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The Demise of the American Middle
Class
By Richard Backus
07/02/08 "ICH" -- - - American as well as all western white and
blue collar workers will soon realize that they will either have
to decrease their wage demands to conform with "global
standards" or chose jobs in the service sector. These global
standard wages are now being set by worker in India and China,
where average hourly wages are about 65 cents and one dollar
respectively. The high paying jobs created in Mexico under
NAFTA, the whopping $3.50 per hour ones, are moving to China
because even this princely wage level is much too generous
according to U.S. businessmen. So currently unemployed workers
and anyone laid off in the future better get their applications
into McD and Wal-Mart in a hurry because these will be the
premier jobs of the future. But, if American workers are willing
to accept these "global standard wages" (adjusted for product
transportation costs), no more than $3.00 per hour, perhaps they
can get work here in the U.S., but only if their employers
believe these wages will be maintained in the future.
Unfortunately no one an live on $3.00 per hour in the U.S.
unless he doesn't mind living on a subsistence level, without
car or medical coverage (even if minimum wage laws were waived
to allow them to do so).
So the middle class worker unwilling or unable to accept this
wage level has been disappearing into the limbo of the " having
chosen leisure over work" class. The (establishment) economists
have so labeled those 35 percent of the labor force (about 70
million people) who are of working age but not working.
Forty(40) million of these 70 million "loafers" are between age
50 and 62(surprise!), still too young to be receiving social
security.
So what are these "leisure choosers "doing? Some have
legitimately retired, being beneficiaries of retirement plans
(civil servant ones being the most generous.) But the great bulk
of them are simply limping along on their accumulated savings,
or, if they are not so well off, have applied and been accepted
as "disabled' under SSI or SSD programs. The children of all
these American workers ( those displaced by foreign workers)
will not see a dime of whatever savings they had made prior to
this time.
Who can we thank for this disaster?
The pols have paid their (personal) economists to say that it is
the wage earner's own preference for leisure. Other current
myths, created in the same way and by the same people, claim
that American workers are uneducated or too lazy to retrain
themselves, or simply too lazy. In other words, the workers have
only themselves to blame.
The truth is that establishment politicians have engineered this
demise of the middle class via globalization, NAFTA, CAFTA, and
legal immigration laws befitting their clients, big business and
the rich. All of these programs have proven to be against the
interests of the American working classes but none have been
revoked or revised. NAFTA alone is currently costing the U.S.
treasury $40 billion dollars yearly but the pols still insist on
CAFTA. The immigration laws affecting high-tech jobs have not
only ruined the prospects for many American hi-tech workers, but
have precipitated the loss of an entire industry. And the pols
continue doing absolutely nothing, even after recognizing daily
the adverse consequences of their policies.
Richard Backus, author of this article, is a free-lance
journalist specializing in political economy and politics. He
resides in Miami Beach, Florida and his personal website is
uncensoredops.blogspot.com
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