Welcome to the party, Yahoo. I’ve been saying this for years.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
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What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are “less attractive” than ever.
And when the middle class becomes extinct, we become a third world nation. Then you’ll likely either see a revolution or mass exodus.
We haven’t had a middle class since the plastic white guys lowered about 1 percent of our country’s taxes. When the righties turned Jesus Freak and totally re-directed their fiscal conservatism to spend spend spend, and lowering the richest folks taxes all along the way, was the beginning of the end of the middle class.
I’m still in it, but at the bottom the way I see it. I’m seeing every day some middle class folks, and I’ve seen some upper middle folks come down to my level. As a whole all across the nation I can see it happening, though. NC was textiles…and that left a long time ago. The state helped the workers get retrained, and a lot of them got pretty good jobs. Unemployment is pretty high here in rural areas, and the state is in the red bigtime. NC’s constitution says no debt spending, so the state will probably privatize alcohol sales and legalize video poker (and other games) to raise income. As for the middle class…still in some places, but probably not others.
well for years 1 party has done everything they can to help the rich and trickle down.
the other has given to the poor from other peoples money.
both package it, saying it is for the good of all ... selling this crap to the middle class, the ones that vote.
the middle class is affected by laws more than anyone, we fund everything. neither party gives a crap about the middle, which is so weird since they are the ones that vote with the largest block. i guess good for them for selling you losers on their plans and then voting for them.
There are so many good quotes from the column, hard to pick just one. This is another that jumped out at me:
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
When I hear politicians brag about “I’ve created this many jobs” or “100,000 jobs were created during my term” or whatever, I always ask “what kind of jobs were created under you? Were they mostly professional, upper five-figures? Or were they mostly forklift drivers and burger flippers? Are you counting the employment of illegal immigrants by American construction and landscape companies in your numbers? Due to their utter lack of specifics, I always assumed the latter. The above quote vindicates my suspicions.
Those Bush tax cuts for the weathly really did trickle down to cause a recession.
I know how much you want to bash the tax cuts that went to everyone, but make arguements with some merit. The recession was caused by the real estate crash.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Please think for yourself, don’t watch Fox News or their allies (Breitbart, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc.)
Can you explain how this caused the recession, which was the point you made?
1. Tax cuts for the people who didn’t need it. These tax cuts did not stimulate the economy. Whatever best Bush had was essentially a bubble, not real.
2. The market did not correct itself when these tax cuts happened.
3. Deficit spending with unpaid programs (2001& 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars)
You can literally put a mirror on the economic policies that happened before the Great Depression in the Roaring 20’s to what happened in the 2000’s to now. The one thing is constant the parties and ideologies.
Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Bush all followed the Washington Consensus. That economic policy was aided by the Republican Congress from 1994-2006 was instrumental in what caused this disaster.
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Please think for yourself, don’t watch Fox News or their allies (Breitbart, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc.)
Can you explain how this caused the recession, which was the point you made?
1. Tax cuts for the people who didn’t need it. These tax cuts did not stimulate the economy. Whatever best Bush had was essentially a bubble, not real.
2. The market did not correct itself when these tax cuts happened.
3. Deficit spending with unpaid programs (2001& 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars)
You can literally put a mirror on the economic policies that happened before the Great Depression in the Roaring 20’s to what happened in the 2000’s to now. The one thing is constant the parties and ideologies.
Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Bush all followed the Washington Consensus. That economic policy was aided by the Republican Congress from 1994-2006 was instrumental in what caused this disaster.
1. Tax cuts for the people who didn’t need it. These tax cuts did not stimulate the economy. Whatever best Bush had was essentially a bubble, not real.
The majority of the tax cuts you refer to as for people that do not need it are for small businesses, who employ the majority of the people in this country. Those people file under their personal income tax versus a corporate tax. The idea of taxing the rich falls disproportionately on small businesses that are the greatest job resource in the country.
The unemployment rate began to climb as the result of the crash of the .com bubble (what Clinton had that he gets credit for) along with 9/11. The second round of tax cuts were passsed in 2003, and that point, unemployment was at 6.0. It went down every year after that to 5.5, 5.1, 4.6, 4.6 before it began to climb in 2008 to 5.8 with the collapse of the financial industry and real estate markets. Obama passed the stimulus which was to prevent it from going above 8%, which it quickly did.
2. The market did not correct itself when these tax cuts happened.
What market are you referring to, the stock market that reached its record high?
3. Deficit spending with unpaid programs (2001& 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars)
The deficit spending is a problem; I agree. Why then should we support the acceleration of deficit spending? The recession was caused primarily by failure of the private markets. It’s funny that you point out that deficit spending caused it, and then support Obama using deficit spending to fix it. Can you explain that?
Recessions that border on Depressions are not caused by one singular thing. It was a decade-long myriad of crap that brought this on. IMO this “Recession” has been the culmination of multiple screw-jobs by Corporate American and our beloved government that’s been going on for a long, long time.
You are correct that there was more than one element involved. The tax cuts would be pretty low on the list which was my point.
Please think for yourself, don’t watch Fox News or their allies (Breitbart, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc.)
Can you explain how this caused the recession, which was the point you made?
1. Tax cuts for the people who didn’t need it. These tax cuts did not stimulate the economy. Whatever best Bush had was essentially a bubble, not real.
2. The market did not correct itself when these tax cuts happened.
3. Deficit spending with unpaid programs (2001& 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars)
You can literally put a mirror on the economic policies that happened before the Great Depression in the Roaring 20’s to what happened in the 2000’s to now. The one thing is constant the parties and ideologies.
Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Bush all followed the Washington Consensus. That economic policy was aided by the Republican Congress from 1994-2006 was instrumental in what caused this disaster.
1. Tax cuts for the people who didn’t need it. These tax cuts did not stimulate the economy. Whatever best Bush had was essentially a bubble, not real.
The majority of the tax cuts you refer to as for people that do not need it are for small businesses, who employ the majority of the people in this country. Those people file under their personal income tax versus a corporate tax. The idea of taxing the rich falls disproportionately on small businesses that are the greatest job resource in the country.
The unemployment rate began to climb as the result of the crash of the .com bubble (what Clinton had that he gets credit for) along with 9/11. The second round of tax cuts were passsed in 2003, and that point, unemployment was at 6.0. It went down every year after that to 5.5, 5.1, 4.6, 4.6 before it began to climb in 2008 to 5.8 with the collapse of the financial industry and real estate markets. Obama passed the stimulus which was to prevent it from going above 8%, which it quickly did.
2. The market did not correct itself when these tax cuts happened.
What market are you referring to, the stock market that reached its record high?
3. Deficit spending with unpaid programs (2001& 2003 Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars)
The deficit spending is a problem; I agree. Why then should we support the acceleration of deficit spending? The recession was caused primarily by failure of the private markets. It’s funny that you point out that deficit spending caused it, and then support Obama using deficit spending to fix it. Can you explain that?
You need accelerated deficit spending because you do not want a total collapse. If we had a recession along with more tax cuts, spending freezes that makes the situation worse.
Stock markets reaching record highs under Bush are irrelevant because the stock market lower than when got Obama there, even with the pro-business Washington Consensus economic policy.
Tax cuts don’t solve everything, the top 2% hoarding everything hurts the economy. I’d rather have 9% unemployment than 18-20% what it could have been.
I said unpaid deficit spending, like the Bush Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Iraq/Afghanistan Wars.
We need deficit spending to get out of this because Wall Street caused it (Washington Consensus) and does not want to participate in the mess they made. That’s why we need to deficit spend to get out of this.
The Keynesian economics approach will once again rescue the Washington Consensus. It worked in the 1930’s for the collapse of the 1929 with policies of the 1920’s. This approach will once again work in the 2010’s against the policies from 1980’s to 2008.
You cannot blame Obama on the collapse when you blame Clinton in the early 2000’s. Of course facts are irrelevant to conservatives see Iraq war.
