The Ninety-Nine Per Cent

From The Ramparts

by Junious Ricardo Stanton ~

"What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of 'chronically unemployed' is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs. But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart. The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild." The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here's-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=%5EDJI,%5EGSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA

As the election year rolls on, bet your bottom dollar one of the charges the Republicans will level at the Obama administration and the Democrats is the economy has worsened under his watch and Americans are a lot worse off now than they were four years ago. Sad to say these charges are correct. In fairness to Obama the wheels were falling off the US economy when he went into the White House. But he has continued the very policies that have brought this country to the abyss of total bankruptcy, ruin and default. Obama with his cabinet selections , his unabashed cow towing to the Wall Street Kleptocrats and the military industrial security state has pushed the peddle to the metal sending the US economy over the cliff. Despite the upbeat notices in the media and the nightly stock market reports (the stock market does not reflect the true status of the economy mainly due to stock market manipulation and fruad) the US economy is on life support and sinking fast. The Kleptocrats don't want us to know the real deal for fear we will tar and feather them and take their assets.

Unemploymnet remains high because few new jobs are being created. Working folks have suffered major setbacks in employment opportunities and the real picture is not being shared with the American people. The problem is you can not rely on government statistics for an accurate picture of US employment. "Just last month, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported finding 243,000 new jobs, they also reported in the same release that an additional 1.2 million workers had dropped out of the work force altogether, giving up hope under Obama. If labor force participation had remained the same in January, 2012 just as it was the month before in December, 2011, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.7% in January rather than supposedly declining to 8.3% as reported. Some additional facts highlight how misleading the reported unemployment rate, and the political rhetoric around it, can be. One year ago, 99 million Americans were unemployed or otherwise not working, and the unemployment rate was 9.1%. Today, while the reported unemployment rate is 8.3%, over 100 million Americans are unemployed or otherwise not working. In January, 2009, 11.6 million Americans were unemployed, with 23% of those unemployed for more than 6 months. By January, 2012, 12.8 million were unemployed, with 43% of those out of work more than 6 months.At the official end of the recession in June, 2009, America was 12.6 million jobs short of full employment. By January, 2012, we were 15.2 million jobs short, falling behind by another 244,000 in that month alone." Don't Be Fooled, The Obama Unemployment Rate Is 11% http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/02/09/dont-be-fooled-the-obama-unemployment-rate-is-11/

New jobs simply aren't being created at least not the kind folks can enjoy a decent standard of living working. A recent study shows more and more Americans are slipping out of the middle class and economic apartheid is expanding rapidly. " The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970, according to a new study, as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.The study, conducted by Stanford University and scheduled for release on Wednesday by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University, uses census data to examine family income at the neighborhood level in the country's 117 biggest metropolitan areas. The findings show a changed map of prosperity in the United States over the past four decades, with larger patches of affluence and poverty and a shrinking middle. In 2007, the last year captured by the data, 44 percent of families lived in neighborhoods the study defined as middle-income, down from 65 percent of families in 1970. At the same time, a third of American families lived in areas of either affluence or poverty, up from just 15 percent of families in 1970. The study comes at a time of growing concern about inequality and an ever-louder partisan debate over whether it matters. It raises, but does not answer, the question of whether increased economic inequality, and the resulting income segregation, impedes social mobility. Much of the shift is the result of changing income structure in the United States. Part of the country's middle class has slipped to the lower rungs of the income ladder as manufacturing and other middle-class jobs have dwindled, while the wealthy receive a bigger portion of the income pie. Put simply, there are fewer people in the middle. But the shift is more than just changes in income. The study also found that there is more residential sorting by income, with the rich flocking together in new exurbs and gentrifying pockets where lower- and middle-income families cannot afford to live." Middle-Class Areas Shrink as Income Gap Grows, New Report Finds http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/us/middle-class-areas-shrink-as-income-gap-grows-report-finds.html

Shrinking incomes mean shrinking standards of living, less consumption and harder times for those of us who are being squeezed by the shrinking US dollar due to inflation, shriveling incomes and public policies designed to steal our wealth and transfer it to the super rich. The fact of the matter is the rich are getting richer setting the stage for widescale economic apartheid in the US and major social unrest. "At the root of this discontent are the extreme inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity that have emerged over the last four decades. The richest 1 percent now owns over 36 percent of all the wealth in the United States. That's more than the net worth of the bottom 95 percent combined. This 1 percent has pocketed almost all of the wealth gains of the last decade. In 2010, the 1 percent earned 21 percent of all income, up from only 8 percent in mid-1970s. The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. These trends among the 1 percent are bad for the rest of us. Concentrated wealth translates into political clout — the power to use campaign contributions to rent politicians and tilt the rules of the economy in their favor. Web sites dramatizing the "We are the 99 percent" movement are full of personal stories of young people who are saddled with debt and no futures, and middle class families that have seen the American Dream collapse around them, losing jobs, homes, and hopes for the future." The 99 Per Cent Spring Chuck Collins http://inequality.org/99-percent-spring/

As you think about voting this year make sure you understand the process is a sham, America is a full fleged banana republic. Most politicians are not on our side. The fact is most have sold out to the one per cent because they want to be on the winning side of the ongoing global class war. The war is on. The question is do you know there is a war raging and which side are you on?

[TheBlackList] The Ninety-Nine Per Cent, jrswriter, 04/22/2012

 

Follow TheBlackList on these networks