Flat-Lining the Middle Class: Economic Numbers to Die For

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/06-9

Food pantries picked over. Incomes drying up. Shelters bursting with the homeless. Job seekers spilling out the doors of employment centers. College grads moving back in with their parents. The angry and disillusioned filling the streets.

Pan your camera from one coast to the other, from city to suburb to farm and back again, and you'll witness scenes like these. They are the legacy of the Great Recession, the Lesser Depression, or whatever you choose to call it.

In recent months, a blizzard of new data, the hardest of hard numbers, has laid bare the dilapidated condition of the American economy, and particularly of the once-mighty American middle class. Each report sparks a flurry of news stories and pundit chatter, but never much reflection on what it all means now that we have just enough distance to look back on the first decade of the twenty-first century and see how Americans fared in that turbulent period.

And yet the verdict couldn’t be more clear-cut. For the American middle class, long the pride of this country and the envy of the world, the past 10 years were a bust. A washout. A decade from hell.

More at the link --

[FirstLight]

1. Grim indeed...but not helpful

I swear, it is one thing to see the freaking statistics....another to know what it's like to make $9k with a family of 4.

Living it is a whole different ball of wax

[ixion]

2. I'm calling it the Greater Depression

because I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. The food drive over my way has closed their doors.

We need new levels of charity, new strata of taking care of each other and making sure everyone is okay.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Depression 2.0 nt