Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

Results 1 to 8 of 8
  1. #1





    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Posts
    22,393
    SCF Rewards
    11,679
    Blog Entries
    2
    Country
    Pittsburgh Steelers Pittsburgh Pirates Boston Red Sox
    Twitter: @MadMan_Of_Metal See ultimatesteelersfan1964's Items on eBay Instagram: COMC Cards For Sale

    60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class is Being Wiped Out

    60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class is Being Wiped Out

    Michael Snyder

    #1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

    #2 As the middle class shrinks, more Americans than ever have been forced to become dependent on the federal government. Federal spending on welfare programs has reached nearly a trillion dollars a year, and that does not even count Social Security or Medicare. Welfare spending is now 16 times larger than when the "war on poverty" began.

    #3 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4,000 during that time span.

    #4 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

    #5 The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by more than 15 million since the turn of the century.

    #6 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.

    #7 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

    #8 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all American households were "middle class" back in 1971. Today, that figure has fallen to 51 percent.

    #9 In the United States today, 35 percent of all households live on $35,000 or less each year.

    #10 One recent survey discovered that 85 percent of all middle class Americans believe that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

    #11 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

    #12 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

    #13 In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.

    #14 Total U.S. household debt grew from just 1.4 trillion dollars in 1980 to a whopping 13.7 trillion dollars in 2007. This played a huge role in the financial crisis of 2008, and the problem has still not been solved.

    #15 While debt loads for middle class families are going up, the net worth of those same families is going down. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families in the United States declined "from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010".

    #16 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been below 59 percent for 40 months in a row.

    #17 Today there are about 3.25 million Americans that say that they want a job but that have not searched for a job in more than a year because they believe that it is so hopeless.

    #18 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.

    #19 The unemployment rate for African-Americans rose dramatically from 13.2 percent in November to 14.0 percent in December.

    #20 The unemployment rate for Americans in the 18 to 29 year-old age bracket is 11.5 percent overall. For African-Americans in that age group, the unemployment rate is now up to 22.1 percent. Millions of young people believe that the system has totally failed them.

    #21 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
    #22 Last year, an astounding 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

    #23 Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

    #24 According to the Tax Policy Center, the recent fiscal cliff deal will raise taxes more for those making between $30,000 and $200,000 a year than it will for those making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.

    #25 According to a Gallup survey, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.

    #26 One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.

    #27 Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

    #28 Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700 percent since 1971.

    #29 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

    #30 The average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011, and electricity bills in the U.S. have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

    #31 According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.

    #32 Health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent since Barack Obama became president. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

    #33 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

    #34 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

    #35 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

    #36 The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

    #37 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

    #38 In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are less than 12 million.

    #39 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

    #40 Since 2000, U.S. multinational corporations have eliminated 2.9 million jobs in the United States and have added 2.4 million jobs overseas.

    #41 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

    #42 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

    #43 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less. If that sounds like a high figure, that is because it is. Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

    #44 According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of all American workers believe that they have enough money to get them through retirement.

    #45 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans households on average have 288 times the amount of wealth that the average middle class American family does.

    #46 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

    #47 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

    #48 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

    #49 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

    #50 The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.

    #51 The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.

    #52 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.

    #53 Today, 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

    #54 One recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

    #55 Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

    #56 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming."

    #57 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government. Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.

    #58 According to U.S. Census data, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either considered to be "poor" or "low income".

    #59 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.

    #60 According to a stunning new Gallup survey, 65 percent of all Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of "economic difficulty".

    Read more: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/01/...an-middle.html

  2. #2
    OPG Staff






    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Posts
    70,304
    SCF Rewards
    5,851
    Country
    See gladdyontherise's Items on eBay COMC Cards For Sale

    The middle class is being wiped out, maybe if everyone didn't get taxed so much to help people who don't want to help themselves, things would be different.
    Click banner for tradelist
    Hidden Content
    Dan LeFevour PC 192/283

  3. #3




    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Age
    55
    Posts
    9,435
    SCF Rewards
    376
    Country
    See bodyelectricmethod's Items on eBay

    more and better jobs can create a situation where taxes can be lowered. right now everything is so bad I am just hoping they don't raise them any more. If the republicans can't figure out ow to do this and be on some form of terms with the democrats, we are going to be stuck here. and the same thing can be said about the democrats.

    the only tax cuts that would help now are ones that would bring back manufacturing and building, which would be huge cuts and right off for big bussiness', which is what people are complaining about already.

  4. #4





    Join Date
    May 2010
    Posts
    17,461
    Blog Entries
    2
    Transferred Feedback
    Beckett (66)
    Country

    more and better jobs can create a situation where taxes can be lowered. right now everything is so bad I am just hoping they don't raise them any more. If the republicans can't figure out ow to do this and be on some form of terms with the democrats, we are going to be stuck here. and the same thing can be said about the democrats.

    the only tax cuts that would help now are ones that would bring back manufacturing and building, which would be huge cuts and right off for big bussiness', which is what people are complaining about already.

    #4 and #47 might have something to do with the complaining.

  5. #5




    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Age
    55
    Posts
    9,435
    SCF Rewards
    376
    Country
    See bodyelectricmethod's Items on eBay

    yes, but the tax breaks they get is not based on keeping there business' in the USA.

  6. #6





    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Age
    46
    Posts
    11,412
    SCF Rewards
    2,192
    Country
    Boston Red Sox Boston Celtics New England Patriots
    See maccards44's Items on eBay

    The middle class is being wiped out, maybe if everyone didn't get taxed so much to help people who don't want to help themselves, things would be different.

    More people needing help are the byproduct of the broken system, not the cause of it.
    Three of the biggest economic drivers that are killing the middle class are gas prices, housing costs and medical expenses.
    At the same time, some of the most profitable companies in the world are oil companies (profit off your high gas), banks (profit off your mortgage) and health care (profit off your medical expenses)

    The biggest lie was the globalization of the economy - why is any company going to pay a factory worker $40k a year to build something when they can pay a chinese kid $4/day to build it? What they don't get (or don't care to get) is that soon they'll be nobody here who can afford the all stuff they build in China for us.

    To your point though, it does create feedback loop that leaves less of us holding the bag to pay for people who need help (and the ones who won't help themselves)
    maccards44 everywhere 'bay, etc
    Just Selling Right Now

  7. #7







    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Age
    54
    Posts
    19,098
    SCF Rewards
    1,943
    Blog Entries
    6
    Country

    And yet the Obama administration's answer to everything is higher taxes. It wasn't too long ago that I said that the current regime's policies were going to eliminate the middle class. Eventually the middle class gets sucked down by lower wages, higher taxes and a higher cost of living. Increasing the burden on the middle class is not the answer.

    And matt_curren, I agree with you, the increase in welfare recipients is a symptom of the problem and not the cause, however as their numbers increase they become a cause of the increasingly growing problem. When you continually add people to the welfare system then you are increasing the governments expense, yet the welfare system is the only part of our government that is not facing cuts. The term "everyone must tighten their belts" doesn't apply to the lower class in spite of the fact that they represent the largest portion of the population that is a burden on the system.

  8. #8





    Join Date
    May 2010
    Posts
    17,461
    Blog Entries
    2
    Transferred Feedback
    Beckett (66)
    Country

    Yeah! Give money to the wealthy! That will help the middle class and poor...somehow...

    Somehow!

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
SCF Sponsors


About SCF

    Sports Card Forum provides sports and non-sports card collectors a safe place to discuss, buy, sell and trade.

    SCF maintains tools that will allow collectors to manage their collections online, information about what is happening with the hobby, as well as providing robust data to send out for Autographs through the mail.

Follow SCF on