Saturday, March 14, 2015

The Middle Class Redefined

Government and Politicians always discuss the writ of passage in becoming part of the middle class. We hear it all the time “Everyone needs to be able to have a shot at joining the middle class in this country.” Boiled down into simpler terms, the poor are offered the opportunity to become rich albeit not rich enough to be in the “Tax the rich group.”

It’s a little like the “red neck” jokes. You know you’re not middle class if you get paid the minimum wage. Usually “flipping hamburgers” is substituted for “minimum wage.’ In reality, it doesn’t matter what the minimum wage is raised to, you are still flipping hamburgers. So if the wage is raised, it is still not enough and never will be no matter how high it is raised. The minimum wage will not support a family of 4, it never has and never will, but by God the bleeding hearts on the nightly news think that this is rank with injustice.

Owning a home and two cars with the bank and no savings also is not middle class. You look good, but you’re only two paychecks away from divorce and being homeless. You have all of the trappings of having made it to the middle class and as far as the government is concerned, you are a poster child for the poor who are looking in the window.

IMHO the real middle class comes from a three generation mix of one family, the grandparents, their kids and their grandkids. And the whole thing is predicated on the fact that the grandparents have enough savings to weather the storms of their children. Marriage tends to give the unit structure.

The government is selling the idea of education as a writ of passage into becoming middle class. The same thing happened after the civil war, you became an independent share cropper, working for yourself. And ended up owing your soul, to the company store for forever and a day, and they didn’t care if you were black or white, money is money.

So when Obama gets up and wants a college education for everyone, to allow graduates the ability to join the middle class, how is that going to work? The student loans are a debt that will never be paid by over 70 percent of the applicants. They will never earn enough to pay the debt and support their children at the same time. Notice a college education does not come with a guarantee of a better job with higher pay when you graduate. Especially if you are majoring as a librarian, astronomer, historian or any other degree in liberal arts. Nobody is claiming that the dream won’t work for you, but the odds are stacked against you.

We need to recognize what politics considers the “Middle Class.” It is a carrot on a stick. It is an abstract place we all want to be, and frankly I am only getting there now, when I am almost too old to enjoy it.

It was the middle class that fought England for our freedom from unjust foreign taxation in 1776. Fast forward to today, and we still have someone taxing everything, but there is no foreign power levying usurious taxes an ocean away rather it’s our own Congress. “Middle Class” is a Congressional euphemism for tax payer. You cannot tax the poor, they make too little, you cannot tax the rich; they’ve already paid the tax on what they have earned.

From a personal standpoint, the title, Middle Class means you have made it. The importance of the title means you feel somewhat obliged to pay taxes. The Middle Class is beginning to comprehend the new economic order; the poor deserve more of the wealth generated by the middle class. The real reality is a little like forcing a hooker to give discounts to the poor; she won't have her heart in it, let alone her body.

11 comments:

Sackerson said...

Like para 3. It's a rooted-family thing - and the family is the fortress against the State and its desire for power in all things.

dearieme said...

Jim, further to that Austrian bank that collapsed the other day; now it's brought down a German bank. Things have a way of spreading.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-15/austrian-black-swan-claims-its-first-foreign-casualty-german-duesselhyp-collapses-be

AIM said...

The American Dream is actually the American Nightmare.

Government is our worst enemy (just as we had the Magna Carta to free us from the monarchy, we need one to free us from oppressive government).

The whole liberal Democrat platform of caring for the people and the down-and-out is an insidious Marxist trap that destroys the human being (destroys his self-sufficiency, independence, freedom, liberty, critical thinking, incentive, industriousness and pride).

Everything the government touches turns to poison:

50% of basic jobs will be taken over by technology in the form of robotics and computers/software.

Raising costs to employers via increasing the minimum wage and Obamacare is expediting this motion of employers over into technology = more unemployment = more of a welfare state.

Down with our enemies: Congress (both Republicans and Democrats), Obama and his White House Administration, Supreme Court, US Treasury, Department of "Defense", etc.

Up with the New Magna Carta for government.

dearieme said...

Small bankruptcy in Spain: not many injured.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/banco-madrid-files-bankruptcy-following.html

AIM said...

The Fed can't raise rates. The banks and Wall St. wouldn't like that (and that is only who the Fed cares about = the "financial economy" rather than the real economy, which is going down the tubes as is the middle class... or what's left of it). The Fed continues to put up this pretense that they are in control and know what they are doing. What a joke.

A recent documentary I just watched, entitled "Money For Nothing" amazed me. It had interviews with lots of Fed governors and went over the performance and stats of the last 3-4 Fed chairman.

If the American public viewed this film I believe that the consensus would be that... the Fed has made lots of mistakes and that they don't know what they are doing. The Fed themselves tell you that in this film! The blind leading the blind.

Highly recommend this documentary.

AIM said...

Here is a link to the movie via ZeroHedge. You can probably find it on youtube as well.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-14/inside-federal-reserve-money-nothing-full-movie

dearieme said...

The American plight:

"One reason why the Fed has not already raised rates is that the analysis I have set out above is unacceptable to many, simply because the conclusion is too uncomfortable. It does not just indicate that the US economy will need to slow to avoid inflation, it points out that, on current trends, the growth of GDP will need to slow to around 0.8 per cent per annum..... to contain inflation.
....
Central banks are famously required to take away the punch bowl before the party gets a glow on. This is always unpopular, but it’s much worse today. The combination of productivity and demography tell us that the party’s over now and this time it never really got going. The Fed is not being asked just to be a party pooper; it needs to deprive people of their illusions. Those who poop parties are not nearly as unpopular as those who destroy illusions."

Source
http://blogs.ft.com/andrew-smithers/2015/03/pity-the-poor-fed/

AIM said...

The Federal Reserve are a bunch of clueless idiots whose job is to help the banks and to ensure Congress has enough money to spend for wars and welfare.

The Federal Reserve will foul things up for the general population and the real US economy as they always do. This Marxist idea that a central government or planner can actually financially engineer and control an economy is another amazing piece of tom-foolery foisted upon the American people.

The Fed creates $ out of thin air and the US taxpayer pays usury interest on it, and that $ isn't even backed by anything. Americans win the gold medal for STUPIDITY.

The Federal Reserve is busy making their banking friends and the elite rich more wealthy by pushing up the stock market and creating bubbles.

But wait. They can't really control or engineer powerful demographic waves.

The first wave of baby boomers will turn 71.5 in 2016. They will be forced by law to start taking distributions from their retirement accounts. Do you know what the is going to do to the stock and bond markets when these boomers start turning stocks and bonds into cash? There are going to be a lot more sellers than buyers.

Down will come the artificially inflated markets.

Instead of infrastructure, investment and productivity the USA put its "money" towards war and welfare. Now we are going to pay big time and this will just be the one of the beginning chapters in the book on the collapse of the American empire.

AIM said...

It's gonna get weird when 90% of the US population are "have nots" and 10% are "haves". Middle class? What middle class?

Jim in San Marcos said...

Hi Aim

Thank you for the links, reality is just around the corner.

Been fixing the sprinklers the last week trying to get the grass to grow. Not much time for blogging.

Sackerson said...

AIM: It's called the Middle Ages.