The Middle Class is tired of carrying the entire planets problems on our backs, done tired of it

a reply to: toysforadults

We can blame ourselves because voters continue voting these same career politicians who represent the wealthy, and who ignore the voice of their constituents.

originally posted by: WeRpeons
We can blame ourselves because voters continue voting these same career politicians who represent the wealthy, and who ignore the voice of their constituents.

What rot. My Member of Parliament is a very good constituency MP.

a reply to: SudoNim
You mean the rest of our planet who lines up to get our money?

originally posted by: biggilo
$16 an hour is considered middle class in the US? That is shocking.

Thats tickle down ecomoics for you.

The Poor get poorer and rich get richer and the middle class disapear.

The interesting thing is a disappearing middle class has always historically been an indicator of the emergence of revolution.

So long as a nation has a sizeable healthy middle class, the status-quo will continue, because the majority of middle class people will want their mostly comfortable lives to continue.


But what we have now with Capitalist Globalism is an increasing erosion of the middle, as the top take a bigger and bigger slice of the pie, so increasingly we have the ultra rich and... the poor.

And yes, I agree, sooner or later this will collapse, unless something is done to shore up the middle classes again.

a reply to: toysforadults

It is exactly this attitude that has me convinced that the United States will withdraw from the world stage over the next few decades. Chanting "Make America Great Again" will not stop it. The citizens of the United States need to accept that their unique history and resources gives them a responsibility towards all of humanity. This has been lost, and the world will now be "led" by the Putins, the Erdowans, and the Dutertes. Sad.

a reply to: toysforadults

The laborer has no representation. No matter how tough or brave the individual, you can't stand up to corporate institutions that look out for one another.
They destroyed unions and union jobs because of government pensions. My husband poured concrete from 70 to 2007 and watched our pay and benefits shrink starting with Reaganomics in 86.

We gave away our middle class to enrich others.
Forget revolution. The lost middle class is in slavery and can't afford the time off from their low wages. Ye reap what ye sow.

originally posted by: biggilo
$16 an hour is considered middle class in the US? That is shocking.

It's defined as roughly 50% of the median wage to 200% of the median wage which puts you in the range of $12/hour to $50/hour as middle class.

It's a big range, and even those outside of it tend to call themselves middle class too, because there's a stigma around it that everyone needs to be middle class.

Most of it though is that people just use convenient definitions, the national median wage puts middle class at $12/hour, but people fail to look at local economies, in large cities you can make near that at McDonalds, but due to the cost of living you're still not middle class. In other areas of the country you're in upper middle class on that same wage.

originally posted by: toysforadults
I put this in the social issues and civil unrest forum for a reason: As a middle class citizen who can barely afford medical insurance and cost of living simultaneously on 50 hours a week at $16.00 an hour and rising I am tired of a few thing -

Did you ever consider that you're not middle class? Many on the right use the rhetoric that if you want food, shelter, and health care you need to work harder for it, and contribute labor of appropriate worth to society. Are you sure that that's not the case for you?

originally posted by: toysforadults
This is why I am a Libertarian.

The government should have little to no power over it's citizens.

Yes the lower class are suffering however I think the middle class has felt the crunch the most. The lower classes are where they have always been however the people able to work their way up and now realizing they are almost back where they were before.

If I remember right, you're pretty young, you don't remember a pre 9/11 or even as an adult a pre 2008 world. Since the late 90's the middle class has been disappearing, what you think you know as middle class, is not what middle class traditionally was. Most people who call themselves middle class today would have been considered poor by the standards of a decade ago

a reply to: Aazadan

Nearly 50k a year was middle class

originally posted by: slider1982
Well I am sure you know the narrative is to have no middle class, they want everyone to be dependant on the state, the next thing to go will be inheritance.. Your folks will need to give everything back and sell their home that they own to pay for their old age care, this is actually already happening.

Inheritance should go. We should not promote dynasties, and the best way to do that is to eliminate generational wealth. Let each member of each generation rise and fall on their own merits rather than the financial advantages of their parents/family. It's the most fair way to do things.

originally posted by: toysforadults
a reply to: Aazadan

Nearly 50k a year was middle class

Jobs paid more back then too, your current $16/hour used to be triple minimum wage, and people were still getting it in entry level jobs.

originally posted by: MOMof3
a reply to: toysforadults

The laborer has no representation. No matter how tough or brave the individual, you can't stand up to corporate institutions that look out for one another.
They destroyed unions and union jobs because of government pensions. My husband poured concrete from 70 to 2007 and watched our pay and benefits shrink starting with Reaganomics in 86.

We gave away our middle class to enrich others.
Forget revolution. The lost middle class is in slavery and can't afford the time off from their low wages. Ye reap what ye sow.

Labor unions are good things, the people who have run the unions though didn't do a very good job of things in recent years. They ended up in effect running the companies, and they ran them into the ground. I think the optimal solution is in having just enough unions that the non union shops also have to give concessions to the employees in order to remain competitive.

a reply to: Nothin

They conveniently forget that the rest of the world subsidizes them by the fact of oil being traded in $ US

originally posted by: Painterz
The interesting thing is a disappearing middle class has always historically been an indicator of the emergence of revolution.

So long as a nation has a sizeable healthy middle class, the status-quo will continue, because the majority of middle class people will want their mostly comfortable lives to continue.


But what we have now with Capitalist Globalism is an increasing erosion of the middle, as the top take a bigger and bigger slice of the pie, so increasingly we have the ultra rich and... the poor.

And yes, I agree, sooner or later this will collapse, unless something is done to shore up the middle classes again.

Yeah the middle class is the canary in the gold mine.

a strong healthy middle class means very fluid social mobility.

It also means a healthy cosumer economy as middle class have some money to spend.

Small middle class restricts social mobility that causes unrest and also money starts to dry up for luxory goods.

As you said revolutions and riots start.

Another thing is economic depressions. The great depression was party caused or at least made worse by huge income inequality as the very rich where making huge amounts of luxory goods and suddenly they found out they had no one to sell there goods too!

a reply to: Aazadan

My husband was in his local for over 40yrs. There was never any scandals and he got all his retirement. The only time his pension was threatened was in 2008. I'm sure like businesses, there are the failures. Except unions don't get bailed out. It's up to the members to read the financial reports and attend meetings to keep them honest.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: toysforadults
a reply to: Aazadan

Nearly 50k a year was middle class

Jobs paid more back then too, your current $16/hour used to be triple minimum wage, and people were still getting it in entry level jobs.

I know we get paid way less than our predecessors.

Its not a secret.

And they act like they are doing us a favor

Oh my job isnt entry level I run a printing press with experience.

It doesnt pay anymore.

In other revolutions, it was clear who the oppressor was......

This time, they did an excellent job of rigging the system so they control the people who are supposed to help the middle class.

You now have a choice of being angry at the very poor or you can be angry at the very rich and vote Democrat. Except the help the left will give are really benefits for the elite.

The housing crisis was a perfect example. All the "help" really benefitted the banks.

originally posted by: toysforadults
I know we get paid way less than our predecessors.

Its not a secret.

And they act like they are doing us a favor

So lets talk about the cause of that. It's not caused by anything you listed in your OP, yet it's also the root reason you find all of those points to be issues. If the money were there, you wouldn't really care.

Purchasing power is declining, it's because wealth inequality is increasing. Those at the top have gotten A LOT of tax breaks, and that simply doesn't work under a progressive tax model (not progressive as in leftist, progressive as in each dollar earned is taxed at a higher rate than the previous dollar).

This stems in my opinion from a lack of equal representation. Donors to political parties and individual politicians disproportionately favor the wealthy. Lobbyists also work for the wealthy. The only way the poor and middle class can get legislation that favors them, or is at least fair to them is to also lobby. Yet, the simplest form of lobbying... paying our members of Congress more, is a very unpopular idea. The more we pay them, the less they need to look to others for funding.

I don't think this can ever happen, which also means that I don't think Congress can ever responsibly handle the tax code. So lets look at ways to move taxes beyond their reach. A flat tax won't work because the poor and most of the "middle class" don't actually have any wealth to tax in the first place. The bottom 50% in the US own a collective 0.2% of the nations wealth. There's simply no tax base there. If you flat tax these people at the 25% rate you need to tax the wealthy to get reasonable funds from them, not only are you not going to improve revenues by much, but you'll place significant hardship on those people.

So here's my solution (and if I ever get into politics later in life, it's something I would try to implement). Lets tax people by their share of GDP. If you make 1% of the nations GDP, you pay 1% of the federal budget. In terms of the tax code, it could be written in a single sentence. (your earnings/gdp) * federal budget. It's self regulating. If the top end starts earning too much, their taxes go up, others go down, and balance is re achieved. If wealth inequality gets too low and income distribution becomes flat, some more enterprising people will take advantage of lower taxes and jump up on the earnings scale.

In your case specifically though, it's not malicious that they're paying you less. Before the concept of replaceable parts came into existence, every item was custom built for every product. Goods were very expensive as a result. Reducing the cost of production puts more products in more peoples hands, even when wages also go down. Manufacturing has seen many changes in the past couple decades. We could do things like bring more manufacturing back to the US, but I'm not sure where that would get us. The ultimate goal of any job is to remove all barriers to entry and enable anyone to do it. Ultimately, that means that a high paying job that goes overseas to an uneducated work force, will be innovated on and eventually come back over here as a low paying job once the skill to do it has been shifted from the worker to the equipment.