Is the “Middle Class” disappearing in America? (1 Viewer)

[george kaplan]

Lower class would, IMO, also include the working poor. For example, a single mother, having to work 2 jobs to feed and house her kids, but making so little, that she can barely do so, and doing so in such a way, that no one on this board would be willing to live in her neighborhood, nor work for the low wages she gets, nor do the jobs she's willing to do.

 

[Chu Gai]

Why isn't the father who assisted in her having the two children not ponying up?

 

[Eric_L]

Why did she allow herself to become pregnant in the first place?

 

[Eric_L]

- Lots of presumptive statements without and substantiation here. It really limits the credibility of these arguments when the presumed facts are incorrect or over-simplified.

I think you may be confusing interest rates with savings rates. Here is a chart of interest rates over the last 20 years;
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/publ/passbkchart.asp The actual rate that households were saving was 5.6% in 1995. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...7.htm#B3732048 The tools for saving have changed considerably over the last twenty or so years. When you make adjustments for flaws in how the saving rate is measured – modern savings rates are not nearly so gloomy (though still inadequate for most people) See the link for more.

And regarding so called tax cuts - consider this;
An IRS report decomposed the top one percent and found that the top ten percent of the top one percent (the top 0.1 percent) increased their share of all federal income taxes from seven percent in 1980 to 15.3 percent in 2003. These 129,000 tax filers earned 7.6 percent of the income and paid an average tax rate of 23.6 percent. This came to $114.6 billion—four times more than all the taxes paid by the 64 million taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent—who paid an average tax rate of 2.9 percent.
http://www.ncpa.org/edo/bb/2005/20051012bb.htm

 

[Chu Gai]

According to http://www.economist.com/finance/Pri...ory_id=7112745 their findings indicate that...

 

[RobertR]

Here in California there's a proposition to impose a tax on California oil production to fund a government program for investing in alternative energy. When asked why the tax won't simply be reflected in higher prices at the pump, no clear, effective answer is given.

 

[Eric_L]

Sounds like a plan - I wish I could tax my competitors product to 'invest' in researching my own!

 

[george kaplan]

Maybe she got pregnant on her honeymoon. And then her husband went to Iraq and was killed in the line of duty. Maybe a gang of rich frat boys gang raped her and she decided to keep the baby. Or...just maybe...just maybe it's completely irrelevant! What the hell does that have to do with anything?

This is the same old, "poor people deserve to be poor, cause they're too lazy or too immoral" crap. If every rich person who had sex outside of marriage, was then put into poverty, OK, but as long as that doesn't happen, then it shouldn't matter.

 

[Chu Gai]

Spin?

 

[Buzz Foster]

Exactly. American labor now competes with labor in India, China, etc. That may initially mean "Low prices, Always!", but there is a higher price that is being paid.

In fact, taxpayers are bearing the burden more than ever before. Here is a good, recent article on the hidden costs of the low wages that are so "good" for business and the economy.

 

[cafink]

What is the higher price?

And just what is so wrong with outsourcing labor? Sometimes, for various reasons, goods can be produced more cheaply (and therefore more efficiently) in one country than another. For example, agricultural products can be produced more effectively in some countries than others because of soil quality.

When this is the case, why should we bother to attempt to produce these goods ourselves when it is more cost-effective to simply purchase it from a country who can do so more cheaply? The money we could "save" by producing a product ourselves would just be diverted to its production, but then we'd have to spend even more on top of that because we can't produce it as efficiently. This additional expenditure is a waste. Why bother producing something ourselves when it costs less money to simply purchase it from someone who is able to produce it less expensively?

I don't think this is an unreasonable position to take, and I believe most people would agree with the logic, yet for some reason, many seem to think that it doesn't apply when the good in question is labor. Why not? Some countries can offer labor more cheaply than the United States because of a lower cost-of-living (just as some can offer produce more cheaply because of superior soil quality). When that is the case, why not take advantage of it by procuring the services of those who can provide them most effeciently?

 

[RobertR]

It is relevant. The percentage of single mothers whose husbands were killed in military action or who were raped by frat boys (it's ludicrous to think that social policy should be based on such a rare and extreme occurence) does not form the basis of the problem, George, and you know it. It's the teenagers getting pregnant without first taking care of "irrelevancies" such as getting an education (college), getting a job, saving money, and being married who are the problem.

 

[Chu Gai]

At least she didn't blame Walmart or Burger King for her weight problem. Yup, let's get rid of Walmart. It's an unsightly place and spoils the view for Jana and Rob Reiner. Let's give consumers higher prices and effectively lower their net income. Let's get silk prices back where they used to be.

 

[Chu Gai]

Next year, my son will be giving his grandfather a rather unique present. His first great grandchild born to a family that is married and first got their educations, then their home, then put money in the bank. His other grandchildren passed on the education (we all, and that includes myself, provided the assistance wherebye they could do so but I'm not going to bleed cash if you don't go), got pregnant while in HS or got others pregnant and then moved on to get others pregnant. I still have hopes that this last generation will do the right thing and get their lives in order before having more kids.

 

[RobertR]

The people who are opposed to purchasing goods made by “excessively” (for which no rational definition is given) cheap labor have a skewed view of economics, IMO. The whole point of producing any good or service is to meet the demand for that good or service, NOT to provide a need for labor. General Motors is in business to make cars, not to provide wages and benefits to UAW members. The wages and benefits they receive are a result of how good the company is at making cars. What rational person walks into a car dealership (or ANY store selling goods) and says, “It’s IRRELEVANT to me how well this is made, what its features are, how it looks, how much it costs, etc. In fact, I don’t even need or want this thing at all. All I care about is the wages and benefits paid to the labor that produced it. That’s the only reason I’m buying it. In fact, I want to buy only goods or services with maximized labor costs. All other considerations are secondary”. Huh?

People forget the secondary effects of paying more money for things to “protect American workers”. If you pay more for A, you have less money to spend on B, C, D, etc. So B, C, D, etc. don’t do as well (and neither do their workers). It’s not so easy to see that, because the effect is diffuse. But doing something splashy and showy to “protect American companies and workers” (which is NEVER influenced by campaign contributions) is easy to trumpet and makes for good campaign fodder (and we’ll just ignore the diffuse negative effects, heh heh).

 

[george kaplan]

I don't know if this is getting too political for this board, but it's fast becoming too hard for me to respond without getting political. So this will be my last little comment.

Spin is printing my 2 extreme examples, without my main point which is that it's irrelevant. That's spin.

If you guys want to continue trying to justify anti-poor and anti-working class and anti-middle class attitudes and programs by citing nonsense from Sowell, the Heritage Foundation, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and others, feel free, but I can't dispute their crap without getting political, and it's too hard trying to avoid stating certain obvious (but politically off limits) facts about such nonsense.

 

[MarkHastings]

This is very true, but put aside the fact that they can't get into college because they don't have the proper opportunities - answer me why they are getting pregnant? If you are poor and have no opportunities, how is having a bunch of kids supposed to help the situation?

So now, not only does the parent not have an opportunity to better themselves, but they have now set in motion the fact that their kids will not have any opportunities as well. :frowning:

 

[KevinGress]

The best "anti-poor" programs are those that help to inspire people to be the best they can be. Are there times where people need some help - certainly. But it should be temporary and with the goal of helping a person back on their feet, not paying them to do nothing. This may sound political, but it isn't - government should not be the front line for that help, but it should be the last resort. It should come in this order - family/friends, church/non-profit organizations, and government last.

 

[Chu Gai]

My in-laws used to take in foster kids. The homes they came from, the abuse in some cases, the poverty wouldn't even make them your usual candidates for poverty or the projects. Many of their lives were enormously fucked up. Some stayed a short while, some stayed for many months. Most I've no idea just how they wound up. Two in particular, from a mess of a home environment, managed to make it, if that's the word. The oldest, Dennis, graduated from high school while working two jobs. He spent a year working three jobs and then went to NYU where he continued to work two jobs. He graduated and wanted to become a doctor. His particular goal was to do it at Albert Einstein in NYC, however his grades weren't good enough. He went to a medical prep kind of school in Ohio I believe, paying his own way and also working. Succeeding there, he once again applied to Albert Einstein, was accepted, and graduated. He received some scholarships, took some modest loans, and continued to work. He is now a surgeon. His brother Michael, took a longer road but is now in the middle of law school and works in government as a judicial investigator.

Other foster kids had different degrees of success. Some wound up in prison, some had babies who had babies. Some got jobs and education training and work as medical assistants, masons, and so forth. All during their stay, they had what amounted to an enormous extended family that spent time with them, played with them, made them toe the line, gave them chores, and helped them with their homework.

If you want it, it's out there. Maybe not everyone gets the biggest rings, but the rings are out there.

 

[RobertR]

George is adamant about not reading any facts cited by Thomas Sowell, but I go back to what I linked to in a previous post–being poor is not simply a matter of being the helpless “victim” of circumstances you have no control over and no choices about. If that were the case, ethnic Chinese (who comprise 5 percent of the population of Indonesia) wouldn’t control 80% of the capital there, despite facing severe discrimination and arriving there with virtually nothing. And West Indies immigrant blacks wouldn’t have average incomes above that of whites in this country, despite having the same disadvantages. Jewish immigrants arrived in this country with virtually nothing (and faced discrimination comparable to that of the Chinese cited above), yet managed to rise above their circumstances. These facts simply don’t fit the world view of the “poor” as people who are doomed to always be that way, have no ability to do anything about it, and are “entitled” to endless government largesse as a result. Rather than ignore facts, it’s better to change one’s world view.