More Evidence That America's Middle Class Is Sliding Toward the Third World
http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/more-evidence-americas-middle-class-sliding-toward-third-world
A recent article by Les Leopold informed us that our nation is near the bottom of the developed world in median wealth, probably the best gauge for the economic strength of the middle class. The source of the information, the Global Wealth Databook, provides additional evidence of our decline from our once-lofty position as an egalitarian country with opportunities for nearly everyone.
The data is summarized below. Column 4 reveals that the U.S. is near the top of the developed world in average wealth, in good part because of its many millionaires (Col 8). Median wealth per adult, in Column 5, is much lower. As a sign of the distance between America's middle class and its national wealth, Column 6 shows that the ratio of median to mean in the U.S. is lower than in any country except Russia.
The impact of all this is shown in Column 7. Median-level adults in the U.S. get a smaller percentage of their nation's wealth than in any other country except China and India.
To view Column 7 in another way, 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) give their middle-class adults less.
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For shame! 
the US would even think about. (The republican base wants out of the UN, the WTO, the IMF - anything that impinges on our blessed national sovereignty.)
Trade is a much larger percentage of the economies of all countries with more equitable distributions of wealth. Obviously trade is not the cause of inequitable wealth distributions.
What Finland does have is a tax system that is more progressive than ours, a safety net that is much stronger and a culture and legal system that protect and promote labor unions. So do Canada, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Japan and most of the other countries on this list. We have none of that.
No 'right-to-work' states or provinces in any of these other countries.
But forgive me. I digress from your point that trade and international agreements (and foreigners?) are the cause of our problems. Anyone who blames Americans who vote for tax cuts for the rich, slash the safety net or weaken unions, is not being sufficiently suspicious of the role that foreigners play in our problems.
The fact that Finland, Germany (take any other country off the list above) trades with 'foreigners' much, much more than we do and yet has a stronger middle class and a much more equitable distribution of wealth, means nothing to us, I suppose. Perhaps because the US is exceptional and what works in other countries does not apply to us. 
Last edited Mon Jul 1, 2013, 12:56 PM - Edit history (1)
the goal. To put amerikkkan workers livelihoods on par with third world wages. Keep em hungry, they can be controlled. is the bankers and most politicians creed. Wake up, sheeple!
But I don't think it's a good idea to keep doing the same kind of things we've been doing for the past 30 years.
Thank you Bush I for proposing NAFTA. Thank you Bill Clinton for getting Senate Democrats (or enough of them to support it) and signing NAFTA. Thank you Bush II for continuing the let's-send-jobs-to-foreign-countries policy, and for financing Middle-East wars on credit. And thank you Obama for signing three "free-trade" agreements and negotiating the pending TPP, the NAFTA of the Pacific on steroids.
A special thanks, too, to all the enablers, including posters who supported Bill Clinton ("Look, the DOW is so high" and Obama ("Would you rather have McCain?" "Or Rmoney?" "You just have to be more patient with the chess-master."
That was a revealing post. 
The "illegal immigration" was ENCOURAGED and INITIATED by the same people who excoriate "illegal immigrants." The floodgates opened because 1) owners could get away with paying UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS less and offer them NO benefits or job security; 2) they could violate OSHA standards all day long and they know the UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS would not complain for fear of being sent back to their native country; 3) to flood the market with more workers than jobs which made it an employer's market rather than an employee's market thereby LOWERING the standard of living for everyone.
I can't believe anyone on this board would be so uneducated, so unenlightened to suggest that the "blame" for our economy is "illegal immigrants" and not the Robber Barons who hold the purse strings AND own our government.
I'm done here. 
Oy! 
years more of highly regressive right-wing tax schemes which promote exploding income inequality. 
