“The Middle Class, died this week after a long battle with capitalism. Its passing has been expected since the recent death of its partner, The American Dream.” : Hamilton Nolan (Gawker)

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Published on

Thursday, December 10, 2015

by

Common Dreams

Deepening Inequality Driving US Middle Class into Oblivion

“The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for four decades, and it may have reached a tipping point,” Pew Research Center says

by

Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

 

A closer look at the shift out of the middle reveals that “a deeper polarization is underway in the American economy,” says Pew Research Center report. (Image: DonkeyHotey/flickr/cc)

The American middle class is shrinking.

For the first time in more than four decades, middle-income households have lost their majority status in the U.S., according to new findings, and are now outnumbered by their counterparts on opposite ends of the income spectrum.

“The fastest-growing segments are the ones at the extremes, the very lowest and highest ends of the income distribution.”
—Pew Research Center

Based on the definition used in the Pew Research Center report released Wednesday, the share of American adults living in middle-income households—that is, with an income that is two-thirds to double that of the overall median household income, or $42,000 to $126,000 annually in 2014—has fallen from a high of 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 2015.

At the same time, the share living in the upper-income tier jumped from 14 percent to 21 percent over the same period, and the share in the lower-income tier rose from 25 percent to 29 percent.

“The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for four decades, and it may have reached a tipping point,” the Pew study suggests. Furthermore, a “closer look at the shift out of the middle reveals that a deeper polarization is underway in the American economy.”

“The movement out of the middle-income tier has been more than just a step in one direction or the other,” the report says. “The fastest-growing segments are the ones at the extremes, the very lowest and highest ends of the income distribution.”

In addition, middle class families have fallen further behind financially, the study shows, with the share of U.S. aggregate household income held by middle-income households having “eroded significantly over time.”

“Upper-income households now command the greatest share of aggregate income and are on the verge of holding more in total income than all other households combined,” the report reads. “This shift is partly because upper-income households constitute a rising share of the population and partly because their incomes are increasing more rapidly than those of other tiers.”

The Pew findings support what many 2016 presidential candidates, led by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, have been saying on the campaign trail.

In an op-ed published this summer, Sanders decried what he called “the war against the American middle class,” marked by Wall Street greed, anti-worker policies, and corporate tax evasion.

And on Thursday, he tweeted:

Bernie Sanders

✔ @SenSanders

There’s been a massive transfer of wealth from the 99% to the top 1%. We’ve got to bring that money back to working families.

8:05 AM – 10 Dec 2015

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in January found that 47 percent of respondents considered reducing income inequality an absolute priority for the government to pursue this year, with Democrats placing far greater importance on it than Republicans.

In a piece for Gawker on Thursday, Hamilton Nolan responded to Pew report with an irreverent eulogy.

“The Middle Class, a popular figure in American folklore, died this week after a long battle with capitalism,” Nolan wrote. “Its passing has been expected since the recent death of its partner, The American Dream.”

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Industrial hemp poised to become NC’s newest legal crop

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The News & Observer

Legalization bill will become law unless McCrory vetoes

Spring Hope has one of the only hemp processing plants in the country

Supporters battle stigma: ‘We’re for rope, not dope’

 

Workers do final assembly of a decortification line at the Industrial Hemp Manufacturing Company in Spring Hope, NC, on Wednesday. The facility hopes to begin full-scale operations when a bill becomes law at midnight Friday, without Gov. Pat McCrory’s signature. The law legalizes industrial hemp in North Carolina. Farmers are eager to grow the crop, which can be used in textiles, oil drilling fluid and other products. It has virtually no THC, the active ingredient in marijuana that is smoked. This group of machines separates the outer fibers from the inner core. The outer fibers are used in the textile industry, the core fibers are used by the oil and gas industry. The plant currently processes kanaf, a plant similar to hemp. It is used to make door panels in cars and trucks. Chris Seward cseward@newsobserver.com

By Colin Campbell

ccampbell@newsobserver.com

 

Farmers in North Carolina are likely to wake up Saturday morning with a new option for growing crops: Industrial hemp production is expected to become legal at the stroke of midnight.

Lawmakers passed the legalization legislation in September, in the final days of the session. The proposal hadn’t previously been made public, and some conservative groups worry that questions about the plant’s connections to its cousin, marijuana, didn’t get answered.

The bill has been on Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk for weeks, and unless he vetoes it, it will become law without his signature at midnight Friday.

Lee Edwards of Sugar Hill Farms in Kinston is among the farmers eager to add industrial hemp to their fields.

“Hemp really gives us a crop during the summertime that is a viable cash crop to us,” he said. “We’re in a perfect geographical location for the production of hemp with our climate.”

Read More Here

Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year

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End Of The American Dream

The American Dream Is Becoming A Nightmare And Life As We Know It Is About To Change

By Michael Snyder, on October 20th, 2015

We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying.  According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year.  Let that number sink in for a moment.  You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out.  And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month.  In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today.

You can find the report that the Social Security Administration just released right here.  The following are some of the numbers that really stood out for me…

-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

That first number is truly staggering.  The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.

If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000.  This should tell you something about the quality of the jobs that our economy is producing at this point.

And of course the numbers above are only for those that are actually working.  As I discussed just recently, there are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

So many people that I know are barely scraping by right now.  Many families have to fight tooth and nail just to make it from month to month, and there are lots of Americans that find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into debt.

If you can believe it, about a quarter of the country actually has a negative net worth right now.

What that means is that if you have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of the entire country.  The following comes from a recent piece by Simon Black…

 

Read More Here

Numerous States Prepare Lawsuits Against Obama’s Climate Policy

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New York Times

By CORAL DAVENPORTOCT. 22, 2015

Photo

Empty coal gondolas in a rail yard in Danville, W.Va. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s attorney general, said President Obama’s climate change regulations would have “devastating impacts” on families in his state. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As many as 25 states will join some of the nation’s most influential business groups in legal action to block President Obama’s climate change regulations when they are formally published Friday, trying to stop his signature environmental policy.

In August, the president announced in a White House ceremony that the Environmental Protection Agency rules had been completed, but they had not yet been published in the government’s Federal Register. Within hours of the rules’ official publication on Friday, a legal battle will begin, pitting the states against the federal government. It is widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

“I predict there will be a very long line of people at the federal courthouse tomorrow morning, eagerly waiting to file their suits on this case,” said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a lawyer for the firm Bracewell & Giuliani who represents several companies that are expected to file such suits.

While the legal brawls could drag on for years, many states and companies, including those that are suing the administration, have also started drafting plans to comply with the rules. That strategy reflects the uncertainty of the ultimate legal outcome — and also means that many states could be well on the way to implementing Mr. Obama’s climate plan by the time the case reaches the Supreme Court.

Read More Here

 

Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

 

 

 

MSN News

The New York Times

By STACY COWLEY 6 hrs ago

© Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times An employee at Golden Corral taking clean cups from the kitchen. Some Golden Corral restaurants began offering health insurance to employees, but few have…JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford.

His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.

Evidence is growing that his experience is not unusual. The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.

But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)

Read More Here

Hundreds of outraged Air France staff stormed a meeting where Company plans to cut 2,900 jobs were being discussed. Execs had shirts torn from their backs as they escaped the angry mob

 

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No need to get shirty! Air France executive is forced to climb a fence after staff attack him and rip off his shirt when he announces 2,900 job losses

• Air France executives attacked after staff stormed company headquarters
• Company plans to cut 2,900 jobs and 14 aircraft from its long-haul fleet
• HR vice president and long-haul flights deputy had their shirts torn off

By Sara Malm for MailOnline and Reuters

Published: 08:46 EST, 5 October 2015 | Updated: 13:17 EST, 5 October 2015

Air France managers have been forced to flee the company’s headquarters after being attacked by a baying mob of workers that tore their clothes off.

Hundreds of angry staff stormed the Air France building at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Roissy, near Paris, after the company announced plans to cut 2,900 jobs on Monday.

Two senior executives, Xavier Broseta, Vice President for Human Resources, and Pierre Plissonnier, deputy of Air France long-haul flights, both had their shirts ripped off their backs as they were evacuated through the crowds.

 

Under attack: A shirtless Xavier Broseta, Executive Vice President for Human Resources at Air France, is evacuated by security after employees interrupted a meeting with representatives staff at the Air France headquarters building at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Roissy, near Paris

Shortly before the attack, Mr Broseta and Air France Chief Executive Frederic Gagey had outlined a drastic cost cutting plan, which would see 2,900 jobs cut by 2017.

The cuts include 1,700 ground staff, 900 cabin crew and 300 pilots, as part of efforts to lower costs, two union sources said.

Air France also confirmed in the meeting that it plans to shed 14 aircraft from its long-haul fleet, reducing the business by ten per cent, and that it wants to cancel its order for Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

This outraged staff, who are already at loggerheads with the company, and hundreds stormed the building, interrupting the meeting.

Mr Broseta and Mr Plissonnier were aided by security as they tried to escape the baying mob

Read More Here

102.6 million working age Americans without jobs right now. That is not an economic recovery – that is an economic depression .

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Unemployment Line  –  Wikipedia.org

The Economic Collapse

Right Now There Are 102.6 Million Working Age Americans That Do Not Have A Job

By Michael Snyder, on October 4th, 2015

The federal government uses very carefully manipulated numbers to cover up the crushing economic depression that is going on in this nation.  For the month of September, the federal government told us that 142,000 jobs were added to the economy.  If that was actually true, that would barely be enough to keep up with population growth.  Sadly, the truth is that the real numbers were actually far worse than that.  The unadjusted numbers show that the U.S. economy actually lost 248,000 jobs in September and the government added more than a million Americans to the “not in the labor force” category.  When I first saw that number I truly believed that it was inaccurate.  But you can find the raw figures right here.  According to the Obama administration, there are currently 7.9 million Americans that are “officially unemployed” and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”.  That gives us a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

That is not an economic recovery – that is an economic depression of an almost unbelievable magnitude.

This is something that my friend Mac Slavo pointed out the other day.  I encourage you to read his analysis right here.  If we measured unemployment the way that we did decades ago, we would all be talking about how similar Obama’s economy is to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But instead we let the feds get away with feeding us this completely fraudulent “5.1 percent” unemployment number and most of us believe the mainstream media when they tell us that everything is just fine.

 

Read More Here

Fed blames 94 million Americans out of work for simply not wanting a job

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October 2, 2015 2:18 PM MS

Kenneth Schortgen Jr

Finance Examiner

Wall Street

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It has been a long time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published the real unemployment numbers for all Americans who fit the criteria of being able to work in the economy, but have not been able to find a job for one reason or another. Instead, the BLS has simply changed their data models numerous times since 1980, and now we have reached the point where there are actually more people between the ages of 16-54 who don’t have a job versus those in that same age range who do.

And with the Federal Reserve using these BLS numbers as the catalyst for whether to raise interest rates after nine years of them being pushed down to near zero, one regional central bank on Oct. 2 laid the blame for there being over 94 million Americans out of work and not counted in the unemployment models as simply ‘not wanting to get a job’.

 

Read More Here

 

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There Are Not Enough Jobs, And Austerity Is To Blame

The September jobs report is spooking even the optimists.

Daniel Marans Reporter, The Huffington Post

 

 

The especially poor September jobs report reinforces what many economists have been saying for months: The six-year recovery from the Great Recession has been too weak to create enough jobs for America’s growing population, let alone restore significant wage growth. 

Domestic fiscal austerity, not recent global volatility, is primarily to blame for the inadequate job growth, these economists argue.

The U.S. economy created 142,000 jobs in September, bringing average monthly job growth to 198,000 this year — way down from the monthly rate of 260,000 in 2014. Average hourly wages decreased slightly in September, meaning pay has risen just 2.2 percent in the past 12 months. 

In addition, the percentage of the population working or looking for work has dropped to 62.4 percent, the lowest it has been during the Obama presidency. The progressive Economic Policy Institute estimates that we need 2.6 million more jobs to keep up with population growth.

• Economic Policy Inst ‏@EconomicPolicy 11h11 hours ago

  To keep up with population growth, we still need 2.6 million more jobs. http://on.epi.org/1L8D7mk 

  

  Read More Here

 

US workers’ pay plummeted 4% over the past 5 years – report

RT

Published time: 4 Sep, 2015 03:52

 

© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

600217

Despite nearly 250,000 jobs being created monthly in the US economy, the majority of Americans saw real wages plummet 4 percent over the past five years, when adjusted for inflation, according to new report by the National Employment Labor Project.

“Stagnant wages have become a fact of life for nearly all of America’s workers, but workers in lower-paying occupations are finding it especially tough to keep up with the rising cost of living,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a research and advocacy group, in a statement.

“Not only are their paychecks not growing, but their purchasing power has shrunk considerably, and to a far greater extent than that of higher-wage earners.”

The report looked at the percentage change in hourly wages for 785 occupations from 2009 to 2014, and then divided those jobs into five classifications. While hourly wages declined across all occupations, the hardest hit workers were those in lower- and mid-wage fields.

Read More Here

French economy contracts while rest of eurozone keeps expanding

Bloomberg

French Recovery Fades as Manufacturing, Services Contract

By Mark Deen May 22, 2014 2:20 AM CT

Photographer: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg

An employee removes excess felt from berets inside the factory of 174-year-old… Read More

French manufacturing and services unexpectedly shrank this month, highlighting President Francois Hollande’s struggle to revive the euro area’s second-largest economy.

A Purchasing Managers Index of factory activity dropped to 49.3 from 51.2 in April, while a services gauge fell to 49.2 from 50.4, Markit Economics said today in London. Economists had forecast readings above 50, the level that divides expansion from contraction.

Hollande is grappling with an economy that stagnated in the first quarter as both investment and consumer spending fell. After two years in office, his government has yet to achieve two consecutive quarters of expansion, a performance that has driven jobless claims to an all-time high of 3.3 million and his own popularity to a record low.

 

Read More Here

 

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French economy contracts while rest of eurozone keeps expanding

The headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Germany.

Colm Kelpie – Published 23 May 2014 02:30 AM

The strong pace of growth in the eurozone’s private sector eased very slightly this month, with drastic price cuts preventing any further slowdown, surveys showed yesterday.

Slower growth in activity at factories took the shine off an unexpected pickup in the service industry, although the bloc’s recovery appears to be gaining traction.

“This doesn’t change the picture of the eurozone having one of its best growth spells in the past three years. It’s broad-based – with the one exception being France,” said Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compiler Markit.

Markit’s Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, based on surveys of thousands of companies across the region and seen as a good indicator of growth, edged down to 53.9 from April’s near three-year high of 54.0, matching the forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts.

 

Read More Here

 

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Eurozone’s 18-month-long recession may be over, economic surveys suggest

Economists say rise in manufacturing output PMI points to flat GDP and ‘light at the end of the tunnel’

• Phillip Inman and Graeme Wearden
• The Guardian, Wednesday 24 July 2013 14.16 EDT

The Osram factory in Molsheim. French factories returned to growth with their strongest performance in 17 months. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Hopes of a recovery in the eurozone were lifted after private sector firms across the region reported a rise in output for the first time in 18 months, leading to predictions that the single currency bloc is on the cusp of exiting recession.

A strong performance by German manufacturers and a halt to the headlong decline in French business activity gave the eurozone a much needed boost after the area slipped into reverse last year.

With the US manufacturing sector expanding at a faster pace in July, the main blot on the global economic recovery was a decline in manufacturing output in China that some economists have warned could force Beijing to renew its stimulus spending or risk a hard landing.

China’s manufacturing sector tempered the eurozone data, slowing to an 11-month low as new orders faltered and the job market darkened.

The flash HSBC/Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 47.7 this month from June’s final reading of 48.2, marking a third straight month below the 50 threshold between expansion and contraction for China.

As if to highlight concerns that global growth is slowing, Caterpillar, the US construction and mining business that is considered a bellwether of global business activity, downgraded its forecast for the pace of the global recovery this year and next.

Alexandra Knight, an economist at National Australia Bank, said the weak Chinese PMI posed a problem for countries that relied on exports to China.

“It adds to the concern about the outlook for demand, and brings into question just how strong Chinese commodities demand will be,” she said.

 

Read More Here

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• French Industrial Output Tumbles as Recession Looms – Bloomberg
• French Joblessness Climbs to Record, Adding Pressure on Hollande – Bloomberg
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