21st century “service economy” heralded by the globalists of the 1990’s is unable to sustain the entitlement society and a thriving entrepreneurial middle class. The middle class is in a rapid state of decline after a decade of stagnant incomes and job losses. There are not enough middle class private sector jobs to employ college graduates and what remains of the middle class can no longer support the tax base required to employ new graduates in government jobs. The United States is quickly evolving into the third world model where a small elite upper class (the 1%) retains most of the wealth of the society and lords over the underemployed impoverished masses trying to survive from day to day. Within 20 years, every city will be Detroit.
That same-ness of political parties is where you get the manifestation of Free Republic and TEA party, where people who know what is in the Constitution, and most importantly why it is there, are going to stand up for what is right. Is it too late if Obama wins or Romney ends up being too liberal? No, it’s just going to be a longer road because we will continue to do the right thing.
But we still have high costs. Part of the defense budget is used defending the world's trade routes. That's an uncompensated expense. The rest of the world extorts low prices on American pharma through implicit threats to not protect patents on drugs. That shifts the world costs to develop a new drug onto the backs of the American taxpayer who pays the full rate on drugs.
Our defense agreements with Europe allowed them to shift protection of their own borders into the payment of socialism. Our leftists admired the level of social spending in Europe, forgetting that their burden for defense had shifted to the backs of the American taxpayer. We are so screwed going forward maintaining existing trade and defense agreements. Until we cast off all foreign entanglements, and reevaluate our place on this sphere, we both know where this game ends.
But we still have high costs. Part of the defense budget is used defending the world's trade routes. That's an uncompensated expense. The rest of the world extorts low prices on American pharma through implicit threats to not protect patents on drugs. That shifts the world costs to develop a new drug onto the backs of the American taxpayer who pays the full rate on drugs.
Our defense agreements with Europe allowed them to shift protection of their own borders into the payment of socialism. Our leftists admired the level of social spending in Europe, forgetting that their burden for defense had shifted to the backs of the American taxpayer. We are so screwed going forward maintaining existing trade and defense agreements. Until we cast off all foreign entanglements, and reevaluate our place on this sphere, we both know where this game ends.
Agree with you on all points. We should have been enforcing our borders years ago and had an intelligent industrial policy that included tariffs. But the libertarians and free traitors won out. Now due to open borders immigration the white conservative voters have less and less power each year and the 3rd world immigrants (who vote 80% Democrat) have more and more. So open borders Republicans figured out a way of screwing their children and grandchildren......eternally because they will be out voted