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Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Late, Great Middle Class

It’s never been harder to find a decent job making something real.

The American middle class, like the American economy in general, is ailing. Labor-force participation has hit a 35-year low.

Median household income is lower than it was five years ago. Only the top 5 percent of households have seen their incomes rise under President Obama.

Commuters are paying more than twice as much for gas as they were in 2008. Federal payouts for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance have reached unprecedented levels.

Meanwhile, the country is still running near-record budget deficits and is burdened by $17 trillion in aggregate debt. Yet the stock market is soaring.

How can we make sense of all this contradictory nonsense? Irony.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have many employees. No one has addressed this issue yet. Many of my employees have wage garnishments. Some have several. When I take these out of their net pay sometimes it lowers it down so low they wonder why they even work. I believe there are many people that don't look for work for this very reason.