[BigRon]

The Collapse of the Middle Class

A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Rep. Bernie Sanders

The corporate media doesn't talk about it much, but the United States is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate nations.

First, there are a small number of incredibly wealthy people who own and control more and more of our country. Second, there is a shrinking middle class in which ordinary people are, in most instances, working longer hours for lower wages and benefits. Third, an increasing number of Americans are living in abject poverty -- going hungry and sleeping out on the streets.

There has always been a wealthy elite in this country, and there has always been a gap between the rich and the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country have not been seen in over a hundred years. Today, the richest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and the CEOs of large corporations earn more than 500 times what their average employees make. The nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, 1/100th of one percent of the population, receive almost as much income as the poorest 20 million families in America.

While the rich get richer and receive huge tax breaks from the White House, the middle class is struggling to keep its head above water. The unemployment rate rose to a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June, 2003. There are now 9.4 million unemployed, up more than 3 million since just before Bush became President. Since March, 2001, we have lost over 2.7 million jobs in the private sector, including two million decent-paying manufacturing jobs -- ten percent of our manufacturing sector. Frighteningly, the hemorrhaging of decent paying jobs is now moving into the white-collar sector. Forrester Research Inc. predicts that at least 3.3 million information technology jobs will be lost to low-wage countries by 2015 with the expansion of digitization, the internet and high-speed data networks.

But understanding the pain and anxiety of the middle class requires going beyond the unemployment numbers. There are tens of millions of fully employed Americans who today earn, in inflation adjusted-dollars, less money than they received 30 years ago. In 1973, private-sector workers in the United States were paid on average $9.08 an hour. Today, in real wages, they are paid $8.33 per hour -- more than 8 percent lower. Manufacturing jobs that once paid a living wage are now being done in China, Mexico and other low-wage countries as corporate America ships its plants abroad.

With Wal-Mart replacing General Motors as our largest employer, many workers in the service economy not only earn low wages but also receive minimal benefits. Further, as the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs soar, more and more employers are forcing workers to assume a greater percentage of their health care costs. It is not uncommon now that increases in health care costs surpass the wage increases that workers receive -- leaving them even further behind. With the support of the Bush Administration many companies are also reducing the pensions they promised to their older workers -- threatening the retirement security of millions of Americans.

One of the manifestations of the collapse of the middle class is the increased number of hours that Americans are now forced to work in order to pay the bills. Today, the average American employee works, by far, the longest hours of any worker in the industrialized world. And the situation is getting worse. According to statistics from the International Labor Organization the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990 -- an increase of almost a week of work. We are now putting more hours into our work than at any time since the 1920s. Sixty-five years after the formal establishment of the 40-hour work week under the Fair Labor Standards Act, almost 40 percent of Americans now work more than 50 hours a week.

And if the middle class is having it tough, what about the 33 million people in our society who are living in poverty, up 1.3 million in the past two years? What about the 11 million trying to make it on a pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour? What about the 42 million who lack any health insurance? What about the 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children? What about the elderly who can't afford the outrageously high cost of the prescription drugs they need? What about the veterans who are on VA waiting lists for their health care?

This country needs to radically rethink our national priorities. The middle class is the backbone of America and it cannot be allowed to disintegrate. We need to revitalize American democracy, and create a political climate where government makes decisions which reflect the needs of all the people, and not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need to see the middle class expand, not collapse.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

[TacoSusio]

glad that your back and posting again ron. for a change, i actually read what you copied and pasted. so, what's your solution?

[Slutter McGee]

Yeah, it makes a lot of fucking sense for the writer of that article to quote the unemployment rate in 03 when the current rate is 4.4, the lowest since 01.

And the comment about the min wage was enlightening considering that most people who earn it are 1. highschool dropouts and 2. High school kids. Raises in the minimum wage will do far more harm than good. As small business no longer can afford to pay all their employees, more will be laid off contributing to increases in unemployment.

Finally the argument assumes causation because of correlation when in reality neither exist. It makes the liberal assumption that increases in the wealth of the upperclass exist soely due to the exploitation of the lower class, which economically unsound and at times downright ridiculous.

Honestly, by supporting that argument, you sound like a fucking communist.

Sincerely,

Slutter McGee

[BigRon]

Slutter McGee

Well first let me say i support America i have served in her Armed forces(have you?) i am not a Communist in fact the greatest country benifeting by outsourching is communist china(who manipulate there currency,use slave labor) so you would enrich them at the expense of your own Nation(whos the communist now) in the name of cheap goods? not counting running record deficts in the Trillions how are we going to pay them off since we make nothing to sell.

Second there no way to live on minimum wage don"t believe me check this out.
http://www.bargaineering.com/article...imum-wage.html

So who cares if small bussiness go out of bussiness if you can"t live on what they pay? Small Business pays like all bussiness the least they can, to help there bottom line.

Most people and i know alot were like me layed off and forced to work for low wages i lucked out and now make decent money but allot of people i was layed off with are still struggling to servive, you may live in a world were you don"t see it so you make gussess or pass on what you have heard.

Name one trade treaty that has helped American workers? i mean your taking the middle class and forcing them to compete with the worlds poor.

And its just not the so called uneducated being unemployed.
http://www.infosysinternational.com/...FRE8GgodzSk1Og

so call me a protectionst all you want or a communist whatever i consider my self and always have a Nationalist.

[BigRon]

1 in 10 US tech jobs may move to India

By the end of 2007, one out of every 10 jobs in American software industry will move to inexpensive emerging markets like India, Russia and China, as US companies rush to cut costs, according to global research agency Gartner Inc.

But India, which has captured the largest proportion of white-collar jobs exported from the United States, is seen to be the biggest gainer amongst all developing nations.

Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage

"Almost 500,000 white-collar American jobs have already found their way offshore to the Philippines, Malaysia and China... But no country has captured more American jobs than India," a media report said.

Pointing out that computer programmers in India could be employed at only $6,000 per annum as compared to $60,000 in the United States, ABC TV said stopping this "white-collar exodus" was difficult.

"Just as millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost in 1980s and 1990s, today white-collar American jobs are disappearing. Foreign nationals on special work visas are filling some positions but most jobs are simply contracted out overseas," it said.

"You're not going to turn the tide on this in the same way as we couldn't turn the tide on the manufacturing shift," John McCarthy, director of Research at Forrester Research, who has studied the exodus of white-collar jobs overseas, was quoted as saying by the channel.

Meanwhile, Gartner, the infotech forecasting and research firm, said that professionals in the computer industry will bear the most brunt, and predicts that one in every 20 tech jobs in the wider corporate world might also be moved overseas.

Only 40 per cent of those who have lost jobs are likely to be retrained and re-deployed by their company, Gartner said.

In a report 'US offshore outsourcing: Structural changes, Big impact,' Gartner said as many as 500,000 jobs in the US software and computer services arena, from a total of about of the 10.3 million jobs, might shift to countries like India within the next 18 months.

Although the research agency has underscored the economic benefits of business process outsourcing, it has warned against the impact that the BPO thrust may have on business strategies. The agency has said that companies run the risk of loss of future talent, loss of intellectual assets, and loss of organisational performance due to rising outsourcing.

Giants like Microsoft Corp, Oracle Corp, TM plan to shift work and jobs to India to reduce expenses. America's software industry is likely to move about 3.3 million service jobs from the US to lower-cost countries over the next 15 years, Forrester Research Inc. had estimated earlier.

With the global economy in a state of slump due to a variety of factors -- the Iraq war, the SARS virus, the tech bubble-burst, etc -- companies are struggling to keep afloat. With revenue streams drying up or trickling in slowly, most US firms have been forced to cut costs and jobs and shift part of their operations overseas.

These overseas markets -- like India -- provide highly educated and skilled employees at a fraction of what such workers cost in America.

Outsourcing has clearly become the fastest growing IT industry segment and that means for the US workers tough times have just begun.

As more and more jobs are being moved away from the US, there is clearly an environment bubbling with tensions that many American politicians have recognised.

In the last few months, a spate of legislations to block everything from outsourcing of government contracts to L1 (business) visas and reduce the number of H1-B visas available have been introduced by the US lawmakers.

Much of the legislation in the US against outsourcing is also seen to be politically motivated and as an attempt to capitalise on the emotive issue of local people losing jobs to outsiders.

Analysts and industry experts have, however, maintained that outsourcing is not new to the US, with manufacturing jobs having been outsourced before.

[Mr Skinner]

I just don't get why ye still haven't moved to Germany, yer 'fatherland', as ye claim?

[AnnonUSA]

What a pleasant Christmas thread.

[Mr Skinner]

do the lower classes get christmas presents?

do nazis decorate the tree with swazticas?

[BigRon]

Originally Posted by Mr Skinner

do the lower classes get christmas presents?
do nazis decorate the tree with swazticas?

Skinner we do not need your imput on an American problem.and why is it your obsessed with nazis is it your gulit becuse of what your grandfathers did(German people did, by putting children in ovens) or you want to be one,as far as what nazis decorated trees with next time your in germany ask one of those 80yr old germans running around since they were nazis(you know your people) atleast at one time they would know.

[Mr Skinner]

lmao

Did I give any input on america? try reading, asshole...

And btw...if I wanna add me 2 cents, I shall do so. After all you yerself always try to give me yer bullshit input on Germany. And I do think my input is more valued that your copy/paste bollocks.

And I thought the Holocaust didn't happen and noone was put into any ovens, according to...lemme see....YOU!

80 y/o? that would make'em 13 when the war started...fucking nazi teens!

[gilligan]

1 in 10 US tech jobs may move to India

while that is true, it is the manual labor type it jobs moving, ie programming and some tech support.

While there are pros and cons to this, alot of places are slow to come around on the concept. We live ina global community, things change. We started off as a bunch of farmers, then a little thing called the industrial revolution happened. We then moved to manufacturing, and we see that going away and moving more towards a tech/service economy.

Things like network administrators cant really be sent over seas, someone will actually have to be on site for things, it is also faster to have someone on site talking 1 on 1 with people.

I see the country moving more towards the current trends. nurses, accountants, things like that are in higher demand now.

To try to simplify it, my girlfriend was layed off when BlueBird (school bus) cut back. She was only a secutary and they let alot of people go. Most of those people have found new jobs. The managers, the mechanics, the painters, all found new jobs. the only people having trouble are the people who have bolted on a seat for 25 years.

You have to be able to be semi mobile in your career. Raising the min wage is not a great thing, it sounds great, it sure does buy some votes, but who makes it? I made it for 4 months as an intern (and yet i lived off of it and my girl was layed off in the middle of those 4 months so it can be done) and when i was 16. Noone should be 25,30,40 making that, noone should bring a family into that. We can raise it, but it will a) cut jobs or b) raise prices. Both of which the same people advocating the raise will bitch.

It is lose/lose situation.

Maybe if our manufacturing industry was not taken over by worthless greedy mobs called labor unions, which support sub par job performance with annual raises instead of raises based on what they have done, we would have such inflated waged and maybe, just maybe, we would have a few more of those jobs here. a union should not be fighting for a $45k a yr its guerenteed anual raise, it should be fighting for the $2 an hr workers, which, hell, do not exist in our country.

[TheBagman]

Most of you know where I stand on this. Im a free market type man. Im against a set minimum wage standard, and I am for free trade whether it outsources my job or not, simply because I get laid off I see hundreds of thousands of jobs available online and in the newspaper. Im not worried about losing my job to some guy in india or china... Im more worried about the raising of minimum wage where companies can't afford to keep workers.

[BigRon]

Originally Posted by Mr Skinner

lmao
Did I give any input on america? try reading, asshole...
And btw...if I wanna add me 2 cents, I shall do so. After all you yerself always try to give me yer bullshit input on Germany. And I do think my input is more valued that your copy/paste bollocks.
And I thought the Holocaust didn't happen and noone was put into any ovens, according to...lemme see....YOU!
80 y/o? that would make'em 13 when the war started...fucking nazi teens!

Well who better to ask then a 13yr old(then,now 80) what they decorated the tree with.

And yes i have said the holocaust never happend but i was just fucking aroud it did happen done by lets see your people.

And thats like your opinion.