Thread: The Vanishing American Middle-Class

I don't think this is just a US phenomenon. All around the world this is a common theme. I would speculate that the media's insistence that there is a growing middle class in 3rd world countries and in Asia are slightly deceptive as there seems to be no increase in standards of living that can not be equally matched with a huge increase in personal debt as well.

Obedient workers - people just smart enough to push paperwork and buttons, but dumb enough to not realise how much they are being shafted ...to paraphrase George Carlin, all enslaved by debt.

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I don't think this is just a US phenomenon. All around the world this is a common theme.

Agreed, in the West and (perhaps Japan).

Obedient workers - people just smart enough to push paperwork and buttons, but dumb enough to not realise how much they are being shafted ...to paraphrase George Carlin, all enslaved by debt.

Spot-on.

9 Of The Top 10 Occupations In America Pay An Average Wage Of Less Than $35,000 A Year

By Michael Snyder, on April 2nd, 2014

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a family to live a very comfortable middle class lifestyle in most cases. But now those days are long gone. In 2014, both parents are expected to work, and in many cases both of them have to get multiple jobs just in order to break even at the end of the month. The decline in the quality of our jobs is a huge reason for the implosion of the middle class in this country. You can't have a middle class without middle class jobs, and we have witnessed a multi-decade decline in middle class jobs in the United States. As long as this trend continues, the middle class is going to continue to shrink.

The following is a list of the most commonly held jobs in America according to the federal government. As you can see, 9 of the top 10 most commonly held occupations pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year...


Retail salespersons, 4.48 million workers earning $25,370
Cashiers 3.34 million workers earning $20,420
Food prep and serving staff, 3.02 million workers earning $18,880
General office clerk, 2.83 million working earning $29,990
Registered nurses, 2.66 million workers earning $68,910
Waiters and waitresses, 2.40 million workers earning $20,880
Customer service representatives, 2.39 million workers earning $33,370
Laborers, and freight and material movers, 2.28 million workers earning $26,690
Secretaries and admins (not legal or medical), 2.16 million workers earning $34,000
Janitors and cleaners (not maids), 2.10 million workers earning, $25,140


Overall, an astounding 59 percent of all American workers bring home less than $35,000 a year in wages.

So if you are going to make more than $35,000 this year, you are solidly in the upper half.

Entire:
9 Of The Top 10 Occupations In America Pay An Average Wage Of Less Than $35,000 A Year

Obedient workers - people just smart enough to push paperwork and buttons, but dumb enough to not realise how much they are being shafted ...to paraphrase George Carlin, all enslaved by debt.

I think more people realise they're being shafted, but feel powerless to do anything.

It is not just happening in America,, is it the future for us all one day.

Watch this brief clip. Scary.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Obedient workers - people just smart enough to push paperwork and buttons, but dumb enough to not realise how much they are being shafted ...to paraphrase George Carlin, all enslaved by debt.

I think more people realise they're being shafted, but feel powerless to do anything.

Too true, that powerlessness manifests itself as a sense of ennui. Stop compromising. Become part of a collective new vision. Much easier said than done, unfortunately. But it was done in the first third of the last century, with the consequences we all are aware of.

Originally Posted by barbaro

Watch this brief clip.

Inconvenient but not scary.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Originally Posted by barbaro

Watch this brief clip.

Inconvenient but not scary.

By "inconvenient" I assume you are alluding to the process of going through the men and women in blue (with the fake badges) when going in and outta the airport.

No.

I'm talkin' 'bout the job. Da job.

It is....scary.

One of the many reasons for the vanishing middle-class - or I should say, the future middle-class that will never exist: student loans.

Sure, don't get a Lib Arts degree, don't go to a private school, etc., And yes, going to Law school is a bad investment.

But the costs hit them from many sides: C of L, tuition, books, and the years it takes.

Every month that Gregory Zbylut pays $1,300 toward his law school loans is another month of not qualifying for a decent mortgage. Every payment toward their student loans is $900 Dr. Nida Degesys and her husband aren't putting in their retirement savings account.

They believe they'll eventually climb from debt and begin using their earnings to build assets rather than fill holes. But, like the roughly 37 million others in the U.S. saddled with $1 trillion in student debt, they may never catch up with wealthy peers who began life after college free from the burden.

The disparity, experts say, is contributing to the widening of the gap between rich and everyone else in the country.

"If you graduate with a B.A. or doctorate and you get the same job at the same place, you make the same amount of money," said William Elliott III, director of the Assets and Education Initiative at the University of Kansas. "But that money will actually mean less to you in the sense of accumulating assets in the long term."

Graduates who can immediately begin building equity in housing or stocks and bonds get more time to see their investments grow, while indebted graduates spend years paying principal and interest on loans. The standard student loan repayment schedule is 10 years but can be much longer.

The median 2009 net worth for a household without outstanding student debt was $117,700, nearly three times the $42,800 worth in a household with outstanding student debt, according to a report co-written by Elliott last November.

About 40 percent of households led by someone 35 or younger have student loan debt, a 2012 Pew Research Center analysis of government data found.

Allen Aston is one of the lucky ones, having landed a full academic and financial-need scholarship at Ohio State University. The 22-year-old software engineer from Columbus estimates it let him avoid about $100,000 in debt.

Without loans to repay, Aston is already contributing 6 percent of his salary to a retirement fund that is matched in part by his employer and doesn't have the same financial concerns his friends do. "I'm making the same money as them, but they have student loans they're paying back that I don't. So, it definitely seems noticeable," he said.

At the other end of the spectrum is Zbylut, an accountant-turned-attorney in Glendale, Calif. He's been chipping away at nearly $160,000 in student debt since graduating in 2005 from law school at Loyola University in Chicago. Now 48, the tax attorney estimates he could have $150,000 to $200,000 in a 401(k) had the money he's paid toward loans gone there.

"I'm sitting here in traffic. I've got a Mercedes behind me and an Audi in front of me and I'm thinking, 'What did they do that I didn't do?'" Zbylut said by cellphone from his Chevrolet. He's been turned down twice for the type of mortgage he needs to buy a home big enough for himself, the fiancee he would have married already if not for his debts and her 10-year-old son.

"I have more education and more degrees than my father, as does she than her parents, and yet our parents are better off than we are. What's wrong with this picture?" he said.

Student debt is the only kind of household debt that rose through the Great Recession and now totals more than either credit card or auto loan debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Both the number of borrowers and amount borrowed ballooned by 70 percent from 2004 to 2012.

Of the nearly 20 million Americans who attend college each year, about 12 million borrow, according to the Almanac of Higher Education. Estimates show that the average four-year graduate accumulates $26,000 to $29,000 in loans, and some leave college with six figures worth of debt.

The increases have been driven in part by rising tuition, resulting from reduced state funding and costlier campus facilities and amenities. Compounding the problem has been a trend toward merit-based, rather than need-based, grants as institutions seek to attract the higher-achieving students who will boost their standings.

"Because there's a strong correlation in this country between things like SAT scores or ACT scores and wealth or income, the (grant) money ends up going disproportionately to students from wealthier families" who tend to perform better on those tests, said Donald Heller, dean of the Michigan State University College of Education.

Those factors, along with stagnating family incomes and declining savings, have made student loans a much bigger part of funding higher education, Elliott said.

Harvard Business School's Michael Norton wonders whether greater public awareness of the widening wealth gap in the United States would hasten policy change. Norton conducted a 2011 survey that found that people tend to think wealth is more equally distributed than it is.

But with elected officials from President Barack Obama on down now talking about the wealth gap as an urgent public problem, a more complete picture seems to be emerging, he said.

"Both parties are now saying, perhaps inequality has gotten to the point where it's not fair when people don't have a chance to rise, and we need to do something about it," Norton said.

Targeting the soaring cost of higher education, Obama in August proposed the most sweeping changes to the federal student aid program in decades. His plan would link federal money to new college ratings and reward schools if they help low-income students, keep costs low and have large numbers of students earn degrees.

Lawmakers in Congress also are debating how to address the issue, including proposals to allow graduates with high-interest loans to refinance at lower rates.

The American Medical Student Association supports expanding the National Health Services Corps, which provides loan forgiveness in exchange for service in underserved areas.

Nida Degesys, AMSA's president, graduated in May 2013 from Northeast Ohio Medical University with about $180,000 in loans. The amount has already swelled with interest to about $220,000.

"There were times where this would make me stay up at night," Degesys said. "The principal alone is a problem, but the interest is staggering." Yet, as costly as medical school was, Degesys sees it as an investment in herself and her career, one she thinks will pay off with a higher earning potential.

College degrees can pay off. College graduates ages 25 to 32 working full time earn $45,500, about $17,500 more than their peers with just a high school diploma, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

Elliott says the country needs to re-think college financing options to bring debt down and graduation rates up.

"We can't," he said, "let debt hinder a whole generation of people from beginning to accumulate wealth soon after graduating college."

$1 Trillion Student Loan Debt Widens US Wealth Gap - ABC News

I don't even know what middle class means anymore. What combination of salary, debt and possessions get you into the group?

Bill Maher was on this topic again on Friday on his show.

America's Vanishing Middle Class


America is a mess but of course not for that group who control land and wealth. Fifty years ago America's largest employer payed on average the equivalent of $50 an hour to its employees; Today's largest employer is paying $7 a hour.

America needs a revolution. The world needs a revolution. And the change doesn't have to come by peace in my view because those who always have controled the power and assets have never never played by the rules, and because all lives and especially living in a world based on truth is much more important than any one person's or group's wealth.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

I don't even know what middle class means anymore. What combination of salary, debt and possessions get you into the group?

There has never been a complete or clear definition in the US.

Perhaps in the 1950s and up to the mid 1960s in recent American history it was more clear.

But in general, it's a very loose definition.

As I've mentioned before most Americans are working-class. Office workers, carpenters, soldiers, painters, teachers, salesman, etc. But they refer to themselves as "middle-class." It is a mentality that makes people feel good and "middle class" is what is perpetuated in the culture and media. Even upper-middle class Americans refer often refer to themselves as "middle class."

The recent Obama vs. Romney Presidential debate had them discussing how to help the "middle class," but it was really the working class they were referring to.

Originally Posted by barbaro

student loans.

We had a pundit in NZ saying that many student loan debtors would be better off if they declared themselves to be bankrupt.

Originally Posted by Munted

Originally Posted by barbaro

student loans.

We had a pundit in NZ saying that many student loan debtors would be better off if they declared themselves to be bankrupt.

But the US is not NZ.

It cannot be done in the USA.

If only they could sue for breach of promise...

A hole that they will never be able to dig out of.

98% Of All Consumer Credit In Past Year Was Student And Car Loans

98% Of All Consumer Credit In Past Year Was Student And Car Loans | Zero Hedge

Debts are a form of slavery. the earlier one is indebted, the better she/he will obey to the rules of society.

It was an educated and productive middle class that made America what it is/was- not the bluddy 'wild west', or a handful of self serving rich people seeking adulation and further riches. It's a shame to see it all go to waste, sabotaged by the very same people who as a class are the biggest beneficiaries of American success to date. But the vigour has moved elsewhere now.

bringing back strong unions and tying the minimum wage to inflation will go a long way to revitalizing the middle class in the US.

^ We must first smash the ruling class. A war is eminent..

What part do you plan to play in that war, Snubby?

Originally Posted by bsnub

^ We must first smash the ruling class. A war is eminent..

As I said, we need a revolution.

Agree with Ray, bsnub and Warrior.

Remember the mainstream media talking about the "housing recovery" or "rebound" over the last couple of years. Since the '08 downturn the majority of buyers of RE single family housing have been investors. --barbaro

Real Estate Investors Driving U.S. Housing Rebound

- Low prices and higher rents attracting investors into the U.S. housing market

- Investors account for one-in-five resales

- Tailwind could persist into 2015

ORLANDO, FLORIDA--(Marketwired - July 12, 2013) - Investors have spiced up the U.S. housing recovery - accounting for approximately one-in-five resale transactions - and could remain a driving force for some time despite higher mortgage rates, according to a feature report published today by BMO Economics.

"Investors are paying cash, lured by rising rents and low prices, which explains why sales are rising even as mortgage purchase applications have remained near 15-year lows," said Sal Guatieri, Senior Economist, BMO Capital Markets. "Low borrowing costs have led other investors into the real estate market."

Entire: Real Estate Investors Driving U.S. Housing Rebound



Wednesday Oct302013


The Smart Money Denies They’re The Smart Money As They Franticly Sell Their Crown Jewels Before The Bubble Blows Up

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

“It’s a great time to sell,” mused Anthony Breault, senior real estate investment officer at Oregon’s state pension fund.
And Blackstone Group, the world’s largest “alternative investment” firm, is doing exactly that, feverishly, relentlessly, hand over fist, at peak valuations, cashing out, maximizing its profits. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.

On the front burner: Brixmor Property, a REIT that owns 522 shopping centers, mostly neighborhood affairs anchored by grocery stores. Its IPO just priced at $20 a share, valuing it at about $6 billion – almost six times 2012 revenues of $1.17 billion. It starts trading on Wednesday. Blackstone will still own 73% of the common stock after the IPO, so the shares need to do well for a while before it can sell them. But it won’t be easy: last year, the REIT lost $61.4 million.

Another crown jewel Blackstone is selling: Hilton Hotels, which filed for a "much anticipated IPO" in September, as the Wall Street Journal called it in its way of hyping IPOs. It could be the largest real-estate IPO this year, and the largest hotel IPO ever. The roadshow might begin early December. Blackstone acquired it in 2007 with over $26 billion in debt. Its shares will be dumped at a hilariously inflated price while the Fed is still printing $85 billion a month to make that feat possible [for a scathing and entertaining analysis of the Hilton LBO, read David Stockman's..... Bernanke’s (Untough) Love Child: The $27 Billion Affair At The Hilton].

Next is La Quinta. Blackstone has already received a number of bids for the hotel chain, with a final round of bids expected in the next few weeks – though it might still get rid of it through an IPO if it brings more money that way.

Then there is Extended Stay America, now getting groomed to be slipped into your portfolio as well. One heck of a double-dip saga. Blackstone first bought it in 2004 for $3.1 billion, most of it funded with debt. In June 2007, at the peak of the prior credit bubble, Blackstone sold that over-indebted jewel for $8 billion. The buyer, Lightstone, had obtained $7.4 billion in funding from Wachovia, Bear Stearns, Citi, and other luminaries. “By then the leveraged lending market had finally gone berserk," Stockman explains.

Entire: Testosterone Pit - Home - The Smart Money Denies They