The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

Companies used to pay a retiree a pension until he passed away. Now, an individual has to estimate or guess how long he will live and try to put enough away all by themselves. Too many can't do it. Also, hospital stays for delivery was 5 days in the early 70s. Now, its 24 hours. The hospital's motto for sending them home is: quicker and sicker! Recovery care has been transferred to the family. But for many families, no one is home. They are all working. Insurance used to cover it all. Now, supplies, specialists, drugs, even hospitalization itself may not be covered at all. It's little wonder that the middle class is going the way of the DODO bird.

My comment lost all of its formatting. That sucks.

There are 22 points that supposedly prove the decline of the so-called middle class.

I evaluated each on on four criteria:

1. Does it address in a focused clear way, the actual size of the middle class -- does it mention the middle class or does it related directly to the middle class? (An Easy Evaluation)
2. Does it PROVE a change in the nature or size of the middle class. (Hard test, but that was the claim)
3. Does it SUGGEST a change in the nature or size of the middle class in absolute terms. (Easier test)
4. Does it SUGGEST a change in the nature or size of the middle class relative to other classes (VERY easy test)

Factor 1: None of the 22 points specifically addresses the middle class in any way.
Factor 2: None of the 22 points provides any PROOF of any substantial change in the absolute or relative sizes of the middle class.
Factor 3. None of the 22 points SUGGESTS that the Absolute size of the Middle Class is changing.
Factor 4. Four of the points might possibly Suggest a relative size change in the Middle class. 1 more point makes a strong suggestion that the size of the Middle Class has changed relative to others.

Thus, out of 4 possible tests, only one rather weak test finds fewer than 25% of the points raised to be even notionally valid to the headline or the claim.

A better, more accurate title would be: 22 Points suggesting that some people in the US are under Financial Stress, while others are doing well.

why won't this site let me vote for reader comments?

the trools are deep here. when we "occupy" change things, we'll see whos out of work then.

With all due respects, none of your statistics prove that the middle class is shrinking. They mainly appear to relate to the fact that we recently went through a severe but temporarily financial crisis, and are currently suffering through a hyper-liberal and economically illiterate administration.

(They also relate to the fact that we have a far higher standard of living today, borrow and spend far more than we need to, and don't save as much as we should.)

The truth is that median incomes have doubled since the 50's (the golden era of the manufacturing middle class), and have also risen significantly since the early 80's. More people are doing services jobs, but those jobs include all white-collar jobs, including doctors, lawyers, etc. Service professions overall tend to be higher-paying, not to mention safer, cleaner, and healthier.

Free trade has been generally beneficial -- unemployment dropped sharply in the 90's after NAFTA was signed, and the WTO was expanded. Some overpaid union workers have experienced losses since the expansion of trade, but what is the alternative? A new protectionism that recreates the global depression and global conflict of the 1930's and 1940's? What's amazing is that free trade has managed to lift billions around the world out of poverty without harming our overall standard of living. It is also creating huge markets in India and China for our goods. (Apple products are already very popular in China, and GM did most of their sales in China over the last few years.)

While I agree much opportunity is being "offshored", many of the things that are listed in the bottom of the article are personal financial decisions or a direct result of those decisions. Some of them are based on decisions that were made by those who were voted in by a sick society with screwed up priorities.

For instance: 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

I've seen statistics like this used as though it's an injustice but the bottom line is that everybody in the US is afforded the opportunity to invest. The vast majority of people don't want to learn anything about it. They don't want to bother to scrape up the bare minimum to open a brokerage account. They don't want to maintain it. People who don't have a savings account sure as hell aren't going to bother with a brokerage account.

And, the people that could easily invest great sums of money are living well beyond their means. They've been getting into ARM loans and buying cars for 70k and 80k. Foreclosures and bankruptcy happen because people are absolutely asinine with their money. It's an epidemic of financial retardation.

I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the system but it stems from society. People vote based on what is important to them or because they don't educate themselves. But, political complacency is waning. People are waking up and becoming active and they're going to the source - Washington. The problem isn't with Capitalism. It's with politicians (who we voted in) who are in the pockets of big companies.

Where did these statistics come from?? It wasn't reported in the article at all?

I think we need to work to raise the limits on monopoly's in this country as it was is talked about in the constitution that this kind of control was not supposed to be happening we are loosing control of our own country by not enforcing it allowing the money world to take it over this was not suppose to be we need to learn to KEEP IT SIMPLE and NOT ALLOW this to take over by blocking way for the rich and powerful to take over and give the control back to the people this is our CONSTITUTION not the RICH gaining power by being rich stop serving and do it not generalize it do it and the same to the politician stop em
now by putting our foot down and watch out because we know what happened when the South put their foot down by saying we need not go to war but allow a better way of solving problems in a more natural way happening this idea is nice but to slow now for sure GOD HELP US we are starving. I talk to people whom I know have money and they think everything is just fine but you go fight a war for me and I will keep my son out of it so he don't get a busted finger nail so you lower breads can suffer for us .
Johnny t
jleland

IMHO it's really simple:

A) Taxes
B) Regulations
C) Globalization

1) Taxes: The solution thus far has been to create tax loopholes so large that even Warren Buffet complains that his secretary pays more taxes than he. If he's honest enough to admit this, I don't need platitudes about uber rich "job creators". We need to SIMPLIFY the tax code.

2) Regulations: After the Great Depression we put regulations in place to separate investment banking risks from commercial banking (your mortgage, student loans, etc.). In those post-WWII years we prospered massively. President Reagan didn't do as much to loosen these standards as President Clinton and the Bush presidents, and yet many Americans LOVED Reagan (despite the tax hikes & regulations!). We lived for decades this way, each generation doing better than their parents, so clearly regulations alone are not economic killers. Yet that didn't stop Sen. Phil Gramm and friends in the 1990s starting with energy market deregulation, after which we got the Enron debacle (execs BLAMED the deregulatory link). Not to be derailed from the belief that regulation --- those useless things we might compare to lines painted on the road and traffic signals --- we went on to modernize (deregulate) the FINANCIAL INDUSTRY. Years later we have the "Occupy Wall St" movement protesting the inevitable: Human nature is greedy; kids in candy stores with unlimited funds will spend them whether they can actually eat that much candy or not. We like to think as grown-ups we are too smart for that type of miscalculation but we're not. The economic crisis was perpetuated by a lot of brilliant people in high places doing boneheaded (greed-motivated) things in the market. Erecting road signs and hiring some traffic cops is not going to stop the flow of traffic (free trade/commerce) it's going to keep it from being a bumper car anarchy. Get it?

3. Globalization: Globalized trade is all good until you begin to see the parallel between things like single-celled Amoebas and polygamous marriage. While it works, it works very, very well. When every international economy is literally codependent upon one another it becomes a 3-leg sack race. The solution is not to limit trade to but to limit the idea that CONSOLIDATION (market concentration) is legitimate free trade. Free trade should mean "more cells in the economic body". Instead globalization has made it more and more difficult to be a small contributor. This is a problem because it is small business that creates the most jobs and most competition. If you are pro free market than you should be for more SMALL BUSINESS and fewer international giants. Yes, you can have "too big to fail". International economies of obese couch potatoes who crush everyone under their weight do not yield prosperous consumers (middle class). To believe in limited government is also to believe in limited international corporate dominance. Concentrating just a few massive players in each industry is a recipe for rising prices because there are too few viable competitors to hold prices down. If you want your own standard of living and that of your children to go up, support discrete economies that are not so heavily invested in some other nation that when one goes belly up they all fall like dominoes (like Iceland, Greece, etc.). We are still teetering precariously after the "Great Recession" precisely because the chain of dominoes stretches all the way around the world. American style deregulated and fractional reserve banking was not so heavily embraced in Canada and Brazil and they are virtually unscathed by comparison.

Get the DVD "Inside Job". It will turn the lights on if it's not already obvious. Meanwhile, turn OFF the TV and radio propagandists who are pushing the line that still more deregulation will jump-start the economy: It's a complete lie. Our world economies were imperiled precisely because we erased the lines on the roads of commerce and ripped out all the traffic lights.