On August 23, 2012, Rebecca Trounson writes in the Los Angeles Times that the idea of a large, stable middle class is central to America’s sense of itself.
But the U.S. middle class has been steadily shrinking, dropping from 61% of all adults 40 years ago to a bare majority now, a new study finds.
This middle tier of American society also has slipped downward in terms of its income and wealth in the last decade, according to the report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. And it has lost a share of its traditional faith in the future.
On August 22, 2012, the Pew Research Center published an in-depth MUST READ article (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/) about a survey stating that:
Fully 85 percent of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living.
See http://foreconomicjustice.org/4367/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/
This is on a projectory to get far worse with tens of millions of Americans facing unemployment and underemployment due to cheap global labor and tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that are destroying jobs and degrading jobs in terms of wage and salary levels, forcing American to subsist at poverty or near-poverty levels.
Soon, industrial monopoly capitalism will reach its twin goals: concentration of productive capital ownership among the elite ownership class (with temporary low taxable capital earnings at 15 percent made permanent, thus preserving exactly those provisions of the tax code most responsible for millionaires paying tax rates considerably lower than those with a fraction of the income) and work performed with as few labor workers and the lowest possible wages and salaries. The question to be answered is “Then what?”
Of course, to reach this twin goal will require “investment.” The term “invest” sounds good on paper or in speeches, especially when justified on the basis that investment will create JOBS. But the reality is that no one is addressing the CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of the income-producing assets that result from investments under the current financial system. Such assets created by investment are the result of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, which is the real reason, as well as outsourcing, that jobs are being destroyed and degraded in terms of wage and salary levels. Until a Romney or Obama address this BIG ISSUE, unemployment and welfare roles will dramatically expand. It is only through future investment with the stipulation of simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of income-producing productive capital––the non-human means of production embodied in human-intelligent machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc.––that we will be able to enrich EVERY American’s life.
As a nation, we continue to ignore the possibility of democratizing future ownership of labor-displacing productive capital technologies and rising ownership incomes as a market-generated means of eliminating wage slavery, welfare slavery, debt slavery and charity slavery for the 99 percent of humanity. Binary economist Louis Kelso argued that the Keynesian model fails to recognize that “when capital workers replace labor workers as the major suppliers of goods and services, labor employment alone becomes inadequate because labor’s share of the income arising from production cannot provide the progressively better standard of living that technology is making possible. Labor produces subsistence at best. Capital can produce affluence. To enjoy affluence, all households must engage to an increasing extent in capital work”
For decades employment opportunity in the United States was such that the majority of people could obtain a job that could support their livelihood, though in most cases related to a family, it required the father and mother to both work, if they aspired to live a “middle class” lifestyle. With “Free Trade” those opportunities began to disintegrate as corporations sought to seek lower cost production taking advantage of global cheap labor rates and non-regulation, as well as lower tax rates abroad. This resulted in a chain reaction forcing more and more companies to out-source in order to stay competitive (thus the rise of China, Indiana Mexico, and other third-world nations economies).
At the same time tectonic shifts in the technologies of production were exponentially occurring (and continue to do so), which resulted in less job opportunities as production was shifted from people making things to “machines” of technology making things, The combination of cheap global labor costs and lower long-term invested “machine” costs has forced the value of labor downward and this will continue to be the reality. Our only way to far greater prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice is to embrace technological innovation and invention and the resulting human-intelligent machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc as the primary economic engine of growth.
But significantly, unless we reform our system to empower EVERY American to acquire, via insured capital loans, viable full-ownership holdings (and thus entitlement to full-dividend earnings) in the companies growing the economy with the future earnings of the investments paying for the initial loan debt to acquire ownership, then the concentration of ownership of ALL future productive capital will continue to be amassed by a wealthy minority. Companies will continue to globalized in search of “customers” with money or simply fail as exponentially there will be fewer and fewer customers to support their businesses worldwide. Why, because the majority will be disconnected from the income derived from the non-human means of production that is replacing the need for labor workers.
Education is not the solution, though it is critical for our future societal development. But except for a relative few, the majority of the population, no matter how well educated, will not be able to find a job that pays sufficient wages or salaries to support a family or to prevent a lifestyle which is gradually being crippled by near poverty or poverty earnings.
Already, GDP growth is at a near standstill. Lowering taxes on the wealthy ownership class will not much impact this reality because they will not invest unless their are customers to create demand. This will continue to be the reality unless we reform the system to connect the majority of people to the property rights of the non-human production of products and services while simultaneously spurring economic growth, and entitle them to the earnings of capital (dividends, interest and rent) as a second income source to supplement their earnings from their labor in the short-term, with the long-term lifetime goal of earnings from capital ownership being the primary source of their income. This is the ONLY way to strengthen individuals and empower them to become personally responsible for their lives and not depended on taxpayer redistribution and national debt to sustain welfare support, open or concealed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0823-middle-class-20120823,0,6206289.story
