Discussion on Middle Class

[PoAT.PaN]

Classes have been apart of culture for thousands of years. For most of that time, you could envision classes as a pyramid. If you think of it interms of mechanical stability, a pyramid is a stable structure because the base is wide. In modern times, the classes are more like a diamond where there are relatively few rich and poor and a large middle class. Mechanically this is quite unstable as the base is narrow. Why has it taken until the 20th century for the middle class to prosper? Is this just a transient phase? Is there a reason why the pyramid of classes reigned for so long?

 

[trenchfoot]

Industrial Revolution and the subsequent rise of the Unions created the middle class...a very strong and prosperous middle class that is now being assaulted and "put in it's proper place with the poor" so the conglomerates can position themselves to be more competitive. It's happening now, where, incredulously, the propagandists from the right have got the middle class destroying itself from within by having a chunk of it work against its own best interests.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

It's happening now, where, incredulously, the propagandists from the right have got the middle class destroying itself from within by having a chunk of it work against its own best interests.

You might call it the "Joe the Moronic Plumber Effect" or the "Lure of the Christian Taliban Effect".

Middle class Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by free market dogmatism that they've lost any sense of class identity. The wealthy, of course, aren't that stupid and understand how to wage class warfare.

A couple days ago I heard an NPR report about how the Republicans wanted to cut funding for OSHA. That is consistent with our nation's transformation into a third world country. Third world countries don't have OSHAs.

 

[Phokus]

Classes have been apart of culture for thousands of years. For most of that time, you could envision classes as a pyramid. If you think of it interms of mechanical stability, a pyramid is a stable structure because the base is wide. In modern times, the classes are more like a diamond where there are relatively few rich and poor and a large middle class. Mechanically this is quite unstable as the base is narrow. Why has it taken until the 20th century for the middle class to prosper? Is this just a transient phase? Is there a reason why the pyramid of classes reigned for so long?

The strength and size of the middle class post ww2 was sort of an anomaly. America had the advantage of a war ravaged Europe/Asia that didn't compete with us. It's no coincidence that once they came back from the stone age and rebuilt their industries/infrastructure that middle class jobs were eliminated and median worker prosperity stopped rising and stagnated.

 

[Macamus Prime]

The middle class is screwed.

The rich dangle the promise of rewarding hard work in front of the middle class, like a carrot on a stick; Reganomics and Trickle Down Economics. Salaries have not increased for the past 30 years; http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelo...s-show-growing-rich-poor-gap#mwpphu-post-form

The dodge was that you don't increase taxes on the wealthy, because they will create jobs and thus redistribute their wealth. That never happened, to the scale it was originally proposed.

Instead, the rich moved jobs over seas.

When the poor/middle class complain about the lack of jobs, the Union "issue" is brought up. An American, not wanting to work for $1 a day at 12 hours a day for 6 days, is considered lazy and over demanding.

And, the rich person's efforts in exploiting overseas governments and people is OK, since they are doing their best to maximize profits, under their Capitalist ventures. And, that's fine, because they will use the additional profits to create more jobs in America. Well, that is the "arguement", but, clearly that hasn't happened for the past 30 years.

Even with all these profits pouring in from the cheap labor it costs to make crap for the US (and world) to buy, the rich STILL raise prices. So, they:
1) do not want to create jobs
2) continue to raise prices
3) establish the false claim (for 30 years) they want to redistribute their wealth (to avoid being taxed higher), all the while they dangle a carrot in everyone's face about how they can become rich too.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Salaries have not increased for the past 30 years

Really, my salary has tripled in the last 20 years.

 

[ProfJohn]

Can someone explain to me how raising taxes on the rich will bring the middle class back, thanks.

 

[wuliheron]

Classes have been apart of culture for thousands of years. For most of that time, you could envision classes as a pyramid. If you think of it interms of mechanical stability, a pyramid is a stable structure because the base is wide. In modern times, the classes are more like a diamond where there are relatively few rich and poor and a large middle class. Mechanically this is quite unstable as the base is narrow. Why has it taken until the 20th century for the middle class to prosper? Is this just a transient phase? Is there a reason why the pyramid of classes reigned for so long?

The ancient Romans used educated slaves from Greece and that worked fine when less then 2% of the population could read and there weren't that many jobs requiring an education. Things began to slowly change with the industrial revolution, but it really wasn't until the 1920s when "Big Science" came on the scene that it took off like a rocket and the large modern middle class was born. That was when industries started investing heavily in research and making things like cars, radios, washing machines, etc. for the masses.

All that research and production produced a demand for skilled labor and education that became self-sustaining. To put this into perspective when Einstein went to school maybe 2% of the population had a college education. That's certainly a big improvement over the Romans, but still nothing to brag about. Today 33% of the US has a college degree, 60% have some amount of higher education, and virtually all the rest have specific skills.

No, this is not a transient phase and yes there are countless reasons for why it took so long for anyone to create a huge middle class. It was the equivalent of going from a hunter-gather society to an agricultural one. A huge change that is still in its infancy and still sending shock waves around the world. Not just economic shock waves, but political, cultural, and environmental shock waves that may take centuries to work out.

 

[Macamus Prime]

Really, my salary has tripled in the last 20 years.

Which means that link I have in my post is just a big lie.

Thanks for clearing that up!! All is well, everyone back to work.

 

[KGB]

Really, my salary has tripled in the last 20 years.

Anecdotal eveidence is always the best.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Which means that link I have in my post is just a big lie.

Thanks for clearing that up!! All is well, everyone back to work.

Maybe I hang around a different crowd as most everyone I know has averaged 2.5% to 3.5% salary increases over the last 20 years.

The minimum wage has almost doubled in the same time frame.

 

[PoAT.PaN]

Can the current class distribution maintain the way it is without there being consecutively larger populations in each lower bracket?

@Londo_Jowo, is that a net salary increase or a nominal one? If it's nominal then your purchasing power really wouldn't have changed due to inflation and in fact may have gone down.

 

[werepossum]

The strength and size of the middle class post ww2 was sort of an anomaly. America had the advantage of a war ravaged Europe/Asia that didn't compete with us. It's no coincidence that once they came back from the stone age and rebuilt their industries/infrastructure that middle class jobs were eliminated and median worker prosperity stopped rising and stagnated.

Exactly right. Our meteoric rise in middle class prosperity was always doomed to stagnation once Europe and Asia recovered from the war. However - illegal immigration (increasing pool of labor) & out-sourcing (increasing pool of labor) have greatly exacerbated this situation. Were it only Old World and New World countries (together with economically comparable nations elsewhere) competing against each other, then prosperity would still increase due to innovation and automation, just more slowly than before. However, by incorporating the poor around the world, and by minimizing the costs of doing so by removing trade and technology transfer barriers, we've made it possible to increase our society's wealth without pressure on capital and resource owners to share that wealth.

One party thinks capital and resource owners are entitled to whatever they can get world wide and government should just get out of their way. The other party feels that capital and resource owners should be punished domestically by government with high taxes and stronger unions, ignoring that this will only increase pressures to move more jobs off shore. Both positions suck ass.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Really, my salary has tripled in the last 20 years.

Which means that link I have in my post is just a big lie.

Thanks for clearing that up!! All is well, everyone back to work.

Uncle Sam paid me $14K when I got out of school.
Raytheon paid me $21K three years later.

25 years later I hit 3X that salary
10 years past that, my salary is well above 4x that value.

Trickle down, hard work, etc.:thumbsup:

 

[drebo]

A middle class that is dependent upon the actions of the government is not a middle class.

A middle class is a class of largely self-sufficient families, that rely on nothing more than their own incomes to keep their sub-urban, picket-fence lifestyle. They don't generally own more than one home, they don't own fancy, exotic cars, and they don't go on lavish, extravegant vacations, though they can occasionally cram the kids into the minivan and head down to Disneyland. All through the work of their own hands.

The instant that family relies on the government to make any part of their lifestyle possible, they are no longer middle class. Whether that be by the government mandating that they be given a job or by the government mandating that they be given a house, a car, and 5 year-round passes to Disneyland. Dependence upon the government automatically precludes a person/family/whatever from being middle class.

Unions, big businesses, the left, the right...they're not interested in preserving the real Middle Class, as it has traditionally been and as I have described it above. The goal of all government figures is to destroy the traditional Middle Class and replace them with their own "middle class" which is entirely dependent upon them, for job, for gas, for money, and, indeed, for thinking.

The Middle Class is dangerous to government. They have property they own without levy or lein. They have thought enough to acquire that property. They have wit enough to bring that property to bear in a confrontation. The American Revolution would not have happened if the colonists had been given their land, had homes built for them, and pittance money sent across the Atlantic. The Middle Class will ever be the mortal enemy for authoritarian rule, not to mention socialist ideology (the idea that a person can be sufficient in his own right is directly contradictory to socialist dogma, but that's another post).

Think about it...over the past decade, the words out of Washington are less about how we can help ourselves and more about how the government says we should live our lives. And yet we lap it up because "we need the government to provide for us...our jobs, our homes, our cars, our opinions." That's not middle class.

The true middle class in America is all but dead, and unless people wake the fuck up and start taking responsibility for their own lives again, we will be stuck with the oligarchy. There will be rich and poor. Nothing in the middle. Oh, quality of life may not suffer for 20-30 years, but make no mistake...those houses, cars, and Disneyland tickets will have a price and the government will come to collect, sooner or later. When they do, it sure as shit won't be the rich paying the price. It'll be you and me and all of the other "middle class" who basked in our wonderful government-given homes and blissful, carefree ignorance as the government told us what to eat, when to sleep, where to walk, and how to think.

 

[ProfJohn]

Can the current class distribution maintain the way it is without there being consecutively larger populations in each lower bracket?

@Londo_Jowo, is that a net salary increase or a nominal one? If it's nominal then your purchasing power really wouldn't have changed due to inflation and in fact may have gone down.

The purchasing power of the average American has gone through the roof in the past 30 years.

Just look around your house at all the stuff you own and compare it to what you had growing up.

The life style we live today is 100% better than what we were living with 30 years ago. Even the poor have multiple tvs and air conditioning etc etc.

 

[Steeplerot]

It's no coincidence that once they came back from the stone age and rebuilt their industries/infrastructure that middle class jobs were eliminated and median worker prosperity stopped rising and stagnated.

This is a exaggeration really, the "golden era" of high wages and security for the middle class was 50s to mid-early 70s in USA.

Europe was bombed out but still strong at the end of the war and came back quick.
By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state of the Marshall Plan had surpassed pre-war levels; for all recipients, output in 1951 was 35% higher than in 1938

The problem is we were only helping about 1/3 of Europe until we cut them off in 52. To say that the boom era was because of supporting Europe's post-war economy is false really once you start the 1950s. Do not forget the huge debt accumulated actually mobilizing and projecting our vast forces across Europe, the pacific and the world pretty much. That was not cheap, FDR set up and promoted the hell out of War Bonds, rationing and huge recycle programs in his last years so the effort wouldn't stagnate our economy post war.


Sure the Marshall Plan helped our economy some, but then we lost a lot of trade partners over there to the iron curtain, those states were stalins problem. So its a really sketchy generalization to make.

Seems more like the US was not putting up with corporate parasite class and cracked down on their games since FDR, the crony capitalist corruption made it's way back into the economy over time unfortunately once the crisis of the depression and WW2 mobilization subsided and the military industrial complex starting running (fleecing?) the economy (some would say) again.

 

[drebo]

The life style we live today is 100% better than what we were living with 30 years ago. Even the poor have multiple tvs and air conditioning etc etc.

But those aren't luxuries anymore, remember? They're rights. As such, everyone, no matter how poor, should have them.

That's what we're told, anyway.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

The 'shape' of the class structure is more like a hour glass. The middle class that supported one working parent, in a non professional job, being able to own his own home and, support a wife and four children, no longer exists.

 

[dmcowen674]

Can someone explain to me how raising taxes on the rich will bring the middle class back, thanks.

It won't but it will help the poor blokes feel better.

 

[dmcowen674]

The purchasing power of the average American has gone through the roof in the past 30 years.

Just look around your house at all the stuff you own and compare it to what you had growing up.

The life style we live today is 100% better than what we were living with 30 years ago. Even the poor have multiple tvs and air conditioning etc etc.

You're on some serious drugs.

Most people can't afford TV service much less have multiple TVs anymore.
Also can't afford the electric bill to run air conditioning.

Only the wealthy can afford such things which obviously you are wealthy, you should stop posting what you know nothing about and have no experience with.

 

[dmcowen674]

Uncle Sam paid me $14K when I got out of school.
Raytheon paid me $21K three years later.

25 years later I hit 3X that salary
10 years past that, my salary is well above 4x that value.

Trickle down, hard work, etc.:thumbsup:

Explains a lot.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Uncle Sam paid me $14K when I got out of school.
Raytheon paid me $21K three years later.

25 years later I hit 3X that salary
10 years past that, my salary is well above 4x that value.

Trickle down, hard work, etc.:thumbsup:

I'd say in the order of things, that makes you an outlier greater than six sigma.

 

[Zebo]

Justification for elites and social hierarchy has always been with us, in the past they called it Divine Rights of Kings, today it's called "Economics." No matter - they have nothing we don't give em - it's all an abstraction. Americans have decided to buy into the cheap labor efficient marketplace the shill economists pimped that the same ole leisure class paid for and now they will pay for not thinking. It's normal. Every 80 years or so Americans need starvation to begin to think again.

 

[Zebo]

The purchasing power of the average American has gone through the roof in the past 30 years.

Just look around your house at all the stuff you own and compare it to what you had growing up.

The life style we live today is 100% better than what we were living with 30 years ago. Even the poor have multiple tvs and air conditioning etc etc.

So has debt to mask their non ownership (save a few). From 7 trillion to about 60 trillion. Just wait until govt and the FED can no longer inject 4-5 trillion of funny money in economy anymore. It's having no positive effect now other sustainability and getting negative via jacking commodities through the roof strangling the middle. It will collapse eventually taking middle class with it and all property will be owned by a small # of elite. Small business will all fail too since they rely on healthy middle class for the most part.

Life is not better. In the past a single HS educated job could raise as family in a home and pay it off. Few if any can do that today.