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Page added on November 10, 2015
The Rapidly Rising Cost Of Living Is Killing The Middle Class In America
All over America, the middle class is dying and poverty is on the rise.
One of the primary reasons for this is the rapidly rising cost of living in the United States. The cost of just about everything that average families shell out money for on a regular basis – food, rent, health insurance, etc. – is rising much faster than wages are. In a previous article I noted that the federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, but 51 percent of all American workers are making less than $30,000 a year at this point. We have seen an explosion in the number of people in this country that are considered to be “the working poor” and it gets worse with each passing year.
One of the most frustrating things for me personally is the rising cost of health insurance. Barack Obama promised that his program would result in a decline in health insurance premiums by as much as $2,500 per family, but in reality average family premiums have increased by a total of $4,865 since 2008.
Just recently, I got a letter informing me that my health insurance premiums would be going up by close to 20 percent in 2016. That is on top of an increase of more than 30 percent in 2015. Sadly, the exact same thing is happening to millions of other families all over the nation. The following comes from TruNews…
The Obamacare increases for 2016 have been released. Premiums will increase 3 times faster than officials claim.
Every state is different. Every insurer is different. New Mexico residents, for instance, can expect increases of 8 to 40 percent for the second-lowest cost silver plan. But for people in other states, including Arkansas the cost will increase less than 4 percent. Overall the average increase is 20.3 percent, according to analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation, instead of the 7.5 percent originally asserted.
And of course it isn’t just health insurance. Every time I go to the grocery store I am stunned by the prices.
They often try to hide the price increases so that we will not notice them. Sometimes when I go food shopping I notice that some of my favorite things are “on sale”, but the sale prices are what the old “regular prices” used to be. And food companies just keep shrinking package sizes, but the amount we have to pay stays the same or goes up.
Unfortunately, our food dollars are never going to stretch any farther than they do right now. Thanks to erratic global weather, food prices are quickly moving higher. In fact, according to the Crux global food prices just rose by the most that we have seen in three years…
The effects of El Niño are starting to reach the dinner table, with global food prices rising the most in three years on supply concerns for everything from New Zealand milk to sugar in Brazil and Southeast Asian palm oil.
An index of 73 food prices increased 3.9%, the biggest jump since July 2012, to 162 in October, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization wrote in a report Thursday.
The return of the El Niño weather phenomenon is changing weather conditions around the world, damaging crops with too much rain in some areas and not enough in others. The price of sugar increased more than that of any other commodity in the FAO report, soaring 17 percent, the most since September 2010. Excessive downpours in Brazil, the world’s largest producer, have slowed harvesting and reduced the amount of sweetener that can be extracted from cane.
As a result of this relentless squeeze on our pocketbooks, tens of millions of families are struggling to pay the bills from month to month, and the middle class is continually getting smaller. As the middle class shrinks, poverty is growing and more Americans are becoming dependent on the government than ever before. The following numbers come out of one of my previous articles entitled “21 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind“…
#1 The U.S. Census Bureau says that nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty right now.
#2 Other numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau are also very disturbing. For example, in 2007 about one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five.
#3 According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the authors of a new book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States that live on less than two dollars a day. That number has doubled since 1996.
#4 46 million Americans use food banks each year, and lines start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because people want to get something before the food supplies run out.
#5 The number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased by 60 percentover the past six years.
#6 According to Poverty USA, 1.6 million American children slept in a homeless shelter or some other form of emergency housing last year.
It has become exceedingly clear that “the American Dream” is dying and that the future is not very bright for “ordinary hard-working Americans”. I like how Rupert Cornwell described this in one of his recent articles…
The politicians still prattle on about “helping hard-working Americans” and “restoring the American dream”. But even as instinctively optimistic a breed as the Americans now believe they are being sold a bill of goods. What dream? The reality is that no longer is it a hard-working blue-collar American’s birthright to live better than his parents. Most probably, he or she will be worse off.
You might be one of those Americans that has fallen out of the middle class and into poverty.
Even in the midst of this so-called “economic recovery”, large numbers of formerly middle class Americans are losing their jobs and losing their homes. And a surprising number of them end up either living in their vehicles or living in the streets. The following comes from a recent article by Joshua Krause…
On any given night in America, there are over a half a million people living on the streets or in their vehicles. As you can imagine, that’s not a good place to be in your life, but it happens. If you think that this is something that might happen to you one day in the near future (and who are kidding, it could happen to anyone these days) here’s a word of advice:Don’t wait until the last-minute, hoping for that next job interview to come through as you burn through your savings.If homelessness is a real possibility in your life, it’s something that you should be preparing for, not waiting for.
The more money you have at your disposal when you decide to leave your home, the easier your life is going to be without a house. If you have no money, you’ll be living on the streets with little more than the clothes on your back. It’s better to put your savings towards a van or a truck that you can live in. Unlike living on the streets, you can actually maintain a fairly decent standard of living with very little money.
When I was growing up, it seemed like just about everyone in my entire high school was part of the middle class. But things have changed dramatically in America since that time. Today, the middle class is being absolutely eviscerated and our “leaders” don’t seem to care.
34 Comments on "The Rapidly Rising Cost Of Living Is Killing The Middle Class In America"
Hello on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 7:42 pm
Interesting. Wondering if all this is true.
Wasn’t there some guy called oilfinder 2 on this board long ago with endless goods news?
Wondering what he has to say about that.
tahoe1780 on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 7:50 pm
Rubber Tramps – http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rubber+Tramp
http://gearjunkie.com/introducing-the-rubber-tramp-diary-entry-one
Anonymous on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 7:53 pm
We’re on the long downward slide back into a standard of living comparable to the late 1800’s. America is a rich country. With globalization stabilizing costs around the world, things are bound to get extremely ugly economically in important areas like Central America, South and East Asia, and the middle east. Over the coming decades, all these economic problems will show up on our doorstep as migrants unless we have the foresight to lock the problems out before they cause severe internal disruption.
I’m already severely curtailing costs, and I spend all my money on food, rent and utilities. There are very little luxuries, and 24/7 utilities may turn into a luxury in the event energy shortages occur across the world.
Its a long, downward slide from here on, given still growing populations and diminishing resources. If we’re very lucky, there won’t be a disruptive large scale resource war, but given how the Russians and Chinese are acting, I wouldn’t count on it.
apneaman on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 7:56 pm
oilfinder2 would like to let you know but he no longer has internet because he is living in his VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhgfjrKi0o
HARM on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 7:58 pm
“Just recently, I got a letter informing me that my health insurance premiums would be going up by close to 20 percent in 2016. That is on top of an increase of more than 30 percent in 2015. Sadly, the exact same thing is happening to millions of other families all over the nation.”
I call bullshit on this. First off, this “statistic” is totally anecdotal. Secondly, it flies directly in the face of known facts on Obamacare and health insurance costs since ACA passed:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-05/obamacare-effect-linked-to-lower-medical-cost-estimates
Lastly, this thinly disguised hit-piece on Obama is hosted on endoftheamericandream.com, a right-wing doomer/prepper site. Not exactly friendly to social spending programs (or the poor).
HARM on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:02 pm
More actual facts about ACA and average healthcare costs:
http://www.factcheck.org/2014/02/aca-impact-on-per-capita-cost-of-health-care/
Now… if the US had gone with the public option/single-payer, the per capita cost increases would be even lower –or negative. But unfortunately, all that our oligarchs would allow was the insurance and big pharma friendly ACA.
HARM on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:08 pm
For the record, I agree that the middle class is getting squeezed and acknowledge that costs of basic necessities has long been rising faster than wages (healthcare, housing, higher education, etc.). However, reprinting a bunch of right-wing hooey from an apocalyptic doomer site isn’t the best way to increase public awareness of the real problems we face.
Mike616 on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:15 pm
FORD Sending Jobs to Mexico, today.
Repubs sent 33 million jobs to China.
The think is when you vote for dumbasses, you get stupid policy, you get a rubber stamp of Wall Street Fraud. Criminal CEOs are incompetent. They don’t know shit about economics, and they fund the Republican party.
Not to say that they couldn’t switch to the Democratic party. But they’re not there now. So you VOTE where the BRIBERY ISN’T.
makati1 on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:17 pm
What can I add to the above article? The “American Dream” is not dying, it is dead and decomposing.
The 3rd world is not coming to the Us in decades. It is already here and being covered up by the propaganda spewing from all of the news sources owned by the 1% and the government dole to more than half of it’s population.
The Fed is in a corner. Even printing trillions of Zimbabwe dollars cannot stop the relentless slide into poverty for most Americans. The tax base is shrinking and being made up for by the printing press. History tells us how that ends.
Again, Americans want to blame someone else, like the Chinese or Russians. Too bad you are ALL so brainwashed that you cannot see the real world. The current aggression is ALL that of warmongering America. The Us has no business meddling in any other country, let alone bombing and killing their citizens. But America is morally dead also.
Dumbed down, drugged up, fat and arrogant to a fault. THAT is today’s “American Dream”.
makati1 on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:22 pm
Mike, there is no one in the US government not being paid for their votes. Congress was bought out long ago and the Prez has been owned since at least Regan. There are no two parties, just one with two different heads. They are liars and cheats, and serve their masters, not you. The sooner you see that and stop drinking the government Koolaid, the better for you and yours.
HARM on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:28 pm
Mak is basically right. There isn’t much difference between an average R and a D these days (though Ds tend to pay a little more lip service to the poor & working class). Both are two heads of the same snake.
Take a look at the Democratic front-runner and presumptive heir to the throne, Hillary Clinton. Served in the Senate as #1 shill/lobbyist for Wall Street during the debt/housing mega-bubble her husband basically helped to create with his repeal of Glass-Steagall and other Depression era banking regulation.
The only way to “protest” is to go third party or simply opt out of the process (which more and more Americans are now doing).
makati1 on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 8:29 pm
Harm, do you live in the US? It doesn’t seem so. Real purchasing power has been shrinking for decades, not just recently. Just because you salary numbers are bigger than they were 20 years ago does not mean you are making more money. Inflation has been shrinking your actual buying power since the day you started to work.
I was making ~$50 per week when I started to work in the 60s. I retired with a weekly salary of about $1,000/wk. A typical house in the 60s cost less than $10,000. Today, the same house would cost more than $200,000 in most areas. My new car cost ~$2,500. Today the same car would cost north of $40,000. It is just numbers to make you think you are gaining. you are not.
Plantagenet on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 9:17 pm
Its bad enough that the monthly premiums for Obamacare are going up by 10-40% in some areas, but the deductibles are going up so much that some families have to spend $5000-$8000 or more to get through the deductible before Obamacare kicks in and pays a penny.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2014/11/21/Obamacare-Deductibles-Already-High-Climb-2015
Making this even worse is that over half of the health care co-ops set up under Obamacare have gone bankrupt so far in 2015—-the non-profit healthcare co-ops were supposed to keep healthcare insurance costs low by competing with the for-profit insurance companies, but as they go bankrupt one by one, it will inevitably lead to even greater premium increases down the road from the few companies still remaining in the Obamacare biz.
Cheers!
dissident on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 9:40 pm
Just keep believing that inflation is under 2%. The government would never lie to you.
bug on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 10:03 pm
And the answer to this dilemma Plant is what? Please explain
Plantagenet on Tue, 10th Nov 2015 10:59 pm
What dilemma are you referring to bug?
The high cost of living?
The phony inflation numbers from the BLS?
The larges increases in Obamacare premiums and deductibles?
The death of the American dream?
Whats on your mind? — Please be more specific.
Cheers!
Pennsyguy on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 12:44 am
The smartest thing I ever did was to be born in the USA in 1949. Even though my family was working class, I could afford an education and had opportunities when I started a career. Due to greed at the top plus the laws of thermodynamics, young people everywhere will not have the chances I did to build a good life. They have my pity.
theedrich on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 2:16 am
If you feed insects, you get more of them. Ditto, illegals. Whatever the current economic situation, overload will only make it worse, eventually leading to collapse. (Source: Joseph Tainter.)
Decades ago, Nobel Prizewinner William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, suggested that low-IQ (and overwhelmingly Black) females be paid a substantial amount of dollars for every month they remained NOT pregnant. His proposal was naturally shouted down as being “racist” — which, of course, it necessarily was.
Likewise, today we have only one presidential candidate — Donald Trump — who sincerely promises to stop illegal immigration cold, and he is being given the same treatment as Shockley. Our entire civilization has become so perverted that it demands ever more poison to continue the delirium bringing about its own doom. All other candidates claim that, by tinkering around the edges, they can reverse course. Both they and the Demonic Party’s Witch of Endor (Hillary of the false teeth) are, in other words, summoning up the dead. Nostalgia and necromancy, however, can at the utmost serve up yet another dish of delusion for the masses of mushrooms. Unbeknownst to them, Nature has decreed that culling the unfits out of a herd is the only way for a species to survive.
bug on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 5:28 am
Plant, the Bls numbers I agree are fake.
The dilemma I refer to is Ocare. Healthcare is a giant problem and thought maybe instead of pointing out that it stinks, you could give an idea to improve
the system.
apneaman on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 9:06 am
theedrich, how do you know Trump is sincere? Are you privy to some pillow talk with the Donald that the rest of us aren’t?
How pathetic that your only reference for your racial hypothesis is a dead physicist (1/4 century) with no background in biology. If your reference is not trained in the field you are discussing, then he is no reference at all. There is no evidence for that racial angle, but intelligence in general looks to be mostly hereditary. What has actually watered down the gene pool is scientific medicines, like the discovery of insulin and privileged white women having babies in their 40’s. The real wealth effect is long life spans for defectives and thus further breeding of individuals that would have otherwise been culled before they had a chance to pass on their genes. How many modern mutants in your family? How is your health? Better than your IQ I hope, because if there is ever intelligence testing for eugenics then you most definitely have a guaranteed space on the next cattle car to the work;)camp.
theedrich, who is more intelligent and valuable to society, black Neurosurgeon Ben Carson or white whiney unoriginal pseudo scientific (19th century) philosopher theedrich? Carson has saved and improved thousands and thousands of lives and is much beloved for it. You could shoot yourself in the head and no one would even know you were gone because no one even knows you’re here. Just another unaccomplished loser whitey in need of some group to blame for your disappointment and averageness. You would have been great if it wasn’t for_____________.
GregT on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 9:16 am
“theedrich, how do you know Trump is sincere?”
Cause he had his own TV show?
bug on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 9:30 am
Greg, trump is sincere because he says he is. He is also going to do many wonderful things because………..he says he is. hahahaha
Hello on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 12:00 pm
>>> ape: black Neurosurgeon
And I always thought neurosurgery was difficult.
apneaman on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 12:44 pm
It is for sub human monkeys like you hello.
apneaman on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 4:44 pm
Fuck the American middle class. Undeserved global 1%ers who would love nothing more than to become .001%ers. Boo fucking Hoo. They need more money to buy even more palm oil infused goodies. Then it’s child slave labour in the Gold Coast for chocolate and child slave labour in the Congo for rare earth Coltan for the never ending supply of E devices. Also the fast fashion toxic slave clothing industry to dress the ever fatter middle class kids who sit on their fat asses amusing themselves on their devices while shoveling chocolate & palm oil fat snacks into their jowly faces in between whining rants about how hard done by they are. Like I said, Fuck the American middle class.
And Indonesia keeps on burning…
“In 2015, about 100,000 forest and peat fires were started in Indonesia to clear land for oil palm plantations. Palm oil is a valuable commodity used as an automotive fuel, for cooking, in shampoos, lipsticks, mascaras, ice cream, chocolate, and so on. We consume ever more palm oil.
The Indonesian fires blanketed the entire region with haze and emitted more carbon dioxide than the U.S. Here is a good summary. I know you are busy and you probably will not devote 31 minutes of your time to watching something that might impact negatively your country and you. Please look at least at the first 10 minutes of this hard-hitting Coconut TV program. At nine minutes and 41 seconds you will hear about personal threats and thugs sent to dissuade activists from ever mentioning the criminals who run the largest Indonesian racket and pay off the government officials. These criminals work for several large corporations controlled by other nations, mostly rich Western democracies. In many ways, they represent you and me, and our pension plans. And so it goes…”
more
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.ca/2015/11/and-indonesia-keeps-on-burning.html
apneaman on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 4:52 pm
Some more shit for the passive middle class to do nothing about except more self pity, sniveling and moaning. Personal sacrifice is now considered signing more than one online petition a week.
Now that we can see the TPP text, we know why it’s been secret
“The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can now be viewed by the public, thanks to the New Zealand government, and it is every bit as bad as activists have been warning.”
https://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/why-tpp-text-is-secret/
Davy on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 5:51 pm
“Fuck the American middle class.” Fuck the Canadian middle class they are most energy wasteful people on the planet!!! Talk about CO2 whores!
makati1 on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 7:54 pm
You tell em Davy!
BTW: When are you going to dump your 0.01% family? After all, I lost ~95% of my family when I decided to be free. They did not agree with my take on the world and their lifestyles and moved out of my life. No loss. I help the ~5% who still want me in their lives and forgot about the others.
makati1 on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 10:13 pm
In related news:
“21 Signs That Americans May Be The Unhappiest People In The World”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-11/21-signs-americans-may-be-unhappiest-people-world
“#11 In America today, there are 60 million people that abuse alcohol and there are 22 million people that use illegal drugs.
#12 America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet….”
#19 According to one absolutely shocking study, 22 military veterans kill themselves in the United States every single day.
#20 The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of automobile accidents every year….”
And on and on … for the ‘exceptional’ country.
GregT on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 11:11 pm
“Fuck the Canadian middle class they are most energy wasteful people on the planet!!! Talk about CO2 whores!”
Absolutely correct Davy. The US is not the best at everything. Canada wastes more energy per capita than any other nation on the planet Earth, and any Canadian worth his weight in oil will say so. Any Canadian that is in denial of this fact is liken to you ignoring the gross atrocities that your country has, and continues to wage on the entire planet. The US is the most evil, corrupt, empire that the planet Earth has ever seen, and Canada is the greatest waster of energy. Our political system is corrupt, but it doesn’t even come close to the corrupt murderous regime that is in control of your country.
Keep supporting the corruption Davy, and you are every bit as bad as the evil that you support. Time to wake up.
apneaman on Wed, 11th Nov 2015 11:50 pm
Greg, they hate us for our freedom.
GregT on Thu, 12th Nov 2015 12:22 am
“Greg, they hate us for our freedom.”
They also hate us for our science Apnea. Another thing that we believe in that just isn’t so. A primitive being that believes that he not only understands evolution, but is in control of it. Not a fucking clue. Anyone that believes otherwise, is every bit as clueless as the flag wavers are.
theedrich on Thu, 12th Nov 2015 4:41 am
Well, apeman, racial IQ measurements and comparisons are mostly a matter of statistical math, in which Shockley was an eminent expert. The fact that he is deceased has no bearing whatsoever on the matter. Furthermore, the studies of many other scientists have resulted in the same conclusions about differences in racial IQ bell curves. The Negroes always come out at the bottom end, northeast Asiatics at the high end, with Whites in the middle, except that Ashkenazi Jews (but not Sephardim or Oriental Jews) average highest of all (mean = ~112-115). The latter phenomenon is due to the inadvertent breeding of European Jews for higher IQ by the medieval Catholic Church which used them for money lending, an intellectually demanding profession. (The hierarchy forbade Christians from engaging in the practice, since such activity was regarded as “usury” [fenus], a sin, according to medieval dogmas.) See A Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence by Cochran et. all. As a side note, it might be added that the raucus infantilism of politically correct university professors and their students is by no means proof of the rightness of their and your twisted assertions; rather, it is little more than a testament to their and your descent into madness.
Of course I don’t expect that any such facts will persuade you of the truth, since you, like the masses in general, have already had your mind made up for you by the mass media and two millennia of Christian propaganda. And by the way, a racial exception such as Carson only proves the rule. As for Trump, it is difficult to believe that he would be subjecting himself to so much vituperation from the corrupt media, and the multi-trillion-dollar international corporate syndicates behind them, if he were not serious.
It is unfortunately true that modern medicine and other civilizational factors have allowed far too many low-IQs of all races to survive to reproduction age. Hence the cretinous susceptibility of the masses to sob-story appeals for “saving the poor” and slogans such as “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need” (Communist Manifesto), as well as “it is self evident that all men are created equal.” But all this is a temporary situation which will only lead to a more catastrophic collapse.
Finally, your ad hominem arguments are worthless and only expose your own inability to recognize reality.
Davy on Thu, 12th Nov 2015 6:46 am
Greg, you miss the point sometimes you have to respond to me like I am a kid. Did I blow right past your understanding level? Don’t ya think I know all of what you said and have I not heard the same shit over and over and over by all those who hate and loath America?
I made that comment to show how fucking stupid Ape Man can be. He can be brilliant then he drifts into a stupidity of hate, resentment, and blame. Then you come to his aid like big brother. My point is when I see a stupid comment by someone of respect on this board I am going to give a stupid one back. You spit on me I will spit on you.