Free Republic

Good ol’ Joe once again blurts out the awkward truth, while trying to be helpful to Democrat Senate candidate in Iowa, Bruce Braley (known to Michelle Obama as Bruce Bailey). .... you know the truth: The middle class is still in trouble,” Biden said. “You don’t have to know the numbers, you can feel it. You can feel it in your bones.” Biden’s lamentation failed to inspire any hope or energy among the crowd at Braley’s rally. Instead, the vice president’s words hun[g] in the air as he pointed out that all the positive economic numbers the Obama administration touts...

By Michael Snyder September 22nd, 2014 U.S. economy has had six full years to bounce back since the financial collapse of 2008, and it simply has not happened. Median household income has declined substantially since then, total household wealth for middle class families is way down, the percentage of the population that is employed is still about where it was at the end of the last recession, and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government has absolutely exploded. Even those that claim that the economy is "recovering" admit that we are not even close to where we...

In 1988, the typical American adult was 40 years old, white and married, with a high school diploma. If he was a man, he probably worked full time. If she was a woman, she probably didn’t.Twenty-five years later, Americans are older, more diverse and more educated. We are less likely to be married and more likely to live alone. Work is divided more evenly between the sexes. One thing that hasn’t changed? The income of the median U.S. household is still just under $52,000.The government’s release last week of income and poverty data for 2013 brought renewed attention to the...

The misguided attempt to increase the minimum wage can almost be passed off as institutionalized economic illiteracy. Many people, however, have argued that it’s more than simple ignorance that drives the Left to ignore fiscal sanity and push for a $15 per hour burger-flipping wage. Well, if the latest attempt to institute mandated-minimum-pay illustrates anything, it shows that the Left isn’t that fond of the effort/reward relationship of hard work. Labor groups are now aiming to snuff out the system of tipping servers because… well… because it’s “unfair”.There is a movement to bump the minimum wage for tipped servers (often...

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog, The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. 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 staggering pace. Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment. But overall, the long-term trends that...

If the Obama recovery had been as strong as the average of the previous 10 postwar recoveries, 13.9 million more Americans would be working today and the average real per capita income of every man, woman and child in America would be $6,308 higher. But the real scorecard on the Senate Democrats elected in 2008 is in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey data. While all Democrats claimed to be champions of the middle class and defenders of minorities and women, census data show how their program did not live up to their campaign promises. Since the Senate Democratic Class...

Four in 10 U.S. households are straining financially five years after the Great Recession — many struggling with tight credit, soaring education debt and profound issues related to savings and retirement, according to a new Federal Reserve survey. The wide-ranging Fed study assessing the economic well-being of Americans shows that the economy has made progress to the point where most households said they were "living comfortably" or doing OK financially. But almost 40% reported last fall that their families were "just getting by" or struggling to do so, and more people said their financial situation was worse rather than better...

America’s wealth is concentrating in fewer hands, and while the rich are getting super rich, the once vital middle class is nearing extinction. [SNIP] But today, after decades of expanding property ownership, the middle orders—what might be seen as the inheritors of Jefferson’s yeoman class—now appear in a secular retreat. Homeownership, which peaked in 2002 at nearly 70 percent, has dropped, according to the U.S. Census, to 65 percent in 2013, the lowest in almost two decade. Although some of this may be seen as a correction for the abuses of the housing bubble, rising costs, stagnant incomes and a...

America, the former “land of the free, home of the brave” is crony capitalism ruled by an anti-American socialist/Marxist regime “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” - Anonymous My reality today in America, the former “land of the free, home of the brave” is crony capitalism ruled by an anti-American socialist/Marxist regime. I feel like the musicians on the Titanic.

When asked at a press briefing on Thursday why her party’s message is “not resonating with the electorate,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told a room full of reporters, “(W)e need you to be messengers.” […] … “But, apart from that, we have come forward with our middle-class jump start. Over the month of August, we go forward with how the jump start talks about bringing jobs home. The Republicans have tax breaks to send jobs overseas. Democrats want tax breaks to keep jobs here at home.” …

Another Obama record… AMERICANS GETTING POORER – HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH IN DECLINE.The median household net worth under Obama is one-third what it was during the Bush years. Under Barack Obama American households are worth two-thirds of what they were worth under George W. Bush. The New York Times reported: Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only...

It's really hard for a middle class family to buy a house along the California coast.Real estate research and marketplace site Zillow routinely calculates an index of housing affordability. First, they use a proprietary statistical model to estimate housing values in a metropolitan area. Then, they calculate the monthly mortgage payment for a median price house in each metro area. Finally, they calculate the percentage of the median monthly income for each metro area needed to pay that mortgage payment.For example, Zillow's estimate for the median home price in Abilene, TX during the first quarter of 2014 was $98,600. After...

The American Dream has been a focal point and topic of debate since the financial crisis of 2008: citizens and politicians alike are asking whether it's time to redefine what success looks like in the U.S. According to Howard Gold, columnist for MarketWatch and founder of GoldenEgg Investing, the white picket fence and security that hard work can bring is still alive, but it will cost you... a lot. In a USA Today article, Gold calculated that for a family of four living out the American Dream costs just over $130,000 a year. "This isn’t about being rich,” Gold tells...

America's middle class has fallen to mediocre levels — the U.S. median income only qualifies for 19th in the world now, below Japan, Australia and most of Western Europe. The bottom line is that the average Spaniard or Italian — not to mention the typical middle class denizen in 17 other countries — has more to his or her name than the average U.S. citizen does, according to CNNMoney. Using data culled from the latest Credit Suisse Global Wealth report, CNNMoney reported Americans' median wealth is only $44,900 per adult — meaning half have more than that, and half have...

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

Hoping to push their agenda ahead of the presidential election, a group of prominent conservatives has devised a 121-page policy manifesto aimed at giving the Republican Party a message that will attract some of the middle-class voters the party lost in recent White House races.The document, to be unveiled Thursday, features eight essays with proposals on issues including health care, taxes and education. The authors hope the book will help Republicans address the economic anxieties of Americans and nudge the party from its most polarizing positions and constant confrontations with President Obama.“We have to do more than ‘Stand athwart history,...

Who will prove the champion of the little guy and gal? Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — on deck for her party’s presidential nomination should Hillary Rodham Clinton bow out — has become the political leader of choice for those who advocate Big Government as that champion. This columnist is skeptical about Big Government improving the lives of the citizens. Yet … there is a case to be made for Warren. She is, at very least, a magnificently worthy adversary for advocates of limited government and deserves to be taken seriously. America has had a decade of lousy job creation and...

There are four structural drivers behind the soaring costs of the middle class lifestyle. Why have the costs of a middle class lifestyle soared while income has stagnated?Though it is tempting to finger one ideologically convenient cause or another, there are four structural causes to this long-term trend: 1. Baumol's Cost Disease2. Systemic headwinds to the current version of capitalism3. Dominance of global corporate capital4. Financialization The key take-away here is that the first two causes are structural and cannot be changed by passing a law or funding another state bureaucracy. Though many believe they can tax global corporate capital to...

"............................Educated, articulate and well versed in the recitation of neo-Marxist agitprop, [Seattle Council Woman Kshama Sawant]clearly has read many books and been taught many things that aren’t so.Such is the case with Sawant’s core mission of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour because she believes it helps poor people. She is convinced that she can, by decree, override the laws of economics from her perch on Seattle’s city council. “Victory in the fight for $15 an hour will mean a substantial improvement in the standards of living of working people in Seattle,” Sawant...in a recent interview[,]“A real class...

It’s an Obama world. Of 953,000 Jobs Created In 2013, 77%, Or 731,000 Were Part-Time. ... And it’s likely to get worse… Obamacare will kill off at least two percent of the US full-time workforce. ... Obamacare is accelerating the US towards a part-time nation. Even far left Think Progress reported today that most of the jobs added since the recession are low paying jobs.