So
Long, Middle Class
By Larry Romanoff for PRAVDA, May 06, 2021
CHINESE
ENGLISH
SPANISH
I
have not seen stated anywhere with sufficient clarity the fact that the
deliberate net result of US government policies is the evisceration of the
American middle class which is being systematically wiped out of existence. It
isn't only that the rich are becoming richer, but that these Great
Transformation policies are predatory in the extreme, deliberately targeting
the middle and lower classes who are losing ground at a staggering rate. As
mentioned elsewhere, America's middle class lost about half of all its wealth
and assets after 2007, and half of that entire middle class had firmly
descended into the lower class, a financial and social pit from which there is
no likely escape. With the economy still on life support and no recovery in
sight after ten years, with only low-wage and part-time jobs being created, the
odds of recovery for those tens of millions of families are slim to non-existent.
Ron
Unz correctly noted that the entire American middle class now hovers on the
brink of insolvency (1),
but perhaps oversimplified in blaming the cost of foreign wars. I doubt the
wars bear much responsibility here; the middle class safely survived the
Vietnam War and dozens of other expensive military adventures. The root cause
is the deliberate launching of a class war, the conscious determination to
drain and eliminate the middle class as a class. As bizarre as that statement
may seem, the facts are everywhere and especially the FED's policies can be
interpreted in no other way. Deregulation, corporate tax changes, the massive
deindustrialisation and outsourcing, Greenspan's "greater worker
insecurity" (2),
the financialisation of the economy, were all carefully and deliberately
planned as a coordinated effort, the eventual results of which were entirely
predictable from the beginning.
In
his article on the decline of America (3),
Peter van Buren wrote, "What’s happening is both easy enough for a
traveler to see and for an economist to measure. Median household income in
2012 was no higher than it had been a quarter-century earlier. Meanwhile,
expenses had outpaced inflation. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that the
income gap between rich and poor had widened to a more than four-decade record
since the 1970s. The 50 million people in poverty remained the highest number
since the Census Bureau began collecting that data 53 years ago. The gap
between how much total wealth America’s 1% of earners control and what the rest
of us have is even wider than even in the years preceding the Great Depression
of 1929."
In
an especially appropriate comment, he wrote that we can argue over numbers and
debate which statistics are most accurate, "or (we can) just drive around
America: the trend lines and broad patterns, the shadows of our world of regime
change, are sharply, sadly clear." Over the last 40 years, a large
majority of American workers have seen their real incomes stagnate or decline.
Ron
Unz again: "Meanwhile, the rapid concentration of American wealth
continues apace: the richest 1 percent of America’s population now holds as
much net wealth as the bottom 90–95 percent, and these trends may even be
accelerating. A recent study revealed that during our supposed recovery of the
last couple of years, 93 percent of the total increase in national income went
to the top 1 percent, with an astonishing 37 percent being captured by just the
wealthiest 0.01 percent of the population, 15,000 households in a nation of
well over 300 million people."
He
added that the wealth of all American households headed by those younger than
35, is now about 70% lower today than it was in 1984. For those who care to
know, the British very much followed the Americans down the rabbit hole: In
England, the rich are 64% richer today than before the recession, while the
poor are 57% poorer.
The
statistics become increasingly desperate with each passing year. One writer
noted that in 2007, 43% of Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck; in 2008
this figure was already at 49%, and today it is well over 60%. "Not only
have food stamps reached an astonishing high of 25% of the population, but more
than 35% of American households receive some form of means-tested government
help, or what we call welfare payments. As well, bankruptcies skyrocketed after
2007, increasingly catching the retired population in their net. Large numbers
of Americans now have no pension plans or other savings and are increasingly
postponing their retirements."
In
2013, the AP reported that four out of five Americans face near-poverty and
unemployment, survey data indicating that 80% of all Americans are facing
"severe economic struggles", and that now more than 50 million are
living below the poverty line, a number that is almost certainly
underestimated. Many economists and analysts have concluded that the current
economic structure guarantees that unemployment "will remain unusually
high for the foreseeable future", leading to "an extended period of
rising poverty and declining income". The country that boasts of being the
world's wealthiest nation and of having the largest number of millionaires and
billionaires, also has the largest number of idle and working poor, both
categories increasing by the year.
Another
article noted that Americans are no longer at the top of car ownership, either.
"According to a new paper on worldwide car usage, produced by the Carnegie
Endowment, American per capita car ownership rates are actually among the
lowest in the developed world. Americans now rank 25th in the world, just above
Ireland and just below Bahrain. Car ownership rates are closely tied to the
size of the middle class. In fact, the paper actually measures car ownership
rates to predict middle class size. Since Americans are buying fewer cars, this
is another sign that the American middle class is rapidly declining." (4)
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing
has been translated into 30 languages and his articles posted on more than 150
foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well
as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired
management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions
in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export
business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University,
presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr.
Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books
generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors
to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’.
His
full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
and
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/english/
He
can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
*
Notes
(1)
www.ronunz.org/2013/04/29/our-american-pravda
(2)
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/1997/february/testimony.htm
(3)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175838/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_regime_change_in_america/
The
original source of this article is PRAVDA
Copyright
© Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, Blue Moon of Shanghai,
2021
