Here's What The Disappearing Middle Class Looks Like

[votesparks]

In part three of our multi-video series on the "recovery" happening in Elkhart, Indiana, TYT viewer and Elkhart resident Becky Ruis details her families' struggles--and her midwest home's issues that the media ignore while labeling it as part of an economic recovery

Published on Jun 16, 2016
Part 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLqSpk99bLYIT33ppOKVRapdSnBnYNUBQo&v=Qsh78R4Lctk
Part 2: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLqSpk99bLYIT33ppOKVRapdSnBnYNUBQo&v=_BgqNE7MxXc

[midnight]

1. Those running for President should have to come up with solutions for the policies that

have created this terrible economy

[Recursion]

2. Their solution is U-Haul

And I'm not sure anybody really has a better one. Even a ton of social spending won't magically create jobs out there; the jobs are in cities and that's where people need to be moving.

[Hydra]

4. Until the next crash

Which is just around the corner. That and the structural work changes in place. 100% employment won't happen without the pubic sector doing it, and the Obama Admin chose to be hands off with that.

[Hydra]

3. They should have to, but this was the goal

This is 35 years of Poppy Bush's utopia. Mind you, they haven't gotten everything they want yet, but pretty close.

[jtuck004]

17. The ones we already elected created the damn policies that are destroying the people.

It would be insane to think we are gonna elect someone that will act differently.

But typical.

lol.

[passiveporcupine]

20. We almost elected the right candidate

maybe in 2020? I don't think that people are going to be any happier until we do.

[MisterFred]

29. One of them did. Did you vote for him? nt

[sulphurdunn]

5. It seems likely

that whoever the middle class next puts in the White House will do nothing to alter the decline of their fortunes, although both would accelerate it, but one maybe less than the other.

[spooky3]

6. Very sad. We need to address these issues and

Would be doing so if not for the obstructionists.

[gordianot]

7. How many of the people in dire straights voted for Republicans?

The Democrats in name only are as bad as any Republican, I put all of them in the same category. Does your politician support international trade deals that distributes wealth and jobs? This is what will happen to you.

Unfortunately this happens to people who thought their political leaders had their best interests in mind. Everyone is one or two pay checks from disaster.

[StarzGuy]

10. Not Even One or Two Paychecks Will...

...make any difference once you become disabled, like me. I became disabled in 2009. I lost my job and home and also any hope of ever regaining a standing into the middle class I once was a member of. Now on disability and can't even afford the 2 bedroom apartment in a not so great neighborhood. The lady in this episode is correct. Even here I consider Flagstaff, AZ to be divided, east side poorer and west side more affluent. East side where I live the average price for a 2 bedroom apartment is around $800 - $1000 per month. On the west side essentially double that.

I can also forget for ever being able to purchase a home here where the median cost of ownership is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a modest 2-3 bedroom home.

In the Phoenix valley area the disparage is just the opposite, the east side is affluent and the west side not so much. In either case I still could not afford to life there either.

More rural areas around the state are somewhat better price wise but then home owners have issues suburbanites don't deal with such as water wells and septic systems.

My middle class life sunk some time ago and there is no real hope for a recovery being that I am disabled and rely on my SSDI for most of my income.

[gordianot]

15. I hear you.

I am retired and our goal is to downsize to a farm my wife inherited. We are set to go. My life's work was with disabilities. I have instructions that anything happens to me let me go stay out of debt. My kids are committed to preserve the farm as a parachute.

This country is wealthy enough no one should suffer.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. This economy is not that bad

14 million new jobs the last seven years. This decade is on pace to be the best decade for wage growth in history. The primary thing standing between many workers and a middle class lifestyle is the unaffordability of college. You simply must have a 4 year degree in a useful field to stand a chance today and that's a lot harder for people to afford than it used to be.

[TonyPDX]

9. Yeah, service industry jobs mainly, and minimum wage at that. n/t

[Plucketeer]

12. Oh it's doing GREAT

flippin' burgers or running a drain cleaner. Jobs that I know I'd aspire to if I were still in the job market.

[Doctor_J]

14. $7.50 minimum wage, part time, and no benefits

no, the economy is not OK

[Johnny2X2X]

16. $24 an hiur

The average wage for workers is $24 an hour.

Listen, manufacturing jobs are not coming back, period. You need an education to have a middle class lifestyle today, and this should surprise no one! Your entire life you've been told that you will need a good degree to get by, from the time you could walk to the time you went to high school, that's all people said, "stay in school."

And still, we have an economy that is producing record setting wage growth for workers, that is a fact. Could things be better? Absolutely! But this economy is still better for workers than any economy since Clinton, and before that since Ford.

[passiveporcupine]

22. sorry, you are talking about median wages, versus average wages.

You need to look that up, because the top 1% really throw that number to make it look good, when it, in fact, represents a very small percentage of Americans.

Median wages don't mean a goddamn thing when we are living in an oligarchy.

[Johnny2X2X]

23. Your math is bad

You're confusing median with mean for average. Median is the amount where half the people make more and half the people make less.

[passiveporcupine]

24. You are correct. I was mixed up.

But median wage still does not reflect the wage it should as adjusted for cost of living. It's a proven fact that the upper class has moved up...there are more millionaires than ever. But the middle class has dropped and poverty level is growing.

And I don't care what Obama says, the economists are right. We are sliding backward and our children are going to suffer for this. And it is proved by this graph, which shows that median wages are still going up, but not nearly as fast as average wages (because of wage inequality).



For example, here is a cost of living adjusted average wage for Portland Oregon.

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
2014 Average Hourly Cost-of-living Adjusted Wage: $21.75
2014 Average Hourly Earnings (Nonadjusted): $24.86

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/metro-area-wages-cost-of-living-adjusted-2014-data.html

I don't have the data for 2016, but you get the idea.

[Johnny2X2X]

27. Poverty rate is declining

The poverty rate shot up to just over 15% after the recession. But it's fallen or stayed the same in each of the last 5 years. The poverty rate has been between 11 and 15% basically every year since the 60s. So it doesn't move a ton.

Poverty is not increasing, it is decreasing. And the wage growth we're seeing right now is going to continue the trend. When Hillary is president we will raise the national minimum wage, if we tie it to CPI poverty will plummet.

[passiveporcupine]

28. Is poverty rate really declining?

Is that based on real wages, on or including assistance from the government? Because that is not what some ecologists are saying.

Where are your links? I'm not seeing that in what I'm finding on-line.

And where is your proof that Hillary is gong to raise the national minimum wage to anything that offsets the current inflation adjustment?

The wage she is shooting for is already lower than where the minimum wage should be based on inflation adjustments for all the years it hasn't budged (according to her she is bringing it up to where it was in 1968, but it is not inflation adjusted, so it's still lower than back then. Sanders' bill of $15/hour would phase in by 2020. Hillary's of $12, would phase in by 2022.

So six years from now, will $12 be a livable minimum wage? Or would $15 an hour four years from now be more livable?

Remember, we are trying to adjust the minimum wage so people no longer need social services to survive on a wage for a full-time job.

Here is a link to the shrinking of our middle class and the growing of the poverty and the wealthy class in the US:

With relatively fewer Americans in the middle-income tier, the economic tiers above and below have grown in significance over time.

Among American adults overall, including those from outside the 229 areas examined in depth, the share living in middle-income households fell from 55% in 2000 to 51% in 2014. Reflecting the accumulation of changes at the metropolitan level, the nationwide share of adults in lower-income households increased from 28% to 29% and the share in upper-income households rose from 17% to 20% during the period.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/11/americas-shrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas/

[jtuck004]

18. Where do you get that crap? 47 million kids on food stamps, 100 million and growing in poverty

or working poor. 8 million families foreclosed on with the help of the administrations, and replaced by 10 million new rentals. More kids, in their prime working age, are living at home and cannot get jobs that will build the nation.

Bank$ter/jihadists that donated to political campaigns are doing ok, however.

Still doing research in your same old place?

[passiveporcupine]

21. I"m sorry,but you are so wrong

Obama is still behind Clinton, but he's about on par with Reagan, although it's notable that the U.S. population is a lot bigger today than during the 1980s, so Reagan created more jobs on a proportional basis than Obama has.

The unemployment rate was 7.8% the month Obama was sworn in. It hit a high of 10% in October 2009 and is now back to 5%.

In his speech, Obama did lament the inequality that persists in the United States. Wages and salaries have barely budged under his watch. The typical family is actually taking home less today than when he took office when you adjust for inflation.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/13/news/economy/obama-jobs-state-of-the-union/

You need to get off your rah rah wagon and face reality. The middle class is shrinking and poverty is growning and there are lots of statistics to prove it. The only group doing well in this country is the upper middle class and the wealthy.

[Skittles]

25. college has become quite the scam

you must now go into a lot of debt to get jobs which did not require a degree 20 years ago

[maddiemom]

11. Thirty or fourty years back, industry was complaining that increasing enviromental regulations were

impossibly costly. That, along with union demands (my former husband owed his engineering degree and managerial positions largely to support from the company that employed his strongly UMWA father, but became "The Man" with increasing paychecks ) gave U.S. industry/ manufacturing all the excuse that they needed to assure their stockholders that employing desperate third world laborers would get rid of the problems that were in the way
of their profits. That an entire U.S. working middle class would be deprived of purchasing power? No thought.

[Roland99]

13. Imagine if Gates Foundation (or other billionaires) helped fund things like that YMCA that closed

Helped communities to stay alive and thrive and prosper

[turbinetree]

19. San Francsico 2.0

Honk----------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[Trust Buster]

26. The shift to a global economy has been a trying time for the country with the highest standard

of living. We live in a much more competitive environment. Americans must become leaner, meaner and more educated in this new world. Complaining will not get us to where we need to be as a country.

[MisterFred]

30. AKA "suck it up and plan on being poor"

[midnight]

31. This is what many of us knew NAFTA would cause…. loss of jobs and loads of austerity...

[Trust Buster]

32. NAFTA didn't invent digitalization and large container ships. It had nothing to do with

globalization.

[midnight]

33. Do you think that Nafta rules have any say on how those two inventions are used?

[Trust Buster]

34. No, I don't. NAFTA had no effect on the millions of jobs that were transferred to Asia.

The government cannot make corporate investment in foreign labor markets illegal.

[midnight]

35. Well then we will have to disagree because I do...