Why has the Middle Class so declined?

[Ban my account ffs!]

http://frac.org/pdf/cost_of_food_white_paper_2011.pdf

Read that, Dead0man.

The issue is actually complex and not as rosy as you seem to think it is!  Sure... overall food costs have declined... but the number of food-insecure households is increasing... and the average American is purchasing groceries in such a way that looks more and more like the government designated "Thrifty food plan"... which is the basis for SNAP benefits.

Not only are food costs going down.. but people are actually buying lower quality/cheaper food items because their income is being squeezed from all other angles.

Impotent anger is better impotent cluelessness... especially when you have like 10 years more experience at life than I do.

[dead0man]

But you are starting from the point that the mdidle class isn't being squeezed...

Except I'm not.  I've even said, twice, that it's harder for the unskilled to live a middle class life style than it has been in the recent past.  I'm saying that people that do have middle class incomes are doing just fine, great in fact.  I've not said that none were being "squeezed" by stagnated wages. (yes I do see the issue with previous two sentences)

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't refuse to believe that, you just assume that I do.  Maybe I'd change some of the verbage, but not the gist.


Re-reading the OP, I think I may have misunderstood what he was asking.

[AggregateDemand]

People aren't paying for more cars, housing, education, childcare, and all of the rest just for the hell of it.

Technically, the middle class is spending more for the hell of it, and that's why dead0man has a point.

The middle class chooses to buy inefficient automobiles, which increase the price of oil, and increase the US trade deficit. The middle class chooses to purchase 2500sq ft homes without retiring mortgage debt. The middle class chooses to encourage or allow their children to borrow excessively for college. The middle class demands to fill their houses with cheap Chinese goods.

The middle class consumer is committing financial suicide by embracing inflexible, intransigent consumptive patterns; however, I still see policy as the dominant force nudging people towards fiscal insanity.

[krazen1211]

Link

Bottom quintile: -301 percent
Second quintile: -42 percent
Middle quintile: -5 percent
Fourth quintile: 10 percent
Highest quintile: 22 percent

Top one percent: 28 percent

The negative 301 percent means that a typical family in the bottom quintile receives about $3 in transfer payments for every dollar earned.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The negative 301 percent means that a typical family in the bottom quintile receives about $3 in transfer payments for every dollar earned.

Good.

[AggregateDemand]

Good.

Liberals prefer to transfer payments to self-determination. Another reason the middle class is declining.

[MaxQue]

Good.

Liberals prefer to transfer payments to self-determination. Another reason the middle class is declining.

I would very much prefer "self-determination", but I'll clearly seeing than full employment won't happen (the market doesn't need that amount of workers). And, unlike some on your side are pretending, tax cuts won't do it. My family owns a business and, no matter how our taxes would be lowered, we wouldn't hire anyone else since we don't need more employees at the moment! Why a tax cut would make a company hires people it doesn't need?

[jaichind]

I see two factors

1) The economy is getting more service intensive.  Income distribution in the service sector is more more in-egalitarian than the industry section.  The most extreme example is in the entertainment industry where Michael Jackson makes all the money and almost everyone else which might be one tier below him makes nothing.
2) The economy is getting more capital intensive as capital recovers from the blows of the twentieth century.   The middle class that rose in the aftermath of WWII in the West is an aberration which is destined to decline as capital recovers and takes advantage of the global labor pool as a result of the rise of emerging economies.   A chart from “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty shows this