@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.

I agree with @JohnnyMossville most of the middle class problems are a function of decreased purchasing power (at least in the USA ) you can't measure currencies against each other, all central banks are in the devalue business right now. If you look at the Zimbabwe stock market charts from a few years ago, investing in Zimbabwe would be the new hot place to invest. But all you are really looking at is Zim dollars being devalued like crazy, when compared to real things like businesses listed on their stock exchange, yes it takes more devalued zim dollars to by the same stock in a company. http://www.google.com/search?q=zimbabwe+stock+chart&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=qmz_T_rAJouI8QSmo_HoBA&biw=1024&bih=672&sei=rWz_T4KpBIWI8QS0-oTsBA#biv=i|0;d|nEP3Vd0DVO3j-M:

@svart

I think your wrong on the Madison quote seems he wrote and meant corporations. I think your confusing most comments about the rich with upper middle class or the moderately well to do most are talking about the "money powers" the extreme rich. Though you have some points this battle you don't think exists has waged along time. It has tainted the US Democracy to the point of people have given up on the corrupted 2 party system. Here's a quote from Lincoln if you didn't like the others he seemed to think that war that doesn't exist was at his back door and I'm sure he would be sad to know there winning.

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."

@svart

As a matter of interest, you might want to go back to the time of the U.S. Constitution, and read the warnings that our so-called "founding fathers" broadcast over the dangers of concentrated wealth. They foresaw all of this, over 200 years ago. Actually, they sound like commies:

James Madison: "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."

Benjamin Franklin: "All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

Benjamin Franklin: "Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating..."

Thomas Jefferson: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

I guess these guys were all whiners, not willing to take adequate personal responsibility and were deluded to think class warfare was already going on.

@svart

Billions of dollars go annually into "manufacturing consent" -- or creating middle-class passivity and incoherence, if you prefer -- and rigging the system in favor of the already wealthy. How else could the depraved U.S. political system survive--with two parties bought and paid for by corporate interests? This class warfare has been well underway for many years. Do you really think this is a fair fight?

Blaming the middle-class for their current plight makes as much sense as blaming a kid for being born into a poor family. Mass society is not a genius. If there aren't structures in place to curb the power of money and ensure at least some equitable distribution of resources -- usually referred to as the social welfare system or the social contract -- the result is always the same. The monied win. Just look at the Third World, which is standard the American plutocracy aspires to.

And I apologize for what seems like rambling on. I just get worked up when people blame others for what we should have done for ourselves. That's the hallmark response of someone who isn't yet out of denial. The truth is that it's now almost out of our hands to do something about it too. Eventually there will be no middle class and you WILL have true class warfare, just like in science-fiction movies. Right now, class-warfare is just a word that gets thrown around in order to elicit emotional responses and rile people up.

And yes, the "isms" never really work, but it's not because they don't work in theory, it's because people don't actually carry them out as planned. People will always bend and twist things to benefit themselves, and eventually everything that is bent and twisted must break. And VK, I think you mentioned before that someone/something must oversee the process, and I agree, in theory. The problem is that people will always be people and whoever is in charge might mean well at first, but it will eventually be changed, and never for the better.

@Jrd and @brianluce Of course I blame the victim in this situation. I AM one of the victims in this. I've done my share of hoping for "change" or expecting some government official to put my needs above those of his campaign funders, or wondering why greedy "rich" (why don't we call them prosperous?) people don't seem in tune with those around them, but this has gotten myself and those around me nothing but wishful thinking. Guess what? The greedy are greedy and make excuses for it. The poor are poor and make excuses for it. The middle class was/is blissfully ignorant, glad they aren't poor and somehow making excuses for being glad they aren't rich. Guess what? We are still in the same boat we were already in. We are still heading down the same creek with the same problems. So who is going to stand up and do something if not us?

So yes, I am blaming the victim, because we are only victims in label. We didn't stand up when some corporations started taking advantage of us by handing us loans that both sides knew we couldn't pay back or selling us goods/services that were taken away from our workers and shipped overseas. No, we were too happy to be getting cheap junk, as long as it was cheap and we could buy more of it. So yes, the victim in this situation is also the perpetrator. If we stood up to say NO then these greedy corporations would never had existed and never thought they could get away with their criminal activities to begin with.

Oh, but then our own government, the ones who should be PROTECTING us, decides to get in bed with these same corporations and then prop them up using our OWN money. So that bank decided it would be a good thing to give out a bunch of mortgages that they knew people couldn't pay? Oh they bundled them up and sold them, KNOWING that they were worthless, then almost went bankrupt when their misdeeds finally came full circle? No problem, instead of letting the market let these criminals go out of business to teach others that robbing your customers is a BAD thing, the government swoops in to SAVE them! Now they are like children who got away with something, they are doing it AGAIN, just doing it more discretely so nobody catches on until later. Don't get me started on the poor who have figured out how to scam the system either. I was at the gym the other day and I sat down next to a guy who was telling his friend how he found a doctor that would take money in return for deeming the guy to be "disabled" so that he could get a check and not have to work. More greed. Just on the bottom of the ladder.

Don't get me wrong, I AM a capitalist (sorry VK) and I think the capitalist system could work but we DON'T have a capitalist system. We never did. Once we started figuring out ways to trade in things that don't exist, we totally screwed our chances at making it work. Then, of course, we know that whoever has the most money to campaign is generally the winner of an election, so it's no wonder that our government is full of people who rather make laws that benefit their agendas rather than benefiting society at large. Our forefathers made a system that could not be changed quickly so that nobody could rig elections and change the course of the government quickly. This is now being used against us because we can't possibly get these goons out of the system. Unions and special interest groups dominate funding and squish protests and the "liberal" media shuts down any chance of fair reporting, and it's all based on human greed.

Greed is a good thing. It causes people to strive for better and motivates people to do things, like work. But greed without conscious is bad and conscious is something we lost as a society a long time ago. So yes, we are all at fault.

It was Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the Cellar.

Blame the victim eh svart?

@svart

That's an unusual way to understand 30+ years of class-warfare in the U.S. The rich and powerful no doubt agree with you, in believing that it's entirely the fault of the lazy middle-classes themselves.

@johnnymossville

Please, no impressionistic claims ("prices have skyrocketed to put it mildly"). Unless you have better data, the CPI is what we should be talking about.

Since profits are measured against the the baseline of previous quarters, how would dollar devaluation 10 years ago against the Euro prove these gains in profits are illusory?

It's class warfare, plain and simple. Don't blame it on dollar devaluation.