40 Facts That The Working Class Is Being Wiped Out

Let me start by saying, I am and for the most part have always been a very optimistic person. And I honestly kept telling myself that this economy will turn around. I truly believed that we as a nation would overcome this financial disaster and get our house in order. Despite the daily dose of bad news, I really felt that things would turn around. I have even seen many of my friends and family go from middle class to broke class;yet, I kept the faith.

Hell, a part of me even thought that our politicians had an answer to our problems but were holding back on us.

I found that to be the only logical reason as to why so many educated men and women would put us in the situation we as a nation are in. Who would have thought that a bunch of highly educated men and women could be so incompetent at finding solutions? Time and time again Congress has raised the debt limit, increased the National debt, passed laws with loopholes that benefit Corporations and Congresses self-interest, while ignoring the impact their actions would have on the future. Seldom have they tackled the issue, like
social security/Medicaid, that experts have been warning about for years.

Even at this moment, they don't care about what happens to America. They are more concerned about what party is going to outdo the other or embarrass the other as they prepare for the 2012 elections. They have no solutions and even less ambition or desire to put the interest of America first.

One would think that at a time like this, both parties would be doing everything in their power to work as a team. They would be passing true bi-partisan bills left and right in an effort to protect this Great country from a Great Big Fall. Yet, they prefer to bicker about who walked out on who, who is to blame, or which party party will do a better job in 2012.

Why do politicians always want us to wait till the next election to fix what they should be fixing today?

My optimism is dead.

The economy is dead.

Jobs are dead.

Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class is being systematically wiped out....

#1 Right now, the U.S. government says that 14.1 million Americans are unemployed.
#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#3 The number of Americans that are "not in the labor force" is at an all-time high.
#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.
#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That number has risen by more than 3.5 million in just the past two years.
#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job. Just check out this chart....

40 Facts

But if we ask a politician about it
will we get the same platitudes about this being a "classless society"
like they fed our parents back in the day?

Speaking for the south I guess now that all of our nobles have been destroyed
by a century of "reconstruction" there is nothing in the way of
accusing us of having "no class."

Does anyone else feel like our new political class in America
has mastered the art of blaming the woman for being raped.

Politician: "Wearing those clothes she is asking for it."

Citizens: "But you made her wear that skirt"

Politician: "Yeah, the tramp"



Now it's going to be something like
how disease ridden the homeless are
and what a breeding ground for crimes
the people living in the tunels under Las Vegas are.



Is it any wonder so many poor people are praying for the end.


David Grouchy

How exactly is the working class going to be wiped out?

Are you saying there will no longer be jobs that pay working class wages or something?

What is your definition of working class?

So if someone makes 40k a year all of a sudden that job will be gone and they will be poor or rich overnight?

I don't see the working class going anywhere.

Things have changed a lot for the younger generation, both my parents were born into poor working class conditions in the North of England, my dad however had a job for life, he worked for his company for over 40 years, the conditions of the job increased as the economies of the world grew. My parents were able to buy cheap housing back then, that they took advantage of and made money from their property. They are now comfortably middle class and retired with good pensions.

This type of social mobility is coming to an end. It is almost impossible for a young person to get on the property ladder in the UK, not without some serious help from parents. The chances of a well paid job for life are also coming to an end. Working conditions and benefits are being slowly eroded away. My parents generation have had the best of the times, the younger generation are now fighting for the scraps left behind, with less optimism for the future.

Social mobility is in many cases now going into reverse, with more and more young people having to return to their family home as they can no longer afford rent or a mortgage.

The West is being dismantled. On purpose.
The East is being built up. On purpose.

It's that simple. Even a retard should be able to tell.

reply to post by eldard


The East is becoming the "new" West and the poor are getting more oppressed

I can't see it being an end to the working class anytime soon. Who would flip our burgers

Times are certainly different though, as Woodwardjr said, from a generation ago. Only 30 years ago the family had their mortgages paid in a short time, mum could stay at home and dad had a job for life. There was no benefit dependency culture then, no mounting debts, and it was possible to save for the future. Can't see those times returning anytime soon for the average Joe

^ More like who would be able to afford the burgers?

two

Almost posted this thread myself, I'm glad someone else did. The most common thing amongst the 40 is the sacrificing of the American worker at the altar of Free Trade. Ross Perot seems pretty damn prescient nearly 20 years later. This is the result of all the "Trade Agreements" the US has signed these past twenty years, NAFTA and others. In my view they are all unconstitutional unless they passed with 3/4 majority in the Senate as treaties must be.

How can it be fixed short of Revolution? A good start would be to kick the idea of "Free Trade" to the side and replace it with "Fair Trade". Implement wage and environmental tariffs against low wage and polluting countries so that industries that continue to produce here have a level playing field against slave labor and no environment protections. Trade would be pretty much the same between Western Europe, US, Canada, Australia, Japan, S Korea and a few others, but countries that wish to export into the US would have to either improve wage and environmental policies or pay a punitive tariff for access to the US consumer. There is very little time to make something like that happen though. Henry Ford realized almost a century ago that if you really wanted to sell a product you had to ensure that those who made it were paid well enough that they could afford to buy it. China and other low wage countries will realize this eventually, but not before they lose access to the US consumer through either the above tariff policy or the degredation of the US consumer through an inability to afford any product due to the loss of living wage jobs.

The old ways are dead and Western society hasn't realized it yet.
The Golden age of Democracy and Abundance has passed;
it's death throes only now being noticed by the few.

Originally posted by kro32
How exactly is the working class going to be wiped out?

Are you saying there will no longer be jobs that pay working class wages or something?

What is your definition of working class?

So if someone makes 40k a year all of a sudden that job will be gone and they will be poor or rich overnight?

I don't see the working class going anywhere.

I can see it very clearly. It used to be that one of the signs of reaching middle class was the obtaining of a family home, a steady job with benefits, being able to send your kids to college and being able to retire at 65. The USA is foreclosing homes at a faster and faster rate, jobs are being lost a faster and faster rate, the cost of health insurance has gone thru the ceiling and the cost of attending a university is growing faster that the rate of inflation. There are no more lifetime jobs- you are lucky to have any job for a few years before you are downsized or outsourced. Upon obtaining a new job, it pays less than your last job and has fewer if any benefits. People who were retired have to come back out of retirement to get any kind of job because their social security is being cut and their retirement income has been stolen by the corporation and the government and Bernie Madoff. . I live in Atlanta, GA and driving home from lunch yesterday, I observed a homeless fellow living under a bridge over the interstate. We got here from the FREE TRADE agreements. Our government allowed our jobs to walk right out of this country to increase their profits. When no one can afford the products anymore because we all have been reduced to living under bridges because all of our houses have been foreclosed and we are all unemployed, what will they do then to make a profit? This was all so shortsighted. The best way to stay wealthy is to generate a revenue stream that does not dry up. Right now the US is getting pretty dry...

reply to post by jam321


In my lifetime, I have seen the “Fall of Communism” and now I am a front line witness to the “Fall of Capitalism.”

I blame all the entitlements that people seem to think they have a right to. No government can afford to keep people at lower middle class levels by just giving them access to all that “free” Health Care, Food Stamps, Housing, etc. It does add up and when there is very little to the tax base to support such programs. Heck, they can’t even afford to keep all these people at poverty levels.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you earned a pension through your service, Union, Military, or even a Private Corp. that matched funds for your 401K, you deserve them.

Helping your fellow human being is an honorable thing as well, but it is not the government’s job to take care of its citizens, but to help them.

The US Congress has passed so many entitlement programs and placed such restrictive taxes on the productive members over the years that a collapse is eminent in my opinion. All the while giving tax breaks to those businesses that send the jobs overseas.

I am all for giving tax breaks to a business that stays here and employs locally. But those that outsource should be punished through a higher tax rate. We need to bring back punishing tariffs as well on those who do not practice “Fair trade.”

There are is a massive storm on the horizon and it is coming our way, and it will engulf the world. Those who wonder how they will handle a SHTF scenario, may soon no longer be wondering, but rather experiencing it.

reply to post by jefwane


Sorry to disappoint. But Japan and Korea got to where they are now by undercutting the competition. You cannot force a country to increase wages. Labor markets are also subject to the laws of supply and demand. If ditch diggers are aplenty they will have low salaries. If you can't find a replacement for you best engineer you'll offer him a raise so he won't leave.

The problem with the US is not lack of manufacturing. It's unabashed borrowing. Case in point: if a woman bought a sneaker from China for 20 bucks instead of a US made one for 80, she saved 60 which she would blow on pedicures, pizza, a movie ticket, a t-shirt, etc. There is nothing wrong with a service oriented economy. Besides, you still can't automize most of those. Protectionism will not get you anywhere.

And resource poor countries such as Japan can't afford to import food at 1st world prices. I live in a country where we supply 95% of bananas they consume. Not to mention they buy most of our pineapples, tuna, prawns and others.

reply to post by eldard


No you cannot force a county to raise wages but you can level the playing field at the point of entry with wage and environmental parity tariffs. Then they must either figure out some way to spur internal demand or change policies to avoid the punitive tariff. I don't buy the idea that a service economy is sustainable, particularly with the rampant outsourcing to India of IT and call center jobs,but I agree that debt is a major component to our situation. The majority of these forty things relate to "Free Trade" ideologies.

reply to post by summerbreeze.ddp


This has all happened before and America experienced Boom periods after it. I don't see this time being any different but time will tell.

People during every down period have claimed it's the end of the country for one reason or another yet we still remain. I'll side with history on this topic.

reply to post by kro32

I don't see the working class going anywhere.

And thats the problem. The working class hasnt gone anywhere since the 70's. Not even keeping up with inflation. But time keeps marching forward, while the working class stays, not going anywhere.

If you don't go anywhere in this world, you will be quickly left behind. Welcome tto the Middle Class. Learn to love the suck.

reply to post by eldard

bought a sneaker from China for 20 bucks instead of a US made one for 80

Only problem with this, the sneakers made in China are $120. The company just gets that much more profit, along with party members. The workers get 80 hour weeks with no overtime, live in compounds (called 'apartments') and have no rights. We are subsidizing slave labor with our debt.

Everything seemed fine, till greenspan started his your house is an investment, got too the bank with it* but the fine print..we can repo it at any given time we feel* donald reegan told president reagen to hurry up 1980 at a preisdential booth speech...the secretary of treasury under Bush jr..stole our bailout money, more so to save AIG... wallstreet hires mathemtaical geniusus to come up with derivitives* we live in a business soceity designed so you dont understand it, so you looise everything at one point..they got greedier, and greedier, and the outcome,ti affects eerything else around them and us..the thing is, they stole enough money bascially, so they can survive. this is corporate america , and moving forwad...the new world order. i bet..it will near collapse, and congresss, president maybe, will say we need socailsim or someting to save whats left....sucker everyone into it. thats what the new world order is partially about..destroying the middle class, so those with money they stole, and power can be gods*

reply to post by eldard


speaking towards ur comparison of a $20 shoe made in china as opposed to and $80 shoe made in the u.s, u see if the shoes were made in the u.s then people in the u.s will have jobs thus being able to afford $80 shoes! the loss of manufacturing jobs has made people dependant on low quality cheaply made products made over seas! what good is being able to buy $20 shoes if half ur countrymen dont have jobs and cant even afford those $20 shoes?

fyi even the $100 + shoes are made in china w materials bought for pennies on the dollar.

bring back the manufacturing jobs and put americans to work!

Originally posted by eldard
The West is being dismantled. On purpose.
The East is being built up. On purpose.

It's that simple. Even a retard should be able to tell.

HOW IS THE EAST BEING BUILT UP? MORON
STATE FACTS NOT OPINIONS... I COULD TELL YOU LOTS OF REASON BISEDES NONSENSE WHY THE DEBT IS HIGH