[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he elderly in America can remember a long-distant era when progressive thinkers included leaders of organized labor and small-town populist politicians. But nowadays progressive politicians and strategists tend to be affluent meritocrats who got where they are by making good grades at highly selective schools.

Their narrow personal experience leads many elite progressives to equate social mobility and increases in income with obtaining academic credentials like their own. While New Deal labor liberals and populists wanted to promote unions and a living wage, many members of the new breed of Ivy League-educated liberal technocrats prefer an alternate plan: send everybody to college.

(snip)

Progressives love to claim that education is the key to upward mobility. But this is based on an obvious fallacy. The "college premium" that results in higher incomes for college graduates is the result of the relative scarcity of college degrees. If everyone had a B.A., then the value of a B.A. in generating high wages would drop.

(snip)

Nor is there any basis to the claim, repeated by politicians and pundits of both parties, that most of the jobs of the future require a college education. On the eve of the Great Recession, the Bureau of Labor Statistics identified the occupations with the largest numerical growth in 2008-2018: registered nurses; home health aides; customer service representatives; combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food; personal and home care aides; retail salespersons; office clerks, general; accountants and auditors; nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants; and post-secondary teachers. Of these careers, only two -- accountants and auditors, and post-secondary teachers -- require a bachelor’s degree rather than on-the-job training or an associate degree, and only one -- post-secondary teachers -- requires a graduate degree (a doctorate).

(snip)

The alternative to the mass upper-middle-class fantasy peddled by Republicans and New Democrats is a return to the older New Deal liberal approach, based on high wages and adequate social insurance. Working Americans should not need to go into debt to obtain college diplomas, in order to share more of the gains of national economic growth in the form of higher wages.

And there would be less pressure on working Americans to gamble with their money in the stock market, if Social Security, like public pensions in the rest of the world, replaced a higher percentage of pre-retirement income than the 30-40 percent it replaces today.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/08/03/myth_upper_middle_class

[efarmer]

We had a period of no competition to speak of and dirt cheap energy in a nation with abundant resources and a high degree of personal freedom. It made us fat, lazy, spoiled, and belligerent in larger numbers, we are going to have to hump for our beans from here on out.
I think changing our measure of success away from money and materialism would be a great aid,
but a hard sell to folks who feel they got cheated out of being rich after they were damn near destroyed by using credit to act as if they already were.

Good rant Six, I have been a rantaholic of late.

Okay Ludi, let me guess your next question for me:

"Efarmer, who is fat, lazy, spoiled, and belligerent and are they different from the people who will be humping for their beans from here on out?"

[Windmills]

It's globalisation once again. The dream of the free marketeers is the new American Nightmare. American companies have been offshoring everything they can to take advantage of the cheaper labor overseas. They're gutting the jobs that pay a living wage and therefore gutting the middle class. Notice that almost all the jobs mentioned are jobs that physically can't be offshored. Otherwise, they'd be gone, too.

[Pops]

The middle class was a passing anomaly in the US, post-industrial revolution muscle/pre-digital revolution liability.



It doesn't take a strong back to move bytes from here to there.

[Cid_Yama]

The myth is that there is a middle class. There never has been.

There is only the working class and the leisure class from who's numbers the ruling class is derived.

Politicians are middle level managers.

The myth of the middle class, allows the leisure class to convince a sizable portion of the working class to think they are better than the rest of the working class in order to get political support for their policies.

Pay the middle level managers more than the rest of the working class and they thing they are something else.

But there is a vast abyss between those that make 100,000 a year, or even a million a yr, and the leisure class, with no way to cross.

We don't admit there is an aristocracy in America. But there is and always has been. They just don't have the archaic titles.

[Ibon]

In the 20 years I was in business in Latin America and to a lesser extent in Southeast Asia I had many opportunities to get to know the representatives and their families of the folks I worked with. Many became my friends. I can recall the hardships of Oswaldo, the Argentine rep in the 90's for example. Most of the economies I worked in had unemployment above 15% and it always struck me how the reps I worked with coveted and defended their business as the only lifeline they had toward getting ahead. I remember the many stories of relatives who had been permanently stuck in unemployment or under employment that only enabled them to tread water and never really save anything. I always contrasted the reality of these folks with my peers back in the US and how much folks took for granted the wealth of the US economy. What struck me most back then was that so many of the people I worked with were harder workers, more dedicated, more willing to put in long hours than their peers in the US.

I have watched the last 10 years the US economy declining to resemble the economies I worked in for over two decades. The main difference is that the US middle class is totally unprepared for a long term weaker economy where there will be a permanent large underclass that will probably never again experience the conditions that were in America the 40 years following WWII.

Argentina again comes to mind. They had a large middle class in their heyday that was long lasting enough where folks started developing a feeling of a birthright or self entitlement as an Argentine to a more privileged position and opportunity than many of their neighboring countries. This came to a rapid end with the collapse of their economy in the 90's and this is one of the contributing reasons why Argentina had the population with the highest patient count for psychiatric care and visits to psychologists in all of the Western Hemisphere during those difficult years.

Today the US economy is producing the same disenfranchised underclass. I remember walking the streets of Buenos Aires back then and seeing the collective anxiety on the faces of folks that I see today here in the USA. We are just so much less prepared psychologically.

People have to learn frugality and resourcefulness but most of all coping psychologically to a permanently weakened economy.

One of the thing that strikes me most is the relative civil nature still that folks have accepting the disparity between rich and poor here in the US. People are still holding out that things will get better and this is what maintains a fragile social cohesion still today. This is going to change soon. We will start to see some disenfranchisement move into revolt soon I imagine. But revolt also requires a certain integrity and fortitude and perseverance.
I don't even know if Americans even have that in them anymore. We seem so deeply lost and fearful that even revolt seems repressed in the collective psyche. Maybe this is all the calm before some brewing storm. I can't see clear going forward how our culture will cope with continued disparity between a growing elite and vast disenfranchised middle class.

[Ibon]

I wonder sometimes if Americans are the worlds best colonials to corporate power. We seem to be very accepting on how corporations rake us over the coals.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '
')We don't admit there is an aristocracy in America. But there is and always has been. They just don't have the archaic titles.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')hat along with being the worlds most powerful economy up until just very recently.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'N')ot sure the US isn't still. Unless things have changed in a decade (not saying that isn't possible). What is the world's most powerful economy now, if not the US?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Not sure the US isn't still. Unless things have changed in a decade (not saying that isn't possible). What is the world's most powerful economy now, if not the US?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', ' ')The trend of increasing disparity between rich and poor however is what makes the US economy resemble more the economies of developing countries.

[Cid_Yama]

The only people that matter are in the Social Register. Trust me. That's how it works.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Social Register, is released annually as a single national directory, published in winter and summer editions from New York by Forbes magazine. Those aspiring to be listed must be sponsored by at least five individuals currently appearing in its pages. Those sponsored are reviewed by an Advisory Committee that has the final decision; about five percent of suggested names are added each year. The Committee also arrives at additions on its own and sends the potential listees "blanks"—forms to fill in information.

[Ludi]

Nickel millionaires need not apply.

[efarmer]

Thanks for an insightful post Ibon.

I also think one of the problems is that the middle class in the first couple of post WWII decades came from frugal and humble roots and knew the way back home if they had to revisit it. For many people in America now, the distance between their advertising augmented self concepts and the humble and more socially dependent life that poor people lead and learn how to navigate is vast and there is no memory for them to tap to make a transition they can imagine.

I think the fear of being poor is lethal to some folks, more so than the actual practice itself.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 't')he humble and more socially dependent life that poor people lead and learn how to navigate is vast and there is no memory for them to tap to make a transition they can imagine.

[efarmer]

Hey Ludi, did you notice that America's national wealth as a global percentage is about the same as the amount of global petroleum we consume?

Ain't that a coinkidinky?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', '
')
I think the fear of being poor is lethal to some folks, more so than the actual practice itself.

[efarmer]

If we are lucky, the out of work mortgage brokers will hire on to the IRS and let you just state your income without checking up on you. It beats having them work for the census and reporting that millionaires from Switzerland live there.

[Cid_Yama]

People who have been booted from the Social Register, for whatever percieved transgression, have killed themselves.

Money doesn't exist. Beyond 'money is no object'. Wherever you go, you get whatever you want. On demand.

You know, on a whim fly to Hong Kong and next weekend meet with friends in Aruba. At a party you all decide to fly to Switzerland in somebody's private jet to go skiing the next day. Then on to somebody's Chateau in the South of France.

And they killed themselves for being ejected. Of course, it's vulgar to talk about. So it doesn't exist.

There is no dissent, there is no change, for fear of being booted.

Some writer for the later Star Trek series Next Generation and Voyager, no doubt a dissenting member of this elite, made a veiled portrayal of this in the Q. Readily recognizable to those of us who have lived it.