The Cannibalization of The US Middle Class Continues . The middle class does most of the work, pays most of the taxes, and creates most of the jobs. In profession after profession, government control freaks have made it nearly impossible to make a living, and this has pushed the percentage of Americans that are self-employed to historic lows. The government is not the solution; it is the problem. The most expensive and inefficient sectors of the economy, healthcare, and education are dominated by government subsidies and regulations. And, of course, taxation is theft and, along with debt, the main source of government revenue. We must starve the beast. The economy can not be controlled. It can only be screwed up. Leave free markets alone, and all will be well. The middle-class today is losing ground not just in financial security and agency (control of capital), but in intangible capital. Credit cards, student debt with no degree/worthless degree, 10-year auto loans... Cry me a river. The K-12 cartel has become a de facto Stupid Factory, stamping out worthless slugs. The truth is that most American families are deeply struggling, but you hardly ever hear this from the mainstream media. Have a good look around your neighborhoods, stores, and schools. America looks nothing like it did even ten years ago. For many American's as good-paying manufacturing jobs fled the country for distant shores, life has become more difficult. Many of the people who have experienced the slip into an economic quagmire and rough times often will tell you, "I never thought it would happen to me." In the end, expect these people to become a burden to society. The number of people living on government transfers of wealth has grown over the years, as of today the National Debt Clock shows that over 167 million people are currently "receiving benefits" and 38 million Americans are on food stamp recipients up from 28 in 2008. The existence of the American middle class is threatened by two major factors. Stagnation in the domestic economy and globalization. Sad America! Primitive, decaying infrastructure. Archaic, hyper-expensive medical system. a Pentagon budget that defies sanity itself. A population not as intelligent as homo Erectus. And it gets even better. The disappearing middle class pays a flat 6.2% pre-tax withholding rate on its earnings for Social Security. Someone with an income of $1,000,000 per year pays a flat 0.81% pre-tax withholding rate on its earnings. Someone with an income of $1,000,000 from 'capital gains' pays nothing. The wealthy have basically been able to totally opt-out of any meaningful taxation supporting the most important social program ever enacted in US history. And people say Social Security is in trouble. No, it is willfully destroyed. This is the "Great Global Leveling," being brought to you by your Oligarch overlords. And it's not going to stop until the group formerly known as "The American Middle Class" sees their wages and purchasing power decline to the level of the average Chinese or Indian. So go ahead and vote for more Globalisation. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. Traditionally, there has been a vast middle class. It was the biggest of the three classes. However, in recent years, the middle class is shrinking dramatically, leaving many of us to be a part of the large "poor" class or the tiny 5% or so minority of the wealthy. Just take a guess which category most of us fall into. It does not bode well that a segment of the population responsible for buying the most goods, including cars and homes, and holding down the most well-paid jobs, including factory jobs, are disappearing. This segment paid a lot of taxes and helped enable the wealthy to be where they are. This phenomenon is going to hurt the U.S. This has happened for many reasons, not the least of which being sky-rocketing prices, loss of factory jobs, and outsourcing of jobs overseas where a $15.00 per hour job can be done for $3.00 or less. To some extent, this is the natural result of a shrinking world, where communication anywhere is instant, various economies join together as the E.U. has done, and the world moves toward globalization, where countries work more closely together than ever before. There is both good and bad to be found in this trend. 70% of Americans think they belong to the middle class. $33,000 per year used to be a good income. The Fed has pushed "good" inflation as 2-3% per year. So prices will rise 20-30%, and that is good! Banks have profited, and middle America gets screwed again. Worst, this policy will continue until all working America is screwed. Think homeless and pooping on the street. The middle class is essential for stability. A middle class has enough stake in society to not want to throw it over. A middle class has enough stake in society to keep working productively and to continue to aspire to be middle class and even to work towards being upper class. A strong middle class provides a strong foundation for a stable society as the middle class is wary of change and believes in the status quo. Without a strong middle class, a society is left with two classes - the lower class which often feels it has nothing to lose and nothing to gain - it can feel it has no real stake in society and can itself over to apathy, resistance or even revolution . And an upper class which then has to expend a great deal of time and energy in placating the restless lower class or in controlling them. 50 YEARS OF GLOBALISM CREATED A COUPLE OF HUNDRED BILLIONAIRES AND BANKRUPTED EVERYONE ELSE. 1913 THE YEAR CONTROL OF THE ECONOMY WAS GIVEN TO FOREIGN BANKS. 1963 KENNEDY HIT, THE YEAR THE MIDDLE CLASS WAS ASSASSINATED. $40 Trillion of pension funds invested by wall street in China. $23 Trillion of debt run-up. Thirty million US jobs offshored to China, including 6 million manufacturing jobs. One hundred million immigrated into the US in the past 50 years. Not to mention some 50 million illegals. 63% of all immigrants now on welfare, and the rate increases every year. Two million green cards and H1B visas per year to drive wages down. $40 trillion paid in welfare reparations with zero effect. The number of poor blacks doubled. The outward projection of the 'middle class' may look good, but behind the scenes, it's living paycheck to paycheck. The only difference is that they're doing it in a nice house on the West side of town instead of a trailer on the south side down in the bottoms. And there is The ceaseless rise of non-discretionary costs . Costs are rising at a ridiculous pace, property taxes, utility charges, and fees; the outflow is getting to be pretty heavy. It will be interesting to see who ends up naked when the next tide goes out. The people that fled the renter status of Feudalism by settling the new world became owners. The country that threw out George the Third was almost totally middle class because most people lived on farms and in homes that they owned outright. The foisting of the FED was the destruction of a real middle class since inflation forced people to borrow from the banksters in order to build what they could do independently before. Property taxes are an abomination since it converts everyone into renters. The definition of the middle class, no matter how impoverished, should be someone who owns his property entirely unencumbered by debt. The existence of the American middle class is threatened by two major factors. Stagnation in the domestic economy and globalization. Stagnation, which is primarily driven by the lack of "low hanging fruit" opportunity and not necessarily any policy, has seized the US economy over the last 40 or so years. From a supply-side point of view, the US should seek to expand its production frontier by analyzing all policy options and emphasizing those that utilize societies' scarce resources the best. Whether that is investments in human capital, infrastructure or in human welfare from the public sector or by allowing the private sector to decide (i.e., by lowering taxes and spending) is hard to say definitively, but anyone who pays any attention to Capitol hill knows that this is not the decision-making paradigm. Rather ideologues are engaged in a never-ending gridlock, and certain individuals are using the acrimonious environment to vault their own political careers. But that is for another question. It is also important that we steer clear of future disasters. The most imminent disasters I see coming up are future shocks to the banking system (like we just saw in 2009), which we should regard as the new normal and the United States massive fiscal shortcoming. The US has a 23 trillion dollar national debt, but more importantly, we also have a further 150+ shortfall in our social security, medicare, and Medicaid entitlements over the next 50 years or so. The best way to deal with those shortfalls, in my opinion, is to reassess the extent to those entitlement programs seriously, but that will be hard for any politician to sell to their constituents. We'll probably have to go through some sort of debt crisis like Europe went through from 2011 to 2013 in order to force ourselves into our own austerity. Anyway, to make a long story short, we are no longer the leading nation in virtually every sector as we were from 1945 to the mid to late '70s and the economic benefits of freer trade, the personal computer revolution, open capital markets, etc. that drove our economy from 1982-1999 seem to be dwindling. Other nations are growing rapidly as they grab the same "low hanging fruit" we thrived on from 1945 to the mid-'70s, and their populaces are getting wealthier because of it. Therefore, as companies are equally interested in selling in China as they are Germany as they are the US, prices are rising faster than wages (for us at least), and we are watching the rest of the world close the standard of living gap. I think one thing that is worth mentioning is that the benefits of technological advancements are impossible to measure with conventional economic statistics. How can CPI possibly account for the fact that half the US population has a smartphone that, by 1960's standards, is a supercomputer. How can one measure purchasing power in terms of GDP per capita when a car made in 2014, with all the features we take for granted, would retail for five times as much in 1965? The point is, I think the rational thing to do is sit back, worry about living within one's own means, and seriously reexamine how we govern ourselves because the biggest threat to the United States is Washington's incompetence. The perception of continual growth and consumption. All they create for the most part are aggressive population growth, poverty, and pollution while enriching a minute portion of the population that feeds it. It is an insane global policy to agree on and practice. Can't grow forever on a Finite Planet! Why is that so hard for the banksters to understand. We will see a continuous shift to a system where all the proceeds from productivity go to the top-level executives. Those below that will fight over the crumbs. This was The Atlantis Report. Please Like. Share. And Subscribe. Thank You.
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