Labor Day 2010 comes in the midst of a stunning wave of U.S. factory closings that stretches from coast to coast. Once upon a time America was the greatest manufacturing machine that the world has ever seen, but now it seems as though the only jobs available for working class Americans involve phrases such as "Welcome to Wal-Mart" and "Would you like fries with that?" Even though the population of the United States has exploded over the last several decades, the number of Americans employed in the manufacturing sector today is smaller than it was in 1950. America has become a voracious economic black hole that "consumes" as much as possible and yet actually produces very little. The United States is becoming deindustrialized at a blinding pace, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for blue collar American workers to find jobs that will actually enable them to support their families. The sad truth is that American workers don't have a whole lot to actually celebrate this Labor Day. 14 million U.S. workers are "officially unemployed" and tens of millions of others have been forced to take part-time or temporary jobs that they are overqualified for just so they can survive. Unfortunately, this is not just a temporary situation for American workers. As millions of good jobs continue to get outsourced and offshored, Labor Day celebrations in coming years will be even more depressing. (Read More....)
When I was growing up, $50,000 sounded like a gigantic mountain of money to me. And it was actually a very significant amount of money in those days. But in 2010 it just does not go that far. Today, the median household income in the United States for a year is approximately $50,000. About half of all American households make more than that, and about half of all American households make less than that. So if your family brings in $50,000 this year that would put you about right in the middle. So can a family of four survive on $50,000 in America today? The answer might surprise you. Twenty years ago a middle class American family of four would have been doing quite well on $50,000 per year. But things have changed. (Read More....)
If you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. There are millions of Americans out there right now that are really, really suffering. The cold, hard reality of it is that there aren't even close to enough jobs out there for everyone right now. It is almost as if we are all caught in a really bizarre game of musical chairs where the losers get stripped of their tickets to the middle class. What this horrible economy is doing to the dignity of millions of middle class Americans is incredibly saddening. There are a lot of very highly educated and very hard working Americans who cannot seem to get jobs no matter what they do and now find themselves doing whatever they can just to survive. It can be really hard to keep your dignity when you played by all the rules and you worked as hard as you could all your life and now you find yourself a half step away from being homeless. Those of us who are still doing okay should never look down on those who are struggling in this economy, because the truth is that any of us could be next. (Read More....)
For middle class Americans, the new global economy has provided mountains of cheap products made in China, India and dozens of other nations, but it has also killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Millions of American workers have been discovering that the price for all of those inexpensive foreign-made goodies is their jobs. Now we have so many long-term unemployed workers in the United States that we are inventing new terms (such as "the 99ers") to describe them. Unemployment is on the rise again (we'll get to the figures in a minute) and everyone seems perplexed at the continuing inability of the "greatest economy in the world" to provide jobs for everyone. But the truth is that this has been coming for a long time. The debt-fueled prosperity of the past couple of decades allowed us to live far beyond our means and provide very high levels of employment for a while, but now economic reality is setting in. The millions of middle class jobs that have been shipped overseas are never coming back. Unfortunately, the existence of a large class of chronically unemployed Americans that are struggling just to survive is going to quickly become "the new normal". (Read More....)
Sometimes it isn't necessary to quote facts and figures about government debt, unemployment and the trade deficit in order to convey how badly America is decaying. The truth is that millions of Americans can watch America rotting right in front of their eyes by stepping out on their front porches. Record numbers of homes have been foreclosed on and in some of the most run down cities as many as a third of all houses have been abandoned. Unemployment remains at depressingly high levels and the number of Americans on food stamps continues to set new records month after month. Due to severe budget cuts, class sizes are exploding and school programs are being eliminated. In some areas of the U.S. schools are even going to four day weeks. With little to no funding available, bridges are crumbling and street lights are being turned off in many communities. In some areas, asphalt roads are actually being ground up and turned back into gravel roads because they are less expensive to maintain. There aren't even as many police available to patrol America's decaying cities because budget problems have forced local communities across the U.S. to lay off tens of thousands of officers. (Read More....)
