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Pew Study Reveals The Real Problem With Our Economy
Dave Cohen / Decline of the Empire
Better late than never, right?
How many fucking times have I said on this blog that the long-term destruction of the middle class (as measured flat or shrinking incomes and rising debt levels) is a principle reason why this economy is dead in the water? Too many times to easily count. How many times have I talked about the fact that all the growth & and income gains over the last 30 years have accrued to the wealthy, who are getting wealthier nearly all the time? Ditto.
And now Yahoo Finance’s Daily Ticker is running the story The Middle Class Is Broke: Pew Study Reveals Real Problem With Economy. Note the use of the verb reveals.
Like we didn’t know that already. Like what this Pew study says is news to us, and especially to those who have considerable experience with being fucked up the ass for three decades now. I love shit like this—
Study Reveals That What You Know To Be True Is ReallyTrue!
Progress in the Social Sciences marchs on! Those Pew people are really on top of things. Awesome analysis. Keep up the good work, boys!
I can only sit back and shake my head in wonder.
One of the most important stories in the U.S. economy these days is the rise of extreme inequality.
Over the past 30 years, a larger and larger portion of America’s income growth has gone to those in the top 10% of incomes, and especially those in the top 1%. This is a major change from the prior 60 years, in which the top 10% and the bottom 90% shared in the income gains.
A stark and startling example of this trend is the fact that, adjusted for inflation, “average hourly earnings” in this country have not increased in 50 years.
A recent Pew study confirms that America’s middle class has recently experienced a “lost decade.” Since 2000, the Pew says, “the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith in the future.” Pew cites statistics showing that middle class earnings and net worth have plummeted since the mid-2000s and that about 85% of the middle class say it is harder to maintain their standard of living than it was 10 years ago…
The causes of this middle-class decline are many, from globalization (jobs being shipped overseas), to the decline of private-sector unions, to the wholesale embrace of a “shareholder value” religion that values profit over everything else that companies produce. But the result of the trend can be seen vividly in two charts.
First, wages are now at an all-time low as a percent of the economy.
Get ready, here’s the kicker solution.
To truly “fix” the U.S. economy, corporations are going to have to be persuaded to invest more of their excess profits in their employees, both by hiring new employees and paying existing employees more.
Good luck with that!
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/08/pew-study-reveals-the-real-problem-with-our-economy.html
