Big Lie: America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World...We're Ranked 27th!

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/americas-middle-class-27th-richest

America is the richest country on Earth. We have the most millionaires, the most billionaires and our wealthiest citizens have garnered more of the planet's riches than any other group in the world. We even have hedge fund managers who make in one hour as much as the average family makes in 21 years!

***SNIP

Why?

Here's a starter list:

We don't have real universal healthcare. We pay more and still have poorer health outcomes than all other industrialized countries. Should a serious illness strike, we also can become impoverished.

Weak labor laws undermine unions and give large corporations more power to keep wages and benefits down. Unions now represent less than 7 percent of all private sector workers, the lowest ever recorded.

Our minimum wage is pathetic, especially in comparison to other developed nations. (We're # 13.) Nobody can live decently on $7.25 an hour. Our poverty-level minimum wage puts downward pressure on the wages of all working people. And while we secure important victories for a few unpaid sick days, most other developed nations provide a month of guaranteed paid vacations as well as many paid sick days.

[midnight]

1. America loves the rich and doesn't want them to do without... However they don't think that

the poor deserve a hand out and should work to pull themselves up and then when they become rich they will be rewarded with a better life....

[hobbit709]

2. They want you to pull yourself up by the bootstraps but they don't tell you

that the boots are nailed to the floor.

[sorefeet]

4. Thats a fact hobbit

[Brigid]

11. We have our winner.

[Arkansas Granny]

14. They also don't tell you that they own the bootstraps and you'll be paying handsomely to use them.

[deutsey]

5. It really wasn't like that in the early, mid-'70s

when I was growing up. It wasn't a golden age or anything and there were plenty of problems the "counter-culture" movements created, but the prevailing assumptions at the time reflected a much different view of the rich and what America mean than we have today.

The conservative Reaction that began in the mid-'70s and culminated with Reagan changed all that. Through lies, propaganda, distortion, manipulation, and intimidation, the right has done a smashingly good job of destroying what made this country better than it is now.

[midnight]

6. I think we have ALEC to thank for this..

[deutsey]

8. along with the infamous Powell Memo

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

[raccoon]

23. "there were plenty of problems the "counter-culture" movements created" --what do you mean? nt

[deutsey]

24. Drug abuse, for one

I grew up with a heroin addict who was very much a part of the countercultural zeitgeist.

It wasn't pleasant.

There were others, but I'm not able to list them now (I'm just doin a quick DU check-in). I'll try later when I have more time.

[leftstreet]

28. Everybody was legally drinking and Rx drugging

You mean 'illegal' drugs I take it

[deutsey]

32. Last I checked, heroin was illegal, yeah.

[deutsey]

33. By the late '70s

the counter-culture had become more of a style and commodity, a reason for self-indulgence, than a movement.

I believe it emerged as a necessary rejection of the uber conformity of the '50s. It was liberating, energizing and ignited one of the most creative (artistically, politically, and socially) times of positive upheaval in a very long time in America and around the world. That's the reason the right is so desperate in its compulsion to ridicule and even erase the positive gains made during that time. Read "Making of a Counter Culture" by Theodore Roszak for a good analysis of the origin of that era.

However, by 1979 the energy and cohesion of that time was collapsing, in my opinion. In many ways, the counter culture had become a victim of its own success and was being co-opted by corporations as style and commodity (Tony Hendra in "Going Too Far" gives a good look at how this happened to "boomer humor"...starting off with the taboo-breaking edginess of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and National Lampoon, and ending with Saturday Night Live's descent into mediocrity and shock entertainment).

It had become more self-indulgent rather than self-actualizing. The activism of the early '70s was dwindling by the late '70s. Drugs (the illegal ones) had come to be used by and large just like the old conformist society used booze and pills. I saw from my working class experience that people weren't smoking pot as some sort of liberating thing...they were doing it to get stoned at parties. They were also drinking lots of alcohol. Some, like the person I grew up with, got addicted to harder drugs.

So what I mean by the problems these good and necessary movements caused was that the New Left and social liberation types of the time were unable to sustain and build on what they started into a viable alternative to traditional/corporate culture. So they got absorbed by that culture and what remained collapsed into itself, leaving a void that Reagan and his ilk were only too happy to fill.

[marmar]

3. K & R

[abelenkpe]

7. K&R

Finacialization

Where making money from money is more important than providing goods and services.


This is what we should be focused on changing.

[byeya]

9. 27th in the World - Bar none!!

Good information to have. Thanks.

[reformist2]

12. K&R - Median statistics are way more meaningful than average/mean statistics.

We on the Dem side of things should *never* be caught talking about things like average net worth or per capita income or even aggregate stats like GDP, which skew heavily toward the rich and mask the near-poverty conditions which are increasingly the reality for a majority of Americans.

[fasttense]

13. The inevitable corruption of capitalism

it leads to a handful of uber rich with everyone else in desperate straights. Reminds me of our last economic system - feudalism. It's very similar.

[baldguy]

15. We have the most millionaires & billionaires. We also have the most people in prison.

Any connection?

[HughBeaumont]

16. K&R.

Trapitalism and Plutonomy can eat all the dicks. If life doesn't get fairer really damned soon, only the wealthy will have one. The rest of us will only exist at their behest.

[mountain grammy]

17. This is the REAL news in America..

The "land of opportunity" is no more! Let's hear this news on the "news" every day. This is 30 years of Reagonomics. Guess morning is over.

[whathehell]

18. Is this news?...America, who, during the 1960's, had the largest middle class in the world,

now has one of the smallest. I thought that was widely known, at least on this board.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Well, it's not about the size of the middle class

It's about the median wealth. There's nothing in this about how broadly you define the sector in each country.

For what it's worth:

So who counts as middle class?

According to organisations like the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it's someone who earns or spends $10 to $100 per day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22956470

So if your household income is above $36,500 per person, you are above middle class, internationally.

The paper which seems to have been taken as the basis for the definition is here: http://www.oecd.org/dev/44457738.pdf

It says (2009 figures):
USA: 230 million middle class
EU: 450 million
rest of North America: 108 million
rest of Europe (which I think includes Russia): 214 million
Japan: 125 million
Whole world: 1845 million

It points out:

The numbers of the global middle class hide the differences in purchasing power. The
range for what constitutes a middle class consumer is quite broad, so someone in the Chinese
middle class does not spend as much as someone in the US middle class. The data bear this out.
The North American middle class accounts for substantially more of global spending than its
population share, while the reverse is true of Asia’s middle class. The US is home to 12 per cent
of the world’s middle class in terms of absolute numbers of people, but it accounts for
USD4.4 trillion (21 per cent) of the USD21 trillion in global spending by middle class consumers.
The difference is because the US middle class is much wealthier than the average global middle
class consumer.

[historylovr]

19. K & R. nt

[nineteen50]

21. Walmart

loves poverty wages and our food stamp program.

[TakeALeftTurn]

22. And it's going downhill fast

.

[hunter]

25. The USA is not a "First World" nation and never has been.

We're a developing nation with a huge military and a wealthy ruling elite.

There's always been a large underclass in the USA largely a consequence of racism, misogyny, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, political corruption and other repugnant national traits.

Our nation first achieved "wealth" by genocide and slavery, and in the modern world by our control of the international oil markets, often by military force, propaganda, sabotage, and financial or political disruption.

[truebluegreen]

26. Not too sure about the "never" part

but I can't argue with the rest of it. Interesting perspective, thank you.

[Quantess]

30. If the USA was "never" a first world nation, no other country ever was either.

However, your other points are valid.

[Quixote1818]

27. Thom Hartmann once said that if our current average incomes had stayed up with inflation

what we made in the 1980's would be around $80,000 today. Hum, I wonder what happened in the 1980's that set the trend downward?

[sakabatou]

29. We're number on... I mean 27! YEAH!

[glinda]

31. K & R n/t