OUR NEW ECONOMY

The government released the top 10 occupations in this country, and every single one is a “service” job. As production has been shipped overseas, and everything we buy is made in another country in Asia, the only jobs left are service and financialization jobs. Seems they don’t pay to well, unless you’re a criminals bankster on Wall Street.

Our economy is clearly dying, as most people can barely afford to survive by working. Those at the top continue to siphon off the cash. Clearly, a mistake has been made. A service economy and creating debt (financialization) don’t work.

It’s interesting to note: as the chart below shows, you’d have to earn $57,000 a year pre-tax to equal the cash and benefits of being on welfare. I suppose that explains why 100,000,000 people are on welfare, and ten states have more people on welfare than have jobs. How long can this go on?

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9 Of The Top 10 Occupations In America Pay An Average Wage Of Less Than $35,000 A Year

By Michael Snyder, on April 2nd, 2014

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a family to live a very comfortable middle class lifestyle in most cases. But now those days are long gone. I

n 2014, both parents are expected to work, and in many cases both of them have to get multiple jobs just in order to break even at the end of the month. The decline in the quality of our jobs is a huge reason for the implosion of the middle class in this country. You can’t have a middle class without middle class jobs, and we have witnessed a multi-decade decline in middle class jobs in the United States. As long as this trend continues, the middle class is going to continue to shrink.

The following is a list of the most commonly held jobs in America according to the federal government. As you can see, 9 of the top 10 most commonly held occupations pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year…

Retail salespersons, 4.48 million workers earning $25,370
Cashiers 3.34 million workers earning $20,420
Food prep and serving staff, 3.02 million workers earning $18,880
General office clerk, 2.83 million working earning $29,990
Registered nurses, 2.66 million workers earning $68,910
Waiters and waitresses, 2.40 million workers earning $20,880
Customer service representatives, 2.39 million workers earning $33,370
Laborers, and freight and material movers, 2.28 million workers earning $26,690
Secretaries and admins (not legal or medical), 2.16 million workers earning $34,000
Janitors and cleaners (not maids), 2.10 million workers earning, $25,140

Overall, an astounding 59 percent of all American workers bring home less than $35,000 a year in wages.

So if you are going to make more than $35,000 this year, you are solidly in the upper half.

But that doesn’t mean that you will always be there.

More Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day.

Just consider the case of a 47-year-old woman named Kristina Feldotte. Together with her husband, they used to make about $80,000 a year. But since she lost her job three years ago, their combined income has fallen to about $36,000 a year…

Three years ago, Kristina Feldotte, 47, and her husband earned a combined $80,000. She considered herself solidly middle class. The couple and their four children regularly vacationed at a lake near their home in Saginaw, Michigan.

But in August 2012, Feldotte was laid off from her job as a special education teacher. She’s since managed to find only part-time teaching work. Though her husband still works as a truck salesman, their income has sunk by more than half to $36,000.

“Now we’re on the upper end of lower class,” Feldotte said.

There is a common assumption out there that if you “have a job” that you must be doing “okay”.

But that is not even close to the truth.

The reality of the matter is that you can even have two or three jobs and still be living in poverty. In fact, you can even be working for the government or the military and still need food stamps…

Since the start of the Recession, the dollar amount of food stamps used at military commissaries, special stores that can be used by active-duty, retired, and some veterans of the armed forces has quadrupled, hitting $103 million last year. Food banks around the country have also reported a rise in the number of military families they serve, numbers that swelled during the Recession and haven’t, or have barely, abated.

There are so many people that are really hurting out there.

Today, someone wrote to me about one of my recent articles about food price increases and told me about how produce prices were going through the roof in that particular area. This individual wondered how ordinary families were going to be able to survive in this environment.

That is a very good question.

I don’t know how they are going to survive.

In some cases, the suffering that is going on behind closed doors is far greater than any of us would ever imagine.

But if you live in wealthy enclaves on the east or west coasts, all of this may sound truly bizarre to you. Where you live, you may look around and not see any poverty at all. That is because America has become increasingly segregated by wealth. Some are even calling this the “skyboxification of America”…

The richest Americans—the much-talked about 1 percent—are a cloistered class. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz scathingly put it, they “have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel has similarly lamented the “skyboxification” of American life, in which “people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives.”

The substantial and growing gap between the rich and everyone else is increasingly inscribed on our geography. There have always been affluent neighborhoods, gated enclaves, and fabled bastions of wealth like Greenwich, Connecticut; Grosse Pointe, Michigan; Potomac, Maryland; and Beverly Hills, California. But America’s bankers, lawyers, and doctors didn’t always live so far apart from teachers, accountants, and small business owners, who themselves weren’t always so segregated from the poorest, most struggling Americans.

Nobody should talk about an “economic recovery” until the middle class starts growing again.

Even as the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights over the past year, the decline of middle class America has continued unabated.

And most Americans know deep inside that something is deeply broken. For example, a recent CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that over 80 percent of all Americans consider the economy to be “fair” or “poor”.

Yes, for the moment things are going quite well for the top 10 percent of the nation, but that won’t last long either. None of the problems that caused the last great financial crisis have been fixed. In fact, they have gotten even worse. We are steamrolling toward another great financial crisis and our leaders are absolutely clueless.

When the next crisis strikes, the economic suffering in this nation is going to get even worse.

As bad as things are now, they are not even worth comparing to what is coming.

So I hope that you are getting prepared. Time is running out.

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Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

“In that case, why are you still living?”

Habit.

And bb, are these the “questions” to which you so eye-rollingly “demand” a response?

“Joe ,how many abortions have you had?Do you bake liberal guilt cookies for little children?”

Here’s a response: You’re a bloomin’ idiot. Don’t ask such stupid questions.

bb

Hey Joe , there you go .That’s all I wanted for now.

juan
juan

Pirate Jo says:

“Also, you’re damn right I’m barren. I figured out what causes kids and had it fixed ten years ago. Best $1,000 I ever spent.”

Just wanted to clarify that El Coyote and El Muchacho are two different commenters. Polar opposites even.

El Muchacho
El Muchacho

And to further clarify, I am not actually a beaner.

archie
archie

el muchacho borracho says, “huzzah”. a numbnuts named “solidum” used to say this. so have others. i assume they are all the same person.

juan, el gordo, el coyote, el vato loco, chen, are all the same person.

el coyote is correct. the two are different people.

El Coyote
El Coyote

I’m impressed, Arch, you speaky spook?

El Coyote
El Coyote

El Muchacho says:

“And to further clarify, I am not actually a beaner.”

El Coyote is a beaner, thank you for asking, although I was mistaken for a white dude (bb) at one time.

archie
archie

“speaky spook'”?

Llpoh
Llpoh

Winston talks about “trade policies”, by which I suppose he means we should impose import taxes so high as to prevent any imports.

That is a failed idea. Look how well that worked in the sixties and seventies – quality sucked, prices were high relative to the global economy, etc.

If mistakes have been made it lies in granting access to US markets to those not fully allowing access to theirs. Japan not allowing in rice/beef/etc is a prime example. That could have/should have been crushed.

But imposing tariffs simply to force-feed jobs at home is not the answer. That would see the US fall off the map for sure and certain.

Equalization of prices for labor is going to happen, one way or another. An unskilled worker with an IQ of 90 and a poor education unwilling to work hard will ultimately make the same wages and live the same lifestyle as a similarly attributed person in China. It must and it will happen. There is no choice.

Screaming I am American and I deserve my middle class lifestyle will not work. Tough titty.

What makes Americans think that their birthright grants them special economic circumstance?

They must compete globally. But fact is too many of the middle class cannot compete – they are too fat, dumb, unskilled and lazy to compete.

So they are fucked.

And there is no trade policy on earth that can keep that reality from coming home to roost. It perhaps could have been delayed, but it never was going to be avoided.

El Coyote
El Coyote

All this was announced back in the 80’s, does service economy ring a bell, financialization or even international paycheck equality?

TeresaE
TeresaE

@El Coyote, ah the old “international paycheck disparity,” I LOVE that.

Americans (and Europeans) heard, “raise the 3rd world to meet us.”

The 3rd World heard, “raise our wages to meet theirs.”

Politicians and their Elite owners meant, “gift the private middle class to the 3rd world while skimming trillions from the top and instituting our friends and extended family as the new government-paid middle class.”

We are such tools. And, as such, deserve what is coming.

I just wish I could figure how to get the f# out before it happens.

Ah dreams. Daydreams are good for the soul, or so I’ve heard.

El Coyote
El Coyote

Spook is a synonym of ghost or apparition. It may also refer to:
Agents or people involved in espionage
Agents or people involved in military intelligence
A racial slur used for black people

This is exactly how comments can go off track. I did not mean the last one, sorry, I didn’t remember that one.

El Coyote
El Coyote

Anonymous says:

bb says: “LIpoh and AWD why you two kissing each others ASSES today?”

bb, I started to say something then took a hit off the old bong and derailed. If you notice, AWD is generally a good sport and only clobbers you when you try to get stupid with him. It is the rare time LLPOH and AWD coincide but it happens.

When you notice a couple of people getting too chummy (LLPOH and Punk in their last embarrassing Bromance interlude come to mind) the polite comment is: get a room, you two.

El Coyote
El Coyote

TeresaE says:

“Ah dreams. Daydreams are good for the soul, or so I’ve heard”

Daydreams are not the problem but reality is. The reality is that candidates must be willing to sell their soul before they can even run for office. Anyone who does not approve of the gay, FSA, or government drone lifestyles can never hope to lead or participate in government.

Nonanonymous

LL, of course everyone must compete globally. If I could live on what non-US workers can, I could afford to work for what they make. However, the cost of living is rising in those areas where wages have risen, so all things being equal, it’s really a matter of production. You’ve done well competing globally. Someone made a comment about genetics being a determining factor is educational performance. I would agree.

The oligarch would like nothing more than to make slaves of us all, flipping burgers in their plantation kitchen. Small businesses drive economies, while government and multi-nationals seek to kill off the competition. I read yesterday where Michigan was the 34th state to pass a call for a constitutional convention ostensibly to consider a balanced budget amendment. This should be interesting.

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