Even Yahoo! gets it: The U.S. middle class is getting murdered
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Even Yahoo! gets it: The U.S. middle class is getting murdered
Yahoo! is trying to be a little more edgy these days (you can't party like it's 1999 forever) but still I was surprised when I went to their homepage for main thing I still go there for -- the baseball scores -- and saw this was the main headline:
Why the middle class is radically shrinking
The U.S. is in serious danger of losing its once prosperous middle class.
The relatively short article seems to blame free trade (a pet peeve for some breeds of liberals) and over-regulation of small business (a mostly conservative bete noir) and the disparity between low-wage labor overseas and U.S. production costs (not really an ideological problem...nor one that anyone has proposed a feasible way to solve). It enumerates 22 signs of the apocalypse, including:
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
I don't want to speculate, but the impact of these conditions lasting for a few more years...can't be good. It's funny -- I have vague recollections from way back in grade school that it was believed that people might stop making things as early as the 21st Century (although it would because of robots, not Chinese people) but no one seemed to think it would be a problem -- that would we just be flying around with our jet packs and eating meals-in-a-pill and chasing our robot dogs on a treadmill.
People weren't supposed to be angry. Weird.
Well, maybe if we as Americans would turn our ingenuity to making robots, jet packs, and other similarly high-value items then maybe we wouldn't be having to compete with the Chinese to see who can make the cool stuff of last century more cheaply. Of course, that's going to require a better-educated and more highly skilled workforce than our educational system is currently turning out. NYT reported last month that high-skill manufacturing job openings at several plants in Ohio are going begging. Don't pull a Corbett on me and ask which plants. Go read the article yourself.— Billy Ray Winthorpe- I wonder if anyone will realize that the way businesses hire in the U.S. is also destroying the middle class. Businesses want experience but won't hire people to give them it. It's all a way to make the businesses and the millionaires that own them more money. The end game of conservative politics is back to the early America of two classes.— HandNik
- Many like to blame the union movement for demanding (HORRORS) too many benefits for their workers, driving businesses to seek cheap labor elsewhere. But the irony is that while the union created middle class is shrinking along with collective bargaining, that same labor movement is shifting overseas, as those cheap Chinese workers start demanding higher wages. If you want a better educated middle class, get rid of NCLB and its dumbed down test driven curriculum and start emphasizing science and technology again along with critical and creative thinking. AND BUY AMERICAN.— Magistra
- Don't worry, Will. When the price of oil goes through the roof, as it will, manufacturing will come back to our shores.— Wednesday
Will...You forgot the part where it was mentioned that an executives salary compared to a worker's salary in the 50's was 20-1 and now its 500-1.
Comment removed.- Word to Will.....duh— catwalks
- The wages in china and other parts of asia will start to rise as their countries become wealthier. Combine that with US wages dropping, and it'll become more attractive to manufacture here.— RG
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- Let's remember, "buy American" means nothing if the end product is only assembled here.— Marchmadness
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- Handnik, WHAT??? "Businesses want experience but won't hire people to give them it." Ummm, you are missing a few words there. I'll fix: "Businesses want experience, but won't hire INEXPERIENCED people AND PAY THEM OUTRAGEOUS SALARIES to give them it". Actually, Handnik, your overall analysis of the hiring atmosphere is completely incorrect. First, we are in a phase where businesses are CUTTING STAFF. Thus, NOT HIRING. Secondly, people are starting to work MUCH LONGER, well into their 60's, if not their 70's, and this is creating competition for the 20somethings that are coming out of college. This elder generation is willing to work for less, since they typically don't have the same burdens that 30-50 year olds have (kids, mortgage, college, etc). Which would you rather pay $30,000-$40,000 a year, a college kid with zero experience, or a 65 year old with 40 years of experience? Complicating this again, is the foreign competition, and the globalization trend. Why hire people in the US when you can get someone in the Philippines for 1/25th the cost. Since direct labor is generally one of the largest pieces of the cost of goods companies in the US sell, companies must do everything they can to minimize that so their prices are competitive in the marketplace. If they don't, they die. You should look at Spain, France, and Italy, where YOU CAN'T GET HIRED because the labor unions have made it impossible to FIRE anyone. Once again, a brilliant liberal idea that no one thought about the consequences of...— IggleFan68
- Yeah, it all has to do with illegal immigration, that's the sole root of the disappearing middle class. LOL. Some of you are utterly brain dead.— RightWingHypocrite
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