The Pauperization Of America

It’s been an unrelenting process. Survey after survey has shown that wages haven’t kept up with inflation since the wage peak in 2000. Families earned less at the end of the decade than at the beginning, a phenomenon not seen in the US since World War II. The middle-income tier actually shrank in size—the ongoing process of hollowing out the American middle class. But now there is a new phenomenon: the unmentionable class, the class that doesn’t exist in America, is ballooning.

Read…. The Pauperization Of America

18 thoughts on “The Pauperization Of America”

  4. Brad

    Gee … this couldn’t have anything to do with all the pauper jobs being filled by illegals at wages we paupers earned over two and half decades ago? No, that can’t be. Certainly if ten Mexicans is good then it must follow that ten million is much better. No downside here. I owe you an apology Stacey, I finally see the importance of giving away the few social resources in our community and my wages while my family goes unemployed and unfed. God bless you Stacey.

  7. evolutis

    @ John Robb … Thanks for the link / Chris Hedges has a point of view that is worth a listen…. all this seems pauperization of the planet.

    “An alarm clock you wrestle with to prove your awake” [Neil Gershenfeld]

  9. bleep

    Hey, well it’s that thing…. 30/40 years ago middle-class meant you were a professional such as a doctor or lawyer, or owned a successful small business. The 40 year debt boom and shift in working patterns (double income families) has created a larger group, simulating the middle.

    As the middle shrinks, the definition will change again. It’s no longer enough to think you’re in the middle and spend like you are…

  10. Noodles123

    The jobs among the middle class have changed as many of the jobs they held in good times are being outsourced or eliminated…Honestly how many idiots that we know have a job title and a big paycheck for minimal work?

    True there are many good, educated, hard working people in this new “Unmentionables” group…But you also have a large group of useless middle management or those that went into careers where there was too much competition for few positions…Over educated on paper but their skills weren’t needed.

    As for the rest?…Being uneducated and only being able to do menial jobs is a great way to starve especially when hordes of illegals are willing to work harder, faster and with less issues…No way around this issue we as a nation are f*cked and soon there will be waves of crime A La Argentina nationwide not just in Oakland, Detroit, Newark, Houston, DC, Atlanta, Philly, Baltimore…Wait! There’s a pattern here what can it be?

  12. Mabs

    The New Economy Movement

    The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option.

    Over the past few decades, however, a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders. Most of the projects, ideas and research efforts have gained traction slowly and with little notice. But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have proliferated and earned a surprising amount of support—and not only among the usual suspects on the left. As the threat of a global climate crisis grows increasingly dire and the nation sinks deeper into an economic slump for which conventional wisdom offers no adequate remedies, more and more Americans are coming to realize that it is time to begin defining, demanding and organizing to build a new-economy movement.

    http://www.garalperovitz.com/2011/07/the-new-economy-movement-the-nation-2011/

  14. John Robb

    @evolutis
    Your comment made me think we were at the “Wretling with Bitcoin” post. So I immediately thought of this…
    http://www.amazon.com/Makes-Money-Dont-Make-Version/dp/B00123LXR8
    I was dissapointed that I couldn’t find a full version on youtube [and can't currently find the time to wrestle with uploading it myself], but hey, then I realized that being post lost could work to my advantage. So I embraced Gerchenfeld’s principle to personally fabricate something here at home. I then pressed my “Print” button and received an error message: “timed-out”. I tried a second time and this popped out…
    http://spiderjohn.com/demolicious/hamsters/novatime.wma

  16. Anthony

    Middle Class did not mean Professionals only that is White American propaganda bullsh*t. After 1970 White Collar Companies STILL WERE NOT HIRING MINORITIES! So guess what, they could join the middle class by getting factory jobs like building cars for $15-$20 an hour (adjusted for inflation). That’s who joined the middle class in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s , combined with those who had only HS educations who could use the power of dual incomes to earn 50-70K for a household of two working parents and two children.

    Its also consumerism, just wait until the IPhone 5 is launched and you’ll see despite the economic crisis, Apple will turn a nice profit off a device that is marginally improved over the previous model and where the competition (Samsung) has surpassed them with a better product.

    Two income households is mandatory. Those that do nothing largely productive but pushing paper or moving things around on a screen are being overpaid.

    Another thing is that you are whatever your job is. Women won’t fuck you if you work at Mc Donald’s. Only women who have accepted they won’t be better than Crew Manager at Mc Donald’s will screw you, marry you and have your child. With the majority of low wage jobs being taken by minorities + competition for White women by Minorities for the same pool of White women, this leads to a bunch of disaffected White men who shoot up movie theaters and join White Nationalist groups, claim being Libertarians (non-racist) and think its cute to ask White women if they date Black men…

    I see it elsewhere on the net, don’t take what I am saying about the other side of the culture war for granted, its real.

  17. Mabs

    From the Pauperization article:

    The system, it seems, has succeeded in wringing out any excess enthusiasm from those who are struggling to climb the hurdles in front of them, though that very enthusiasm is a vital ingredient in economic success.

    The system is doing what it was designed to do, and has now nearly reached terminal velocity.

    As Bernard Lietaer clearly pointed out, the nature of our monetary system, which is debt based and doesn’t create interest money, is to asset-strip the population and create sociopathic competition. The problem is structural.

    Aristotle: The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

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