Middle-class families, which used to be the backbone of the United States economy are becoming poorer. Despite the constant bombardment of news of a “healthy economy,” 62% of middle-class families struggle to afford a basic middle-class lifestyle.
Even though the unemployment rate that has reached a 50-year low of 3.7 percent, most jobs across the U.S. don’t support a middle-class or better lifestyle, leaving many Americans struggling, according to a new study. When factoring in both wages and the cost of living in the metro area where the job is located, 62% struggle to provide a middle-class lifestyle according to the study by Third Way, a think tank that leans center-left on the political spectrum.
“There’s an opportunity crisis in the country,” says Jim Kessler, vice president of policy for Third Way and editor of the report. “It explains some of the economic uneasiness and, frankly, the political uneasiness” even amid the most robust U.S. economy and labor market since before the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. But is the economy robust? Or are we being fed a line by the mainstream media? The middle class is not thriving, and increased regulations and higher taxes make it difficult for people to branch out on their own and create their own business.
“I’m frustrated with the fact that I’m not going to be able to save anything because my rent is so high,” says Esther Akutekha, who says she’s 30ish and pays $1440 per month to rent an apartment. Akutekha is a public relations specialist and her job pays more than $50,000 a year, but she’s still struggling. “I don’t even know if I can afford” to have children,” she added according to USA Today.
A slight majority of Americans, 52 percent, do live in middle-class households, according to recent annual reports by Pew Research Center. And another 20 percent or so live in upper-income households. But that’s because they’re juggling multiple jobs, for example, or relying on investments, an inheritance or other household members who may have higher-paying jobs. –USA Today
The findings of this new report highlight how scarce opportunity has become in the modern economy. Less than half of available jobs will offer a middle-class or better lifestyle. According to Third Way, to put this another way, only 38% of jobs pay more than the equivalent of $44,066 per year in the median cost of living region in the country.
The report also made comparisons based on housing costs in certain cities. For example:
A machinist in Cedar Rapids makes on average $45,470, well short of the $57,220 the same job pays in San Francisco. But the lower paid Cedar Rapids machinist is leading a middle-class life while their San Francisco counterpart falls well short. Same job; different life. –Third Way
But the dwindling middle class is nothing new. The results from Third Way‘s model indicate that the opportunity to earn a good living is scarce throughout the United States and it will no doubt only continue to worsen.
Don’t despair, vote Democrat and get the effen Republicans, who are deliberately destroying the economy and the middle class, out as fast as possible.
And if you don’t do that, don’t gripe about how bad things have become under Trump and his cohorts.
Is your device stuck on ‘sarc’? Or are you just defective mentally? Fall down a well? Got kicked in the head by a mule? Seriously ‘annoying mouse’, just how the heck could anyone actually believe that Democrats want a society of individuals to prosper? The creed of that party is ‘gimme gimme gimme’, not learn, work, save, aspire.
Heartless, agreed about anonymous. Just another typical libturd.
He is a Russian keyboard warrior.
You said it Heartless,annoying is living in a bubble.
Your comment is obviously based on ideological bias, but not in reality. All ideology by its very nature must be irrational, rather than belief conforming to reality, ideology demands reality conform to belief. There is a difference ideologically between Demo. and Rep., but not much in practice. Both are equally culpable in wrecking the country. The Demo. party wants mostly a welfare state, the Rep. mostly wants a warfare state; neither has sufficient power or numbers to get everything each wants. It’s all theater. Though their parties’ propaganda says otherwise, there are certain issues and areas they always mutually compromise and coordinate in; such as massive and highly intrusive spying on American citizens, maintaining an unsustainable Military Industrial Complex, ongoing erosion of civil rights, massive deficits and spending, supporting the Fed. Res. banking system, intensively interfering in other nations sovereign affairs, and empire building; both Dem. and Rep. loves all this. Both parties are completely permeated with statism.
Now we have 22 trillion in fed. debt, many trillions more in state and local debt, all unpayable, with more than 100 trillion in future obligations and liabilities. Our cities are crumbling, our national infrastructure has been rated D- by the Amer. Soc. of Civil Engineers, the middle class is dying, society is being torn apart by a thousand issues, gov’t at every level is corrupt, and on and on and on and on. Very little seems to be solved. The only thing thing they can do is make sure the clocks are set back in the fall and set forward in the spring; even that is absurd, leave the clocks alone. You can believe what you want of course, but if you say only Rep. are responsible for the colossal mess we are in you have been successfully propagandized.
I WIPE MY ASS WITH THE CONSTITUTION
END ANCHOR BABY LAWS NOW
ONLY NATIVE BORN WHITE MEN OVER 35 WHO HAVE NO CRIMINAL PAST AND WHO OWN PROPERTY SHOULD BE ABLE TO VOTE
SUFFRAGETTES SHOULD HAVE BEEN FUCKING HANGED
OWNING PROPERTY MEANS YOU ARE INVESTED IN THE LAND
NOGGER GOVERNORS IN FL AND GA
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ally-germanys-merkel-urges-sister-party-leader-step-083542464.html
ANGELA MERKEL PLEDGES THE WHITE MANS MONEY TO CREATING MILLIONS OF JOBS FOR AFRICANS AND THE FACILITATION OF BUSINESS LOANS TO AFRICA
WOMEN SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE
THIS IS THE KIND OF IDIOCY THAT WILL ENSUE
THE MORE WOMEN IN A GOVERNMENT
THE MORE OBLIVIOUS A COUNTY IS TO REALITY
Ooops! ….meds time again!
What a stupid comment Jimmy, you may not like what Eisen says but it is mostly the truth!
END ANCHOR BABY LAWS NOW
And screw Puerto Rico too!!!!
He says he wipes his ass with the constitution.
Sounds like he just gave up his 2nd Amendment rights.
Anonymous
Where to start?
1. NAFTA , Bill Clinton & the Neo-Cons
2. China Free Trade , Bill Clinton & the Neo-Cons
3. Eviscerating Glass Steagall , Bill Clinton & the Neo-Cons
Neither the Republican Neo-Cons (Bush & Company) or the Democrats (Clinton-Obama-Clinton) have done anything except facilitate 1-2-3 above. Trump is the first President to attempt to change 1&2 in the favor of the blue collar person.
The democrats used to be the “working man’s” party, now they are the party of transgender LBGTQ and every other faggot kind out there.
Anonymous, are you a Hillary supporter? If so you’re in the wrong place.
Is that you Hillary?
their only here to work====the system
http://www.nnnforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=634801#post634801
Demographics.
Obama only let muslims, China, South Americans, Mexicans, Africans into the country. Non Europeans. Europeans not allowed to come into America at same numbers.
You are being out bred.
You are being Immigrated out of exsistence.
At the same time robots are taking over your jobs.
And that is only the good news.
Here is really bad news: China
– China bringing in pregnant women so they will be American by birth.
– China has offices on most major US University campuses.
– China buys advertising in US media to push their agenda. They even protest and have movie scrpts altered.
– China buying most fertile US farmland.
– China is taking over Africa. NOW!
– China controls in US civilo aviation manufactures and parts suppliers. STEALING technology.
– China has many many troops at Panama canal zone to destroy canal in time of war.
– China has people to hack, shadow ban, delete, scrub, comments like this one from social media and web sites like this one.
No one will Acknowledge ANY of these FACTS.
This is NOT my opinion.
* Demographics are reality.
* Out bred. Out birthed.
* Immigrated out of exsistence.
* Technology matrix being installed to stop your efforts to resist. Tech real purpose is to target you. 5g network is to surviel, control, and kill you.
* Robots first to take your jobs.
* Next robots will kill you
I DARE ADMIN TO ALLOW THIS POST.
I DARE YOU TO FOLLOW UP A STORY ABOUT DEMOGRAPHICS.
I DARE YOU TO RESEARCH EVERYTHING I LISTED.
These are facts. Not opinion. Not fear mongering. And all of this will be seen in very near future. Because all of it is here NOW.
Do you feel like a kulak?
1929
Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Stalin introduces a policy of “class warfare” in the countryside in order to break down resistance to collectivization. The successful farmers, or kurkuls, (kulaks, in Russian) are branded as the class enemy, and brutal enforcement by regular troops and secret police is used to “liquidate them as a class.” Eventually anyone who resists collectivization is considered a kurkul.
1933
By June, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine are dying at the rate of 30,000 a day, nearly a third of them are children under 10. Between 1932-34, approximately 4 million deaths are attributed to starvation within the borders of Soviet Ukraine.
http://holodomorct.org/holodomor-facts-and-history/
John,
That was lot of information for one post. But you are 100 percent correct in statements above in my opinion. Please keep up the posting as it just may open eyes of the blind.
China is taking over Africa. NOW!
Nobody gives a flying shit about Africa and nothing good ever came out of Africa.
John:
By “Europeans” you mean “WHITE PEOPLE”, don’t you? I thought so.
I hear that it is considered hate speech to identify “white people” as “white”. That the color “white” is racist. Soon, I expect to read somewhere that identifying white people as “European” is “hate speech” because “Europeans” are not “white”. Europeans have always been “multi-racial.
What exactly is “demographics? Is it the race of a people living in a specific geographic location?
It would be interesting to read articles about race and human genetics and how genetics affects human behavior and humans historically, and what outcomes we can predict by examining this data. I am interested in genetics and human behavior.
I believe it is disengenuous and dangerous to curtail conversations about race. It is not racist to be properly educated in all matters that affect our lives. How else can we learn unless we are allowed to hear all ideas and all viewpoints, to discuss and debate all issues without fear of censorship or fear of some sort of punishment. It isn’t healthy to have to watch what you say all the time. It isn’t that terrible if it offends someone.
These easily offended people are tyrants who cry like two year olds in order to control the behavior of adults. I find such behavior unacceptable. It is the responsibility of adults to control children, not the other way around. Likewise, it is the responsibility of right minded people to stop those who want to suppress freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of association.
_
Truth is hate to those who hate the truth!
That’s a pretty bitter truth pill.
It’s not really going to matter if Trump gets away with superceding a Constitutional amendment with an executive order. The first time that happens will set a precident for all other Constitutional amendments. The next president may want to supercede the first or second amendment with the stroke of a pen. No matter where you stand on the issue of anchor babies or this president, allowing him to overwrite the 14th amendment is opening the door to us loosing all of our rights.
Jas:
Trump is not going to be allowed to supercede the 14th with an EO. It is going to be challenged immediately in court, be a test case, and go all the way to the SCOTUS.
I hope there the Court will rule that the EO is irrelevant and that specific part of the 14th applied historically to newly freed Black Americans and no longer is applicable in the modern day.
Now, I’m gonna throw my penny in the wishing well.
<bb
Trump won’t do anything about anchor babies, it is all election blather to get people pumped up.
opening the door to us loosing all of our rights.
We lost them long ago, you just don’t realize it yet.
He doesn’t have to supersede anything. HE merely points out through the EO that enforcement of the 14th Amendment according to the existing TEXT of it and with the SCOTUS rulings, is demanded of our Border Control and ICE. Currently, they are NOT enforcing it by way of specific misinterpreting what it actually says.
Illegal aliens DO NOT have protection of the Constitution and are subject to their home nations laws, therefore they ARE NOT IN OUR US JURISDICTION and in criminal act of crossing our borders ILLEGALLY. ONLY LEGAL IMMIGRANTS have our 14th Amendment protections (and that was upheld by SCOTUS). Any challenge will lose in the court battle if his EO does anything to grant powers they do not already have, or change the wording of the 14th. The SCOTUS is BOUND to uphold the 14th and an executive order that REQUIRES it to be enforced.
The main reason I prep is probably NOT any great big SHTF event but rather that I don’t want to have to sell assets to but food and toiletries.
I don’t want to have to sell the “Family Silverware” to buy my next meal!
Yes the middle class is dying.
I’ve watched the Democrat rulers of my state
(single party state) destroy the middle
class for the last 18 years.
As an example, recently the county lost a significant
amount of property tax income due to land and over 700
homes being destroyed by a volcano.
The first thing the county did
was raise the sales tax to help recover lost county
income.
Keep in mind they are no longer providing the
same level of services to the destroyed area,
but that budget can’t be cut one iota.
We are being taxed and regulated to death by the Democrat
party in America. Middle class is dying, but
is being caused by Democrats, be it the inner city GimmeDats,
or the Government, and Corporate liberals. It is a death by a thousand cuts.
rellik
A lot of the people on public assistance are the working poor complements of the Neo-Cons “Free Trade” evisceration of manufacturing with the Democrats strong support. Its Globalist / Progressives v Populist / Nationalists as the difference between Democrat and Republican is analogous to two teams, in the same league, having the same owner. The “elections” are just a game.
Mac, show us one shred of evidence to support your story.
The fact of the matter is, never in the history of the planet has so many been people been so wealthy, even with a record amount of unemployable obese entitlement goldbricks!!
The American middle class is well, alive and expanding, both in wealth and their obese size.
Look at all the Youtube videos of people living in their vehicles. There are a shocking number of older retired people living in vans because all they get from social security is $1200 a month and they can’t live on it.
Yesterday after I exited my favorite Chinese restaurant (the orange chicken is fabulous) I saw two people, a man and a woman pushing shopping carts loaded down with their belongings and covered with tarps. Both appeared to be in their mid-sixties, or early seventies: likely living only on social security.
Obviously a husband and wife, you can only imagine the story behind their predicament. A generation of Middle Class Americans have been destroyed by Globalism. It will take another generation of TRUMP ECONOMICS to right the wrongs of the Globalists and put America on a path of prosperity again.
A Third Term is necessary at the very least.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and the American Middle Class wasn’t destroyed in a day. It was thirty years in the making as Americans were betrayed by their elected officials.
All of these MFKRS need to be rounded up, indicted, tried, and executed for treason. If push ever comes to shove in this country, know your enemy …. and in advance. Make a list, check it twice. Know who has been naughty and who has been nice in your neck of the woods.
The NWO can be eliminated overnight and at 500 yards. You are responsible for the Bill of Rights where you live. 🙂
Couldn’t agree with you more durangokidd! A shame elderly people are left to rot!
What makes elderly people so special? They were once young and worked just like you and I. Maybe some even scoffed at older people who lived hand to mouth. Maybe some were bad people. Maybe some had misfortune not by any fault of their own but just because of circumstances and maybe some deserve the predicament they live in now. To say a group of people because they are old deserve this and that is ridiculous. This world owes nothing to anyone.
DurangoKid could have asked them about their story and that would have been a story in itself.
No chance of that, I was driving in rush hour and they were going the other way. With so many homeless in Phoenix during the winter there is no way I can ask every homeless person I see on the street about their story.
Typically the homeless are addicted to tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. A few are on the street due to divorce, job loss, and or poor health; or a combination of these maladies.
It will take many years for America’s historical prosperity to return to the general level before the election of GHWB and the plague of Globalism. The good news is that TRUMP is making a beginning and manufacturing is now adding 1,000 jobs per day based upon the latest numbers I have seen.
The turnaround has to start sometime, somewhere. The time is now. 🙂
They were both old enough to receive Social Security. And there are federal programs like Sec 8 Housing that bases rent upon income for Seniors, but you have to get on a list for an available apartment.
I know a woman who is 69 gets 900 a month on Social Security and had a really nice one bedroom apartment in a great Senior Housing Facility for just a couple hundred dollars a month …. until she got caught smoking in her no smoking apartment. 🙂
Bert; per person wealth has gone down and inflation up,not looking so good lately, at least in the states. Outside the country is a different story.
The other day I was in the grocery store and was going to buy some canned fruit salad. Two years ago it was $0.99 a can. Now it is $1.59 a can.
That’s fucked up.
And they say the dollar is strong. Me thinks not.
Weaponized Morals is what the Democraps have created, and it is all centered on the illegal invasion threatened by the “migrant” caravans…made up of 99.9 percent military aged MEN coming to rape our WELFARE state.
What say you, Lawful Americans? Will you let your morals be the weakness that allows the Democraps to fully destroy this country while Republicans control all aspects of the Government? Would the French have been IMMORAL to defend themselves against the invasion of the Germans in WII? Would the Russians have been IMMMORAL to defend themselves against the German invasion of Russia in WWII? Would the USA been IMMORAL to repel the invasion of the Japanese in WWII? What is different between then and now? The END STATE GOAL OF THE INVADERS IS EXACTLY THE SAME. TO PLUNDER your country and steal your rights and your money and labor just using a different strategy. And the Treasonous Democraps are AIDING AND ABETTING THE INVADERS!!!
No one in Washington, DC gives a rats ass about working men and women. They just got rid of mileage,tools, road expenses and all the things working folks use to be able to deduct. It’s time for a convention of states.
A “Convention of States” would be a mistake. A very BIG mistake. It is the mistake that the Globalists want US to make.
Who do you think is going to be going to that Convention of States ??? The same assholes who have rigged the economy, the law, and our government against average Americans; that’s WHO !!!
THEY WANT US TO INSIST UPON A “CONVENTION OF STATES”.
Once convened, it is NOT limited to any specific “grievance” we have as Americans. It is open to repealing & replacing & modifying our existing documents including the Bill of Rights.
A “Convention of States” is the DUMBEST FUCKING THING WE COULD EVER DO !!!
We don’t need a New Constitution (and believe me the LEFT has already rewritten the old one). We only need to elect Representatives who respect the Constitution & Bill of Rights; and who will represent US honestly. That can only happen by PATRIOTS going to the polls and participating in politics, as reluctant as you may be.
All politics are local. Join a TEA PARTY GROUP where you live. Infiltrate the local Republican Party. Magnify your voice & your power in a group. The squeaky wheel gets the grease !!! 🙂
A little known convention was held in Switzerland In the late 70’s by the people who actually run this world. The objective was to map out the institution of a “One World” plantation. The firt step was to level living standards world wide and to destroy sense of nationhood. The wealth and power of the American middle class had to be destroyed because it demonstrated what a free people with opportunity could achieve. Since our economic success was built on Industry; None other than Henry Kissinger was assigned the job of transferring American jobs and technology into China. NAFTA was another nail in the coffin. National identity was to be destroyed by the mass immigration of low skilled third world peoples who are less likely to integrate until there would be no single ethic group of 51%. California is the first state to be declared a success!