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The American Middle Class Is No Longer the Worlds Richest
Can this change in USA? What a shame.
[size=”2″]The American Middle Class Is No Longer the Worlds Richest[/size][/h1] [size=”2″][link=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html]http://www.nytimes.com/20…he-worlds-richest.html[/link][/size]
[size=”2″]The U.S. Middle Class Cedes Gold to Canada[/size][/h1] [size=”2″][link=http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-23/the-u-dot-s-dot-middle-class-cedes-gold-to-canada]http://www.businessweek.c…s-cedes-gold-to-canada[/link][/size]
[size=”2″]How Did Canada’s Middle Class Get So Rich?[/size][/h1] [size=”2″][link=http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/how-did-canadas-middle-class-get-so-rich/361053/]http://www.theatlantic.co…ss-get-so-rich/361053/[/link][/size]
[size=”2″]How did we lose the lead? The authors blame three broad factors: (1) Canada’s education attainment is outpacing the U.S. and most of the world; (2) American middle-class market wages aren’t keeping up with overall economic growth; and (3) Other governments are doing more to redistribute income to poorer families in other countries, particularly in western and northern Europe. [/size]
[size=”2″]Canada passes US in middle-class wealth[/size][/h1] [size=”2″][link=http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27117829]http://www.bbc.com/news/b.gs-echochambers-27117829[/link][/size]
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55 Replies
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Obama’s stagnant economy and the massive growth of the dependent underclass.
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This has been happening for 30 years.
It has little to do with Obama presidency.
It is the cumulative effects of outsized political influence by wealthy elites who have tilted the code, labor laws, and financial system in their own favor in such a way that the bulk of Americans have been injured by them.
It is tragic.
Let’s hope that Ralph Nader is prophetic in his new book “UNSTOPPABLE: THE EMERGING LEFT-RIGHT ALLIANCE TO DISMANTLE THE CORPORATE STATE.”
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Goodness Alda cannot even begin to understand the irony of his statement given that soshulist Canada has bypassed us
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Unequal opportunity to education
That’s the sole reason
Precollege education is hit or miss depending on where you live and college education is becoming more and more unaffordable
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The Canadian economy has benefited greatly from Canada’s aggressive oil and natural gas extraction from its huge supplies. This accounts for a large amount of the Canadian wealth effect. In the meantime, Obama and the EPA have blocked oil and natural gas from our even larger reserves. Obama wants to take credit for the recent US oil and natural gas boom, but this has taken place in private lands. At the same time drilling in federal lands has dropped.
While some on the left like to point out Canada’s socialist leanings, they should also note that Canadian government spending is 40% of GDP, while the US government eats up 45% of the GDP. Canada has prospered recently under conservative leadership, after the socialist leftist government nearly bankrupted the country. Canada has a 5% consumption tax on goods that forces ALL people to pay into the system.
The relative contraction of wealth in the middle class in the US is due to joblessness. Obama is directly to be blamed, because he has stymied job growth though many of his actions, like blocking drilling and fracking in federal lands, blocking the Keystone pipeline, higher taxes, Obamacare disincentives to full time employment, Obamacare costs, policy uncertainties, shakedown of the banks, endless extensions of unemployment benefits, high corporate tax rates, class warfare and debasing of the dollar.
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You Middle Class just doesn’t grow like that in 5 years, Alda, even if you are “conservative” socialist Canada.
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Quote from aldadoc
Obama’s stagnant economy and the massive growth of the dependent underclass.
I’m sorry, I think there was a typo in your comment. I’m pretty sure you meant “the House Republicans’ stagnant economy”.
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We need to get Dems into both the white house and capitol hill.
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Actually we just need equal access to high quality education no matter where you live, then no matter what more of the potential cream will rise to the top
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I’ve always contended that the way our populace votes for politicians is an indictment against the public school system. Garbage in, garbage out.
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Alda with the same tired old litany. Interestingly Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma have huge energy sector and yet it does not filter back to the average person as it does in Canada. And of course with Keystone, Alda is in favor of taking privately owned land for a foreign corporation and for the federal govt to take precedence over the rights of the states all for about 50 long term jobs (unless he is going to count the job creation created by the clean up of toxic spills)
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Where did all the right-wingers on AM go? Used to be a lot more arguing the conservative cause, now only Alda does. Pointman & Mike can only insult but never make any cogent arguments.
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Some got kicked off because they extreme enuf to violate the Terms of Service.
Others only chime in when they have an escape route when they’re proven wrong, but the issues these days are so clearcut, they have no one to whine to except the choir.
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Quote from Lux
Some got kicked off because they extreme enuf to violate the Terms of Service.
Others only chime in when they have an escape route when they’re proven wrong, but the issues these days are so clearcut, they have no one to whine to except the choir.
Soapy, you must stop drinking that lemming-ade.-
More Pointless sound bites.
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Yes. Too much garbage from faux news.
We could use a nice dose of socialism in this country. Crony capitalism is worsening income and asset disparity in this country. -
[b]”We could use a nice dose of socialism in this country” [/b]
Voxy, you, soapy and obummer are already there!!!
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Pointless, please cite a current Republican policy that will strengthen our economy and improve the American way of life.
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Quote from Voxel77
Yes. Too much garbage from faux news.
We could use a nice dose of socialism in this country. Crony capitalism is worsening income and asset disparity in this country.
30 years of Republican solutions is killing us.
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Quote from Frumious
Quote from Voxel77
Yes. Too much garbage from faux news.
We could use a nice dose of socialism in this country. Crony capitalism is worsening income and asset disparity in this country.
30 years of Republican solutions is killing us.
Frumi, the obummer owns this economic disaster. Not to mention the global foreign policy crisis he has created. We will be isolated from the rest of the world because Europe is almost all socialist and are dependant upon Russia more than the USA. Besides he is despised by almost everyone, arrogant and condescending. Beer summits won’t work anymore. -
Don’t look now, but another big company (Toyota) is moving out of liberal California to Texas in search of a better business environment:
[link=http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-toyota-texas-20140428,0,2881400.story#axzz308qbWKR0]http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-toyota-texas-20140428,0,2881400.story#axzz308qbWKR0[/link]
I hope they don’t bring a bunch of Democrats with them. Would the last capitalist please bring the flag with you when you flee the self imploding Socialist Republic of California.
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you’re right alda, ca is a failure. google. apple. facebook. yahoo. amgen. there’s no innovation here.
anyway, you can complain all you want about obama. the corporate class is ruining this country, sooner or later there will be a populist movement to take these guys down. that’s how it’s been throughout history. aristocrats keep concentrating wealth and power until they get too greedy and then…pop! there will be blood. -
Quote from Voxeled
you’re right alda, ca is a failure. google. apple. facebook. yahoo. amgen. there’s no innovation here.
anyway, you can complain all you want about obama. the corporate class is ruining this country, sooner or later there will be a populist movement to take these guys down. that’s how it’s been throughout history. aristocrats keep concentrating wealth and power until they get too greedy and then…pop! there will be blood.
Voxy, the socialist storm troopers will storm those corporate headquarters and re-distribute all that wealth back to the people. The obummer’s game plan. -
Toyota already has its factories in Texas. Land is cheaper in Texas so it makes sense to build factories there. Land is more expensive in California, so it made sense for Toyota to set up its initial US operation at a coastal port so it could import its cars made in Japan a few decades ago. But now it’s simply moving its management and marketing operation to it’s manufacturing plants in Texas. Nothing wrong with consolidating under a single roof to shore up the redundancies and improve efficiencies. The move is strictly operational now that Toyota has grown from selling 288 cars in the US (imported from Japan) at its first dealership to 2.2 million[i] Made In The USA [/i]cars in the US today.
Let’s not take the huge mental leap in logic that this therefore proves that Texas is a more desirable place to house a business. It simply means Toyota is now moving its management to the manufacturing plants to consolidate its growing operation.
Let’s revisit this discussion when hi-tech companies start their exodus from California. -
Quote from Lux
Toyota already has its factories in Texas. Land is cheaper in Texas so it makes sense to build factories there. Land is more expensive in California, so it made sense for Toyota to set up its initial US operation at a coastal port so it could import its cars made in Japan a few decades ago. But now it’s simply moving its management and marketing operation to it’s manufacturing plants in Texas. Nothing wrong with consolidating under a single roof to shore up the redundancies and improve efficiencies. The move is strictly operational now that Toyota has grown from selling 288 cars in the US (imported from Japan) at its first dealership to 2.2 million[i] Made In The USA [/i]cars in the US today.
Let’s not take the huge mental leap in logic that this therefore proves that Texas is a more desirable place to house a business. It simply means Toyota is now moving its management to the manufacturing plants to consolidate its growing operation.
Let’s revisit this discussion when hi-tech companies start their exodus from California.
Californication is becoming the northwest territory of Mexico. Old pot smoking, burned out hippie jerry brown has made that state a cesspool since he took office. Broke, lawless and overrun by illegals until real Americans are the minority. Come to think of it, they are the flagship state of the demo-crite party. A real voting bloc of illegally voting dems. -
They give to the feds. They are not a taker state. But that’s not good enough for you now, huh?
Another example of an extremist conservative being forced to dig a little deeper to find the dirt. You’re running out of ammo if you have to stoop to “pot smoking” to make a political case. -
[link=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/04/29/how-well-educated-is-your-home-county]http://www.washingtonpost…ed-is-your-home-county[/link]
The suburbs of Denver, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are home to the highest percentage of college graduates in the country, while fewer than one in eight residents of large swaths of Appalachia and the rural South have attained college degrees.
Thats according to this great map using data from the Census Bureaus American Community Survey, which visualizes counties by the percentage of citizens who have attained bachelors degrees.
Heres another correlation: The best-educated counties are also those with the highest median incomes.
Most Red States don’t look so good. Republican solutions at work.
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People like point are deeply worried about wealth and opportunities slowly but steadily flowing to hardworking honest smart people, ethnic and religious minorities, women, LGBT and immigrants. They feel like sky is falling!
That is the problem. Not blue state or Obama. -
Quote from Voxel77
People like point are deeply worried about wealth and opportunities slowly but steadily flowing to hardworking honest smart people, ethnic and religious minorities, women, LGBT and immigrants. They feel like sky is falling!
That is the problem. Not blue state or Obama.
Typical socialist “wealth re-distribution” rhetoric, V77 !! -
Median household income has dropped by $2,400 during Obama’s “recovery”.
[link=http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/incomes-have-dropped-twice-much-during-recovery-during-recession_750068.html]http://www.weeklystandard…-recession_750068.html[/link]
Too many more “recovery summers” and we’re going to go broke. -
go to bed Aldi ..get some sleep
Quote from aldadoc
Median household income has dropped by $2,400 during Obama’s “recovery”.
[link=http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/incomes-have-dropped-twice-much-during-recovery-during-recession_750068.html]http://www.weeklystandard…-recession_750068.html[/link]
Too many more “recovery summers” and we’re going to go broke.
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Inconvenient Alda, to recall that the recession happened during Bush’s term & republicans have opposed any solution since in the fear it would boost Obama. Republicans have been very open about hoping to keep things depressed, too bad the alqueda republicans don’t read the true parts from their own side.
Those “socialist” Canadians have taken over the middle class territory republicans sold to the WalMarts.
[link=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html]http://www.nytimes.com/20…theyre-better-off.html[/link]
Yet, Ms. Mustachi added, I think people in the U.S. seem to struggle more.
Canadians have little doubt that they face less financial stress about medical costs than Americans. Many also credit their labor unions for the size of their paychecks; union membership rates [link=http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=17]are higher[/link] in Canada.
Its possible that Canadian home prices may have some declines [link=http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/how-did-canadas-middle-class-get-so-rich/361053/]ahead of them[/link], which could reverse the relative positions of the middle class. But many of the other forces that have caused Canadian middle-class incomes to grow more quickly are less ephemeral. Young Canadian adults, for example, are now [link=http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2013%20%28eng%29–FINAL%2020%20June%202013.pdf]more educated[/link] than their American peers.
The Canadian middle class also seems to have an accurate impression of the differences between the rich in the two countries: The American rich still have a big lead over the Canadian rich, as the LIS income surveys and other data show.
If you have money in the United States, youre probably better off, said Kyle McGreal, 35, a general grocery warehouse worker who lives with his wife and two children in Caledonia, Ontario. But a lot of Americans are struggling.
Republican values of “cheaper, cheaper cheaper” have had a definite effect & not a good one on the USofA. And, as you will note by the anxiety in General Radiology, such efforts trickle up to physicians’ incomes if not stabilized. The big problem is not radiology incomes but PCP incomes and the shortage of PCP as a specialty. And no, this did not just suddenly come about due to the ACA.
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Quote from Frumious
Inconvenient Alda, to recall that the recession happened during Bush’s term & republicans have opposed any solution since in the fear it would boost Obama. Republicans have been very open about hoping to keep things depressed, too bad the alqueda republicans don’t read the true parts from their own side.
Those “socialist” Canadians have taken over the middle class territory republicans sold to the WalMarts.
[link=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html]http://www.nytimes.com/20…theyre-better-off.html[/link]
Yet, Ms. Mustachi added, I think people in the U.S. seem to struggle more.
Canadians have little doubt that they face less financial stress about medical costs than Americans. Many also credit their labor unions for the size of their paychecks; union membership rates [link=http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=17]are higher[/link] in Canada.
Its possible that Canadian home prices may have some declines [link=http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/how-did-canadas-middle-class-get-so-rich/361053/]ahead of them[/link], which could reverse the relative positions of the middle class. But many of the other forces that have caused Canadian middle-class incomes to grow more quickly are less ephemeral. Young Canadian adults, for example, are now [link=http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2013%20%28eng%29–FINAL%2020%20June%202013.pdf]more educated[/link] than their American peers.
The Canadian middle class also seems to have an accurate impression of the differences between the rich in the two countries: The American rich still have a big lead over the Canadian rich, as the LIS income surveys and other data show.
If you have money in the United States, youre probably better off, said Kyle McGreal, 35, a general grocery warehouse worker who lives with his wife and two children in Caledonia, Ontario. But a lot of Americans are struggling.Republican values of “cheaper, cheaper cheaper” have had a definite effect & not a good one on the USofA. And, as you will note by the anxiety in General Radiology, such efforts trickle up to physicians’ incomes if not stabilized. The big problem is not radiology incomes but PCP incomes and the shortage of PCP as a specialty. And no, this did not just suddenly come about due to the ACA.
Bandersnatch, where do you keep coming up with these lame cut n’ paste pieces of socialistic bovine excretions? Of course the Canadians would have “less financial stress about medical costs than Americans” since their access to healthcare is severely limited; therefore, they [b]don’t[/b] have to pay for something they don’t get. But we Americans[b] have[/b] to pay for something we don’t get – ACA obummercare! It costs us all whether we use it or not – got to care for that non-working lemo-crite voting base. -
Why would limited access to medical care reduce stress Bozo?
Your big red nose is getting in the way. -
Quote from Frumious
Why would limited access to medical care reduce stress Bozo?
Your big red nose is getting in the way.
Let me help you out here bandersnatch.
I remember when you previously indicated that you had come from some administrative position in healthcare; therefore, I would not expect you to understand the concept that “limited financial stress” is the result of not getting healthcare. You don’t pay for something you don’t get unless you are an American. -
Limited medical care can kill you. I suppose your cure for stress then is to die. Otherwise you make zero sense. Those who can’t get adequate medical care usually have a lot of stress.
Unless they die first.
Are you really a physician with that kind of cure? -
Quote from Point Man
Quote from Frumious
Why would limited access to medical care reduce stress Bozo?
Your big red nose is getting in the way.
Let me help you out here bandersnatch.
I remember when you previously indicated that you had come from some administrative position in healthcare; therefore, I would not expect you to understand the concept that “limited financial stress” is the result of not getting healthcare. You don’t pay for something you don’t get unless you are an American.
So now you’re saying that only America has an insurance industry?
Ever hear of Lloyds Of London?Or entitlements for the poor?!
Ever hear of J.R. Rowling? -
This is only just coming to light…….. ???? Explains the “Troll” label thrown around by right wing whack jobs – when anyone tries to say anything positive about the Great White North.
Canadian secondary education is definitely more rigorous. There is also more interest in global news.
Canadian (and Australian) economies are very resource based – whilst this has provided a cushion them from the worst of the liquidity crunch – manufacturing has taken a big hit.
Winter has truly sucked this year – no place is perfect………… -
As i recall, Canadians also score significantly higher than Americans on Step 1.
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The Takers = Red States
Federal assistance is a primary reason their taxes can be lower, because they are on the dole, AKA federal welfare.
[link=http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/]http://www.theatlantic.co…ich-are-takers/361668/[/link]
What the resulting map shows is that the most dependent states, as measured by the composite score, are Mississippi and New Mexico, each of which gets back about $3 in federal spending for every dollar they send to the federal treasury in taxes. Alabama and Louisiana are close behind.
If you look only at the first measurehow much the federal government spends per person in each state compared with the amount its citizens pay in federal income taxesother states stand out, particularly South Carolina: The Palmetto State receives $7.87 back from Washington for every $1 its citizens pay in federal tax.
[b]Its not just that some states are getting way more in return for their federal tax dollars, but the disproportionate amount of federal aid that some states receive allows them to keep their own taxes artificially low.[/b] That’s the argument Wallet Hub analysts make in their [link=http://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer/2416/]2014 Report on Best & Worst States to be a Taxpayer[/link].
The reddest states on that map at the topMississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Mainehave exceptionally high poverty rates and thus receive disproportionately large shares of federal dollars. Through a variety of social programs, the federal government disburses hundreds of billions of dollars each year to maintain a safety net intended to help the neediest among us. Consider, for example, the percentage of each states residents who get food stamps through the federal governments SNAP program.
If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, you might think it was those blue states, packed with damn hippie socialist liberals, sipping their lattes and providing free abortions for bored, horny teenagers. . . .
As it turns out, it is red states that are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that’s right. Red States the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes. They talk a good game, but stick Blue States with the bill.
So the REd States have the highest poverty levels & are the highest recipients of the hated federal support.
You’d think these people would want to learn how to fish instead of getting free fish rom the government.
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RED states receive more assistance? Is that true?
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Quote from JR888
RED states receive more assistance? Is that true?
Yes.
[link=http://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/]http://wallethub.com/edu/…deral-government/2700/[/link] -
[img]http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_reckoning/2012/10/non-payers-by-state.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg[/img]
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on this map it looks like Lake Erie and Lake Ontario are in the lowest 10%.
Quote from dergon
[image]http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_reckoning/2012/10/non-payers-by-state.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg[/image]
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Quote from Voxel77
We need to get Dems into both the white house and capitol hill.
You already have a White House full of dims, sorry “dems”, but you ain’t going to hold what you now have on Capitol Hill.
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We need Canadianism!
[link=http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/May-Day-May-Day-Instead-of-Communism-how-about-Canadianism.html]http://www.philly.com/phi…about-Canadianism.html[/link]
Let me be clear: Capitalism — in the current unchecked kleptocratic way that it’s carried out currently in the United States — sucks. But Communism — as it’s been practiced over the last century — is worse. I saw that first-hand when I traveled to the Soviet Union for a week at the end of 1979 on a bizarre student journalism junket, a trip in which I got to meet and spend time with the anti-Soviet Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, still a highlight of my life. many years later. What I saw that week was grey and depressing, with people working dreary make-work jobs. Most Communist regimes deny basic freedoms (including my favorite, freedom of the press) and more broadly it has failed as an economic system. China only became a world power when its “Communists” became totalitarian capitalists.
Socialism is more debatable — even [link=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/2012568342122448.html]American society has aspects of socialism today[/link], and I believe there are areas such as health care in which a single-payer system (cutting the profit margin out of who lives or dies) is preferable to what we have now., But when you look around the last 100 years or so of industrialized and now post-industrial society, you have to ask yourself what works, and the answer is clearly…fair capitalism, with equality not of outcome, but of opportunity.
Simply put, give the kid from North Philly and the kid from Lower Merion an equally good education…and then see which one becomes Steve Jobs.
What worked was [link=http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/introducing-this-blog/]America in the decades after World War I[/link]I — when labor unions were at their strongest and so was the Middle Class, when government policy was not geared toward the rich but toward regular folks, with VA mortgages and the GI Bill.
But what works today? Not Communism…but Canadianism. The other day, the New York Times and its new website the Upshot made its very first piece a look at how the U.S. middle class has fared against other nations — and it found that while [link=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html]our workers have lost ground[/link], dramatically, the middle-class is holding its own just across the northern border.
As always, personal choices matter, too — the story notes that Canada has more two-parent households, and that also helps. But it’s clear that earning a living wage — which in a capitalist society can only really come through collective bargaining — and a national health care system make a big difference, In America, the decline of the middle class began around 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s crushing of the air-traffic controllers strike started an open season on unions.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A stronger democracy — with less Big Money and less [link=http://articles.philly.com/2014-04-30/news/49497035_1_photo-id-law-voter-id-ruling-liberal-access]voter suppression[/link] — can lead to a living wage, even-better access to the health care than the gains that we’ve just made, and bargaining power that could revive the U.S. middle class. That would be something, but that’s not Communism. Call it Canadianism. I can smell the back bacon and Tim Horton’s donuts already, can’t you?
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Canadianism, for Pete’s sake. I don’t know the Canadian markets all that well but I actually thought the Canadian housing market was kind of bubbly like the US in 08. If you ever watch HGTV and see the prices it seems fairly expensive. So either their middle class must make a lot of loonies, or they might be way in debt, eh?
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Housing is a reason Canada is doing better than we & there has been questions whether Canada has a housing bubble. Nevertheless, when housing did burst in 2006-2008, Canada did not suffer anywhere near what we did & they, right now much healthier than we are economically. And speculation is even if their bubble does bust.
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There’s definitely some froth in the Canadian market fueled by low rates. It can’t go on forever. Also, iirc the 30 year fixed isn’t a common mortgage device in Canada and most housing works on ARMs … which could mean some real pain when interest rates start to bump up.
That said, the bulk of the piece above…. that Canadians are managing their society and economy in a way that is more fair and … in the long run .. better for the overall health of the country …. stands.
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Pew: [url=http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/]The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground:No longer the majority and falling behind financially[/url]
[image]http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2015/12/ST_2015-12-09_middle-class-01.png[/image]
After more than four decades of serving as the nations economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.
Over the same period… the nations aggregate household income has substantially shifted from middle-income to upper-income households, driven by the growing size of the upper-income tier and more rapid gains in income at the top. Fully 49% of U.S. aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970. The share accruing to middle-income households was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.
And middle-income Americans have fallen further behind financially in the new century. In 2014, the median income of these households was 4% less than in 2000. Moreover, because of the housing market crisis and the Great Recession of 2007-09, their median wealth (assets minus debts) fell by 28% from 2001 to 2013.
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Sounds like it’s time for Wal-Mart to have their Holiday fund-raiser for their associates where other associates can donate food and such so that all the associates can afford to have a Holiday meal.
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New ranking out showing the U.S. continues to decline. Canada BTW is ranked 7th.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/united-states-social-progress.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage]Were No. 28! And Dropping!
A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.[/link][i]This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.
The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than Americas.
The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action, Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. Its like were a developing country.[/i]
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[i]Michael Green, the C.E.O. of the group that puts out the Social Progress Index, notes that the coronavirus will affect health, longevity and education, with the impact particularly large in both the United States and Brazil. The equity and inclusiveness measured by the index seem to help protect societies from the virus, he said.
Societies that are inclusive, tolerant and better educated are better able to manage the pandemic, Green said.
The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index more than any country in the world is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.[/i]
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Why should this be a surprise over the last decade. In 2008 we had a Great Recession & in December 2008, Republicans planned to do everything to stop Obama and Democrats for improving the economy to get people out of the recession. They were explicit in stating they wanted no success for Obama & certainly no success that had their cooperating fingerprints on it.
Even the stimulus and solutions proposed by Bush & his Administration was opposed by Republicans once the results of the election was known.
On top of that we had corporations, specifically banks who started the recession with their hands out to reward their upper management with bonuses while laying off lower staff & keeping pay very low. Hoarding the money & not improving jobs and pay was how most private businesses behaved across the board for many getting government handouts.-
This sounds spot on. For whatever Trump maybe, congress is also wildly unpopular and largely useless at doing anything to improve the lives of ordinary people.
“[i]The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index more than any country in the world is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.”[/i]
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Quote from DICOM_Dan
This sounds spot on. For whatever Trump maybe, congress is also wildly unpopular and largely useless at doing anything to improve the lives of ordinary people.
“[i]The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index more than any country in the world is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.”[/i]
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Agreed. Congress has been terrible for a LONG time.
Too many career politicians.
Too much pork.
Too much pandering.
Not enough compromise.
And many other things.
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