The United States needs to be reimagined. A recent study from the Pew Research Center tells us that in economic terms the middle class "has suffered its worst decade in modern history." It's shrinking.
With jobs scarce, wages declining and the nation's wealth concentrating ever more intensely at the top, the middle class has shrunk in size for the first time since World War II.
This is not a problem that began with the Great Recession, although the recession and its dismal aftermath have caused it to snowball. We've known for many years that despite hard work ordinary Americans have had trouble making ends meet, paying their monthly bills for food, shelter and clothing. It has become ever more difficult for families to find the funds necessary for decent childcare, and to send their children to college, and to prepare for a comfortable retirement. According to Pew, a mere 11 percent of Americans now describe themselves as very optimistic about the country's long-term economic future.
What we're experiencing is nothing less than an historic generational decline in living standards. We've obviously been doing something very wrong.
My colleagues at Demos, a nonpartisan think tank, have been researching and analyzing the economic plight of the middle class and poorer Americans for many years and have come up with a compelling blueprint for turning this disastrous situation around. It is a program that would require a tremendously heavy lift politically, a great deal of shared sacrifice among America's citizens, and a substantial financial investment in our human capital and other resources.
Try to imagine a nation in which there are good jobs for all who want and need to work; a nation in which all students who want a college education would be able to afford it; a nation in which predatory lending is prohibited and banks and other financial institutions are not permitted to charge usurious interest rates; a nation in which the middle class is once again expanding at a rapid rate and the ranks of the poor are vanishing.
Demos's comprehensive report, "Millions to the Middle: 14 Big Ideas to Build a Strong and Diverse Middle Class," not only imagines such a sanguine state of affairs, but offers us a viable route to get there.
One of the most important ideas is a guarantee of at least 16 years of schooling for boys and girls growing up at a time when some form of post-secondary credential is a virtual prerequisite for a middle-class standard of living. Demos's proposed Contract for College would transform the federal financial aid system from one that is predominantly loan-based to one that relies primarily on grants. Millions of young college graduates are now caught in a cruel vise. Not only are decent jobs very difficult to find, but the graduates are shouldering enormous student debt loads that must be repaid.
As the importance of a college education has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, public support for colleges has dropped sharply. This doesn't make sense. In response, colleges and universities have jacked up tuition and fees. Tuition at public colleges have tripled since 1980. Demos's proposal, fully implemented, would double the percentage of students from low and moderate-income families who successfully complete college.
As all Americans know, the job market in general is horrendous. What is not so widely recognized is that the nation's employment challenges go much deeper than the normal vagaries of the business cycle. Millions are without work, and many are without hope of finding employment. Millions more are underemployed, working part-time or in temporary jobs, or doing work that is substantially beneath their capabilities.
This is not a temporary cyclical downturn destined to be followed by a robust recovery. Globalization, labor-saving technological advancements and the decline of labor unions has fundamentally changed the nature of work in the United States. Without bold new initiatives the American economy will be unable to come anywhere close to creating enough decent jobs to sustain a healthy middle class and substantially reduce the number of people living in poverty.
Sixty percent of the jobs destroyed since the start of the Great Recession were middle-income positions. Most of the job growth since then has been in low-wage occupations. As the Demos report notes, "The Department of Labor projects that over the coming decade the largest job growth will be in currently low-paying occupations such as home health aides, food service workers, and retail salespeople." That is not the stuff of which the American Dream is made.
The suffering from the employment crisis in the U.S. has been immense and must be brought to an end. The Demos proposal calls for a number of new or expanded initiatives, including:
This is not pie in the sky. America's proudest creation in the early post-World War II decades was its vast middle class. It did not spring spontaneously into being, like magic. The process was helped enormously by a wide range of public policy decisions that, among other things, established a highly progressive tax code, guaranteed the right of workers to join a union and bargain collectively, made massive infrastructure investments, and offered extensive public support for education, including higher education.
The decline of the middle class was also the result of public policy choices, only this time they were geared to overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthy. Today's downward mobility can only be reversed by a range of new choices consciously aimed at helping working Americans regain their financial footing. Demos's report can be an important guide to that process. The goal is a fairer, more economically just and equitable America.
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Rev. Margaret Aymer, Ph. D.: Poverty, Wealth and Equality? A Scriptural Study
If you want to help people find meaningful work make markets more free with less regulations not more.
49% do not pay any income tax at all. Half the population live in abject poverty and the middle class starts somewhere above 50%? Or does the middle class make up 66% of the US population as some claim and a third to half of them don't pay taxes?
It is pure fantasy to believe that 5% of society can somehow pay more so more can be exempt from paying for services they consume.
I believe that we got into this mess by both parties catering to the mythological beast called the middle class (to which most everyone think they belong). We convinced people to buy houses they couldn't afford, because they are in the "middle class". Then we forced banks to lend them the money. Finally it all collapsed and the "Great Recession" began. Sure, there were other factors, but many of those were also related to politicians promising more for less.
We need expand the base. That can happen in 2 ways: (1) More people participate by paying something. In this rich country 49% cannot pay a penny of federal income taxes? (2) Increase the productivity of the base so they can earn more money (and pay more taxes).
Raise the taxes on the rich and their corporations. They are trying to live in a first world society but feel they don't need to help pay for its infrastructure.
Tariff all imports. I'm sure you were aware that our government was mainly funded by tariffs on imports until Reagan. Once that stopped the burden shifted entirely to the middle class.
Stop Free Trade. This is related to tariffing imports. If companies knew their foreign made goods would be tariffed up the ying yang they wouldn't leave the US so quick.
Who needs all those millions of jobs in the export sector, anyway.
If Free Trade doesn't benefit the public as a whole it is a failed policy. Free Trade decimates our national capital and sends it overseas. The little piddling number of jobs in the export industry that you tout is like a raindrop in the ocean.
They completely miss the big picture. Our government is owned by big business and the behemoth multinationals are one of those owners. 60% of total imports are by U.S. based multinationals (only 12.5% of which is oil). They are free to offshore American jobs and then turn around and import back into the American market without paying any meaningful tariffs on those goods. They are using us as an ATM machine. China, for example, has an average 25% tariff against our goods while ours is only 2.5% against theirs. Can anyone possibly believe that any government, in its right mind would allow this unless the multinationals that benefit from it are not one of the owners of the government?
p.s. $6 trillion cumulative trade deficit over the last 10 years - that's a lot of jobs if spent buying goods from companies employing American workers instead.
Using IRS data from 1969 - http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0#table1 - which uses adjusted gross income (income from all sources and before the standard deduction, itemized deductions and exemptions for dependents), the range for the middle 60% is $13,000 to $81,500 and the average income for this group is $33,700. - pretty grim.
Based on tax forms filed - both single and joint returns
2. Required overtime pay for all workers.
3. Reduce the work week by 2 hours, every time the unemployment rate hits 8%.
We've been told for decades the American Worker is the most productive yet his work week has been getting longer, for a rate of pay that hasn't keep up with the profits he produces. It's about time that our working smarter got us higher pay, not just fewer jobs and richer owners.
Obviously what the author means is some assumed level of "stuff", and I find it hard to defend any plans that say take what some Americans have and give it to some other Americans so they are more equal.
This is different from taking from Americans who have enough to live on and giving some to Americans who don't have enough to live on, but that is a very different topic (see Dr West & Mr Smiley for that discussion).
Wake up people!
America is great, not because of our government but because of our people. Without the wealth generated by the private sector there is no money for national security, infrastructure, safety nets, ect....
People seem to believe that if we just trust our government they can create this utopia of goodness. A utopia where everyone has a job, everyone has money, everyone is well because of health care, the rise of the oceans will cease, the earth cools, no one is ever offended and we all live harmoniously side by side. This idea is impossible, unable to exist because of human nature.
Government is not the answers to our problems, it is the problem. Republicans and Democrats share the blame for the state of our country. The government has a responsibility to provide an enviroment conducive to growth and the public must respond with personal responsibility. The government has failed.
The natural order of government is tyranny, ours has been the exception. As we continue to give the government more power and control the public will continue to relinquish freedoms.
It is true we need the government to properly regulate. Notice I said properly, for too many years our government has been controlled by monied interest and created bureaucracies that stifle economic growth.
We are complacent even in our tough economic time. We have no idea what true oppression is but government naturally progresses towards oppression. If Americans believe government has all the answers and solutions we are surely on a path that will result in a loss of some or all of our freedoms.
These are facts.
The only true way to be free is through self sufficiency and personal responsibility. The expectation of government to lift everyone up will only result in oppression. History has proven this time and time again.
How many more examples do we need to understand this?
FYI, we do not pay taxes for solutions. We elect officials to solve problems. Taxes are only a source of revenue to perform operations.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
On just recreating the labor movement: One cannot "free trade" and labor unions and mass immigration and expect wages to be high and labor unions to do well.
On infrastructure programs: There is no money left. Liberals already spent 5.3 trillion on debt that did nothing.