Submitted by: Donald Hank
How does an America with no middle class look like? Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects top two jobs for the next decade will pay roughly $20,000 a year. Approval rating of Congress at 10 percent. In comparison, Americans approved of BP’s handling of the Gulf oil crisis at a 16 percent rate. A strong middle class has been at the core of what has been promoted as the American Dream. How would America look like if the middle class simply vanished? We may not need to wait too long at the current rate since we are quickly siphoning people off the middle class and throwing them into lower income brackets. The vast majority of Americans do not buy into the propaganda promoted on the tightly controlled media outlets. In fact, the latest Congressional job approval numbers are at a record low of 10 percent according to Gallup. To put this low figure in perspective 16 percent of Americans approved of how BP handled the catastrophic Gulf oil spill at the peak of the blowout. This low Congressional approval is all coming during a supposed economic recovery where 46,000,000 Americans receive a monthly charge to their debit card for food assistance. Even government figures show the big job growth sectors of the next decade to be in low paying fields. What would America look like without a middle class? The era of the poor young worker The recession has hit all groups hard but the deepest impact has been on young Americans. Take a look at wages for young high school graduates:  Source: Economic Policy Institute The path is rather clear. High school only graduates since the 1970s have seen their wages go steadily down. Since the bulk of the workforce comes from this sector, it makes total sense that the average per capita income would be $25,000:  This seems rather stunning that in the most prosperous nation in the world wages are actually going down or sideways for most Americans. So many young Americans have caught onto the trend. A high school diploma isn’t enough to be competitive. Many decided to take on massive debt and go to college. As we have discussed, higher education is in a massive bubble and the return on investment for college graduates may have peaked out overall:  Since the year 2000 college graduates wages for both men and women between the ages of 23 and 29 has moved consistently lower. Since some of the better paying jobs are in STEM fields, those that go to for-profit institutions and pickup degrees in random disciplines not only find themselves with a degree that doesn’t aid in landing a job, but are now in massive amounts of debt which is hard to get rid of, even in bankruptcy. Read the rest at My Budget 360  |
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