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Who destroyed the middle class?
  • 29 Replies sorted by
  • ghkqnghkqn

    This is hardly a USA problem only. You will also find the same problems in Europe. Professionals, factory workers, etc. basically constitute the middle class. Unfortunately, since the early 1980s, there are less of them in the US and other developed economies as outsourcing increases. So regardless of whoever is the politician, and regardless of his/her claims, if you belongs in the middle class then you know your future. Even if the outsourcing trend is to slow down or reverse, the middle class is unlikely to find their past rosy days. Companies may be investing back into the US, now that wages are a lot cheaper, because whether it is China or the US, they are looking for American workers (aha made in USA) at Chinese wages and may be Chinese benefits (aka none) unless you have a skill they need (like their Physician ... it is real hard to negotiate on price when you are in an ICU). As an engineer, and I am ranked pretty high up there, the last year I saw a raise was some 10 years back (my CEO obviously did quite a lot better than I did). At the same time, my benefits just get smaller and smaller while a company pension may just be a thing of the past. So it is no surprise that companies are all sitting on increasing wealth (while the job outlook stays weak). One thing I find it very surprising when comparing food costs between say metropolitan NY and say inner belt Paris, France, costs on bread, milk, eggs, even beef, chicken are quite a lot higher in back good old USA, the land of OGM, ample cows and this is also the land where we figured out how to put chickens in endless sleepless nights so we get plenty of eggs. The laws of supply and demand were supposed not to work that way. Don;t get me wrong, we do have somethng cheaper, houses (but we also have a lot more of foreclosures). I know that personal observations are meaningless statistically, still I wonder how so as I already factore in the stronger euro I do believe that the future will be with small businesses, as positions with big corporations and multinationals get rarer (and look less and less appealing).

  • chazzmoechazzmoe

    @ghkqn http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=France&city=Paris&displayCurrency=USD check out that site, maybe stuff is higher in NY where the state/city tax the crap out of stuff or rents are so high but in the Midwest stuff is cheaper than Paris. Although I am with you on all the gmo food crap, I would rather not eat it and would pay more to eat non gmo food. I know I'm going to get flamed but many of the policies put in place to save the consumer actually have the direct opposite effect and hurt them. A lot of the regulations put in place limit competition, big corperations lobby to get rules and regulations passed making it harder for small business/start ups to comply with all the regulations thus running them out of business or making it too expensive to even start a business to compete. Trust me I come from a union background, George Bush and most of the Republicans gave capitalism a bad name, that's not capitalism it's corporatism or crony capitalism, fascism. Capitalism is using resources the most efficiently as possible, use a little less paint making a car =little more profit, use a little less energy making your product =more profit, the more efficiently you use resources the more profit you make. Profit is what drives companies and individuals to come up with new ways to be more efficient. Now people are going to say well what if say a company wants to cut corners to increase profit, say they start spraying cars with crappy paint that starts chipping or fading fast, or the engines are crap, they might increase profit temporarily but when you screw your customers and the word gets out you go out of business, no bailout, your gone and a company that delivers a better product takes up the slack. Capitalism = the customer is always right. The business is forced to compete for your business by making products their customer wants. The business is there to serve the people's needs. In America and many other places we have the furthest thing from capitalism.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Capitalism is using resources the most efficiently as possible, use a little less paint making a car =little more profit, use a little less energy making your product =more profit, the more efficiently you use resources the more profit you make. Profit is what drives companies and individuals to come up with new ways to be more efficient.

    It is false. First, things do not work this way, as any modernization in reality means less profit for some time, so factories working on very old tech are very common.
    Second, competition introduce extremely inefficient resources usage.

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