The general gist of findings from the 2010 census may not be shocking, but the actual numbers detailing the growing problem of the shrinking middle class in America are: Nearly half of all Americans qualify for the poor or low-income categories, making income inequality an issue that now splits the nation down the middle. —KA
AP via Google News:
Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.
Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder — 6.9 million — earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level.
The majority of low-income families — 62 percent — spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth.
Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.
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By do over, December 16, 2011 at 4:39 am Link to this comment
The next step is to render the lower 50% as untouchables. It is better to turn and fight than take one more step down this dark path.
Report thisBy Marian Griffith, December 15, 2011 at 2:49 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
—there was more but it will not let me post it—
Report thisBy Marian Griffith, December 15, 2011 at 2:43 pm Link to this comment
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@Hollywood Russ
—-thanks to the erosion of our constitutional rights, the have-nots will not be able to legally complain about their condition—-
Societal change resembles a volcano, or a tectonic plate, in that the longer they are kept stagnant the more violent the eventual eruption.
But even if no violent revolution is forthcoming, the torrential drain of wealth out of the American citizens towards the new nobility is unsustainable. You can not run an economy on the needs of 1pct of the population.
It has been long been held evident by economists with more common sense and less radical ideology that you can not possibly have 1pct of the population consume enough to keep 99pct of the population employed. They held it for justification of progressive taxation, but the american politics have, driven by those rabid economic ideologues, have banned the very idea of taxes.
So as more and more people drop below the poverty line they have two choices: resistance (which is the precursor to revolution) or drop out of society entirely. The occupy movement is in fact the beginning of the first response, and the hundreds of thousands of unemployed who no longer are even looking for a job (and thus are surviving outside of the formal economy) are an example of the second.
The first response will require an expensive repression mechanism which is expensive to maintain. The second response will decrease the tax base, which is already visible at the county level and will continue to increase at ever higher levels of government. The natural reaction of the emergent new nobility has been to cut costs, meaning that people have to spend more and more and eventually drop out of the system one way or another. The other approach is to quietly (so as not to publicly violate their ‘we lower taxes’ stance) increase the tax burden of the remaining non-nobility tax payers. Which will drive some of them into destituency. Both reactions will increase the problem of insufficient funding by driving people out of the formal economy.
Report thisBy Marian Griffith, December 15, 2011 at 2:42 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
test (to see if it is the size that blocks me from replying)
Report thisBy Blueokie, December 15, 2011 at 1:35 pm Link to this comment
I think it started during the administration of St. Reagan when he convinced the majority that it was better to listen to jingoistic flowery rhetoric than to actually solve problems. His greatest accomplishment was selling the herd on the concept of being “consumers of government” rather than citizens. Reagan was the
bellwether success of a 45 year oligarchical plan to gain control of the U.S. government that has continued unabated up to our current plutocratic lackey in the Oval Office.
“When you accept the terms of the system you get the system, on its terms” - Ralph Nader
Report thisBy Hollywood Russ, December 15, 2011 at 11:07 am Link to this comment
This is one of those “Duh” moments. I could have told you that America is being
Report thissplit into two camps: the haves and the have-nots. Fortunately, thanks to the
erosion of our constitutional rights, the have-nots will not be able to legally
complain about their condition. The haves can continue to sap all the wealth of
this country into their bottomless pockets. For 50 years, the American Dream
was a reality, from the post-WWII era to the Clinton presidency. Now it is just a
dream again. The unemployed or underemployed have been beaten into a state
of cringing servility, willing to work at any job for any wage. This belies the
conservative argument that there are jobs out there, it’s just that people are too
lazy to do them. When I hear that Reaganistic argument, from his statement in
the early Eighties that he saw lots of ads for jobs in the paper, it makes me
want to go ballistic. I remember that a few years back we had an opening for an
entry level position at my place of work. We received over 100 resumés. Yes,
Virginia, there are jobs out there, but there are a hundred workers jostling for
that position. So getting hired is much like hitting the lottery nowadays.