The U.S. is near the bottom of the developed world in median wealth, probably the best gauge for the economic strength of the middle class....
...a middle-class adult in Finland owns $122 for every billion dollars of his or her nation's wealth. In Canada it's $13. In the U.S. it's 60 cents. Only China (40 cents) and India (30 cents) [in the countries included in the survey] give their middle-class adults less.It's called "becoming globally competitive." The US is highly competitive, of course. Among developed countries, the US is winning the race to the bottom hands down.
AlterNet
More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World
Paul Buchheit
4 comments:
What a freaking disaster the last five years have been. Obama is going to go down as one of the biggest flops in history.
Was the "American dream" always a lie or just a thing of the last decade? Are these figures taking in mind liabilities? (net wealth) if not, it may even be worse.
And, ultimately, how is that neoliberal policies and trickle down economics are not doing what they say they do (make everyone more wealthy)? Yeah, last one is rhetoric.
I think we are starting to understand now. The real damage to the working/ middle classes comes from liberals in the USA and third way socialists in Europe.
Our traditional enemies on the conservative right were meeting with too much resistance. The economically powerful decided to bribe the leadership of the center/left to do the dirty work for them.
A kind face to take the sweeties off the children without them crying.
@ Andrew
Began with rise of Thatcher and Reagan, but they were hampered by still having to compromise when a socialist threat was active. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolutions that was declining, but when the USSR imploded, the right took this as the sign that they could go full bore again without real opposition or alternative. It really became TINA unless the plebs revolt. Hence the necessity for the surveillance and national security state. That is to say, liberal democracy (social and political liberalism) and economic liberalism (capitalism based on market fundamentalism) are inherently antithetical.
A (so-called) market state cannot exist in the context of a genuinely democratic one. It needs a fascist state aka "corporate state." It also needs endless war or at least endless threat to run its arms industry and the national security state.
Post a Comment