The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
(snip)"Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world's laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we'll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them - they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news. Working Americans will be applying Preparation H to their keisters for a long time to come.
But the ultimate accomplishment of the already rich, the newly rich and the corporate rich, has been their global solidarity on the corporate/financial front. It's been a long run up to globalism, but the rich have great patience. As an American, all my life I've heard their chief mouthpiece, the president of the United States, beginning with Eisenhower, right on up through Kennedy, Reagan, Ford, Carter and Bush, and now Obama, sing the same song. Which goes moreover like this:
"Trade is the road to peace. Commerce and business know no national boundaries. They link nations together on productivity, creating jobs and peace across the world."
It sounded good at the time. Who would have thought that the people enjoying all this harmony and peace brought about through globalization would be enjoying it in a one big happy planetary work gulag? And if they are not doing so at the moment, they will be as soon global capitalism, under the watchful solidarity of the rich, bears full fruit.
Thanks to globalization, the American, Australian and European working classes are on their way to extinction, in terms of their traditional rights, and quality of life. Just like the workers being poisoned to death by circuit board toxins in Guiyu, China, their fates will be determined by global capital, either by default or by bitter struggle against it. We are not seeing much of the latter and are not likely to, until it is too late, which it may already be. After all, you cannot put up much of a struggle against global capital when you worship it a creed and are addicted to commodities too.
Oh yeah, I forgot. We're gonna "develop" and "stimulus" our way out of what is happening now - which is that we are fast becoming a slave labor workhouse planet. Now let me see here - hmmm - who is in charge of development? Oh yeah, the global financiers.
There is no way the world's working people can win in the long run, which is getting pretty damned short, or even survive, except by joining the worker struggles, of China, Asia and Africa and India. The idea that American workers are the same as the Asian and Latin American and African working people goes down hard in American gullets.
But for Americans, it does not go down at all. As a people, they'll never ever accept that fact, because they'll never know it for at least two reasons. (1) They are too over worked and undereducated to find out for themselves, and (2) American corporate media machinery will never let them hear of it. Americans are screwed, blued and tattooed."(snip)
(snip)"There is no way out of our culture manufacturing machinery. We're not in charge. It would be bigger than any one of us because it consists of all of us. It tells us all we are individuals supremely worthy of our silliest notions and desires, thereby making us soft and lazy, infantilized an incapable of truly effective solidarity as a people. Instead, we are fed Tea Party drivel. Even if CNN decided to send Coop to Guiyu to cover the blood poisoned worker women with the deformed children, the result would be the same. The guy in Cedar Rapids would see further proof that "Me live in best place in world. Got Cheetos." Or perhaps a nice Cotes du Rhône if you are a member of the commodity drugged educated faux middle class.
And I wanna say to them: "Not for much longer, buddy. Not much longer. And you can thank Anderson Cooper and a helluva lot of other people like him who do not have a clue, but nevertheless inhabit your very mind, for that." "(snip)
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Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
I think a lot of people in the middle class know what the deal is.
I believe Bush and the republicans were voted out directly because the middle class perceived them as working for the rich, the middle classes needs be damned. Obama promised change and I have to admit I even when a little left in voting for him. I was sick of the lies.
So now here we are watching Obama doing pretty much the same damn thing and the congress continuing on fucking the middle class.
So brewed up the tea partiers. These people are kind of flaying their hands around in the dark trying to figure out something - of finding the door out of this mess we are finding ourselves in.
But sooner or later we are going to need to punish some corporations for their investments outside the US while enjoying the leverage the rest of us give them outside the nation in terms of military, market, and monetary controls.
One can go to any company town where the company folded up and moved offshore and believe me - they know they are being fucked. In the IT world filled with guest workers and scams played on employees (so called "knowledge transfer" so they can be laid off and replaced) - they know they are being fucked.
The problem is so many of these people are turning to the established mechanisms and not finding what they need. (Hence the rise of the tea parties built by those who simply don't believe anymore - it always starts on the fringes but I don't think anyone can deny it is becoming more mainstream as people see they are not part of the solution yet - aka wall street bonuses after "we" bailed them out.)
The revolution will not be televised, but there is certainly a revolution of some kind in the making. Whether it happens at the ballot box or a Boston massacre I don't know.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
again not wanting to swing too far toward the political ...
Regardless of how the US middle class eventually manifests its 'displeasure' over economic changes, for a fact those changes are going to happen whether they like it or not. The corporate board room decisions to relocate middle class manufacturing jobs to other countries were made quite a while ago, with many US middle class jobs now being on 'borrowed time' while US employers are building new production facilities in Asia or South America. Once those new offshore factories become operational, the old US factories will close.
You already pointed out the fact that many IT companies have already offshored a ton of their 'service and support' work. This trend is also growing for other professional services, from medical x-ray interpretation to legal brief composition to architectural / engineering drawing creation. Thus while a core of 'upper echelon' talent will remain in the US, an ever growing amount of lower level support functions will be offshored. This is of course a direct whammy to younger US middle class professionals as it effectively saws off the lower rungs of traditional career ladders.
Also, as of late, it is not just US middle class manufacturing jobs that are at risk. With the huge rise in US regulation of financial industries ( and paychecks ), many financial services companies are now relocating some operations to London or Brussels or Dubai or Hong Kong. This will result in additional hundreds of thousands of existing US middle class jobs in the financial industry being offshored.
It seems that the last refuge of US middle class jobs are gov't jobs. However, given that these jobs do not produce any 'profits' from which to fund their own paychecks, it remains to be seen how long the gov't can continue to borrow ever more money in order to do so. This will be especially difficult in light of falling gov't tax revenues as more and more US private sector middle class jobs disappear.
~
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
Odd (and deserving) if the corporate managers will have to move to those third world countries to keep their huge incomes rolling along.
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Tell me the name of a country where an equivalent lifestyle exists at a lower economic cost. Not just some place where a person can hide out until the 'coast is clear,' but someplace where you'd want to live the rest of your life.
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I'd like to know.
Seriously.
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"Global controls will have to be imposed and a world governing body, will be created to enforce them. "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijPE7fe4XTg
I think I am in agreement with Melonie to an extent. It just...feels...like this is what's happening. I used to have faith in the world, now I can't even imagine what will happen in the next 5 years because I think its going to be bad.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
If you go to Walmart's web page and study their financial statement you will see that have a gross margin of about 25 to 27 percent depending on the quarter and this equates to a 35 to 38 percent markup. Sams which is a big part of Walmart marks up many brand name items about 8 to 12 percent which is a 7 to 10 percent gross margin.
The fact that they have such a high gross margin means they are marking up most of their items which are mostly made in CHINA about 100 percent hence the higher overall margin , I certainly do not believe membership fees and kick backs from manufacturers get the margin up.
Chinese made goods are the means that allow major US retailers to show huge profits. We have exported most of our means of production to other countries. The argument was we were going to do "other things" . Problem is that the other things are easily ripped off intellectual propery rights are rarely respected in China etc.
Our wealth has been transfered to China and our people are falling from Middle class to lower class since they have no jobs . The Harvard Profs who painted a rosey picture for free trade never addressed the long term effects of a trade deficit and they remain silent for some reason on that topic.
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^^^ well, obviously or not so obviously, the outsourcing of production to China and other low cost countries is no longer limited to goods on WalMart shelves. For better or worse, from Apple I-Pods to Honda engine parts, a huge number of 'sub-assemblies' are no longer fabricated in America. Of major relevance in this particular thread is the fact that manufacturing jobs were one of the classic enablers of the US middle class ... i.e. they provided a sufficient income level relative to the necessary educational and specialized skill level for a large number of Americans to afford living a 'middle class' lifestyle. Absent those manufacturing jobs, Americans without advanced educational credentials and specialized skills must now effectively compete on an equal basis with their global counterparts ... but the economics of that equation are becoming increasingly globalized as well. Unfortunately, the globalized rate of pay available is no longer sufficient to afford living a 'middle class' lifestyle, in America at least !
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
gross margin is not the bottom line. walmart's bottom line is the same as other grocery stores-- about 1%. they just sell so much that even that much is a bunch of money. 99% of their money goes to increased costs of goods, increased health care costs, and increased wages for their employees.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
(snip)"Labor force polarized as middle-skill jobs disappear: report
By Ruth Mantell, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Middle-skills jobs have lost share in the employment pool in the last three decades, a trend of labor-market "polarization" reinforced by the recession, according to a report released Friday.
"Employment losses during the recent recession were far more severe in middle-skill white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or in low-skill service occupations," according to the report by economist David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was presented at a Washington conference about the future of American Jobs.
The four middle-skill occupations -- sales, office and administrative workers, production workers and operators -- accounted for 57.3% employment in 1979. That portion fell to 48.6% in 2007, and declined to 45.7% in 2009, according to the report.
Male workers have been particularly hard hit, as their educational attainment has slowed and labor force participation declined, according to Autor.
"Perhaps most alarmingly, males as a group have adapted comparatively poorly to the changing labor market," Autor wrote. "For males without a four-year college degree, wages have stagnated or fallen over three decades. And as these males have moved out of middle-skill blue-collar jobs, they have generally moved downward in the occupational skill and earnings distribution."
The employment and earnings of less-educated males have been particularly harmed by fewer middle-skill, blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, according to the report"(snip)
attn Independent Contractor Dancers ... from the new national health care law
(snip)"Beginning in 2012, under a little discussed mandate of the health care reform legislation, businesses will be required to report all payments in excess of $600 for services or merchandise to the Internal Revenue Service on a Form 1099.
“Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases,” said Chris Hesse, director of taxation at CPA firm LeMaster DanielsPLLC in Washington state, as quoted by Chris Edwards in a Cato Institute blog.
“And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations,” Hesse said. “This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.”
The health care bill mandate aims to collect lost revenue from companies that under-report on their tax returns. The provision is expected to raise $17 billion over 10 years."(snip)
(snip)"Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments in excess of $600 for rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when these payments are made to entities other than corporations. Payments made to a corporation and payments for merchandise are not required to be reported.
In order to file the required 1099, a business would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number (TIN) from the vendor. Under current tax law, one copy of the form is sent to the IRS, and another copy is sent to the person to whom the business made the payments.
The reporting requirement will affect business in two ways, according to The Boston Globe. First, most of a business’s revenue now will be reported to the IRS by the businesses that paid it, so understating large amounts of revenue will be more difficult. Secondly, it will force businesses to identify the recipients of their business expense payments."(snip)
(snip)"According to Lungren, the IRS is awaiting instruction from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to enforce the reporting requirement, according to The Hill's "On the Money."
"[The IRS] told us that HHS is the one that is given the requirement to interpret this entire law," Lungren said. "That was an extraordinary response as far as I was concerned...I have never known HHS in the past to be responsible for interpreting tax law."(snip)
If this proceeds without changes, it will mean that every independent contractor dancer will become responsible for individually accounting for tipout payments to every DJ, bouncer, house mom etc. and issuing them 1099 forms at the end of the year if the dancer wishes to deduct such tipout payments from her taxable business income. This in turn requires that the dancer find out the real name, real address, and real Social Security # / Tax Identification # of every DJ, bouncer etc.
Same 1099 issuance requirement would also becone true of house fees and other 'cuts' the dancer must pay to the club.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
You all know why the middle class is under siege -- the powerful (underwritten by rich and powerful and privileged corporations) have successfully waged war on us by 'paying off' the elected politicians (basically by supporting their re-elections) and by our offering those same politicians prestige and the ability to stay in power as long as they can get re-elected instead of limiting maximum terms. They both think they are a privileged class, entitled to whatever they can glean from us middle-class people until they get caught with their 'pants down' or until we get sickna dntired enoughto get off our asses and find someone (temporarily) more honest to elect. And now those five black-robed justices in the USSC have amplified their power even more.
So now we have entitlements for the un-entitled and prestige and power for thieves. We sadly have allowed it to happen. It is not the Democrats or Republicans or extremists who have done this. We have done it to ourselves. We have let them all 'pull the wool 'over our eyes.
So how do we get ourselves out of this? Try insisting on ethics strong reforms for both politicians and big corporations. If these jerks in DC don't start getting themselves cleaned up, out they MUST go. No more pork-barrels privineges and no more rolling over the electorate by those corporations with tremendously greater privileges and influence than we the people have.
At this time I have to recommend modifying Lincoln's words: government of the big corporations, of the big corporations, and by the big corporations.
Those people who believe big corporations are always good the the US, no matter what they do are just naive, overly influenced by idealogues, or just plain benighted.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
Quote:
So how do we get ourselves out of this? Try insisting on ethics strong reforms for both politicians and big corporations. If these jerks in DC don't start getting themselves cleaned up, out they MUST go. No more pork-barrels privineges and no more rolling over the electorate by those corporations with tremendously greater privileges and influence than we the people have.
At this time I have to recommend modifying Lincoln's words: government of the big corporations, of the big corporations, and by the big corporations.
Again not wanting to stray too far into the political, but real world observations would tend to indicate that corporations in and of themselves aren't the all-powerful 'wizards behind the curtain' ... or at least they certainly aren't the only ones. Consider the fact that many corporations from Enron to BP to Philip Morris to Blue Cross have been ( or soon will be ) the subject of gov't villification, while other corporations from GM to Pacific Ethanol to Goldman Sachs have been the subject of gov't assistance. The corporate influence upon gov't would appear to be far more complex than corporations simply having tons of money to deploy.
Also, from the standpoint of elections, corporations do not vote. Thus from this standpoint, unions who can deploy both tons of money as well as registered voters on election day would appear far more influential than the corporations the union workers work for. And of course, a near majority of union workers are now employed by the government as opposed to private corporations.
And yes the issue of entitlement benefits for the 'unentitled' continues to grow ... which obviously provides ever more registered voters who have their own gov't benefit check at stake when the next election rolls around.
As to 'how do we ( the US middle class ) get out of this ?" ... the only effective and repeatable answer I was personally able to come up with is 'voting with your feet'.
Re: The Middle Class Game Is Up ...
Those government slaps on the hand are just handed out to the worst offenders that have gotten reported by the media. They have to act like they are watching out for us. It's pretty durned obvious that they are spending their time doing something other than regulation.
For example in the SEC they watch porn on their office computers. Well, I guess they have do something with all that time.
Corporations do not vote but they sure can (now) influence the outcomes, and that's a lot more [powerful than voting individually.
About voting with one's feet : "if we do not hang together, surely we shall hang separately." Meaning that we need to recruit a lot of activists because together we actually have ALL the power we need to fix it. You are obviously a lot more concerned with own self than with changing the direction of your country.
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You are obviously a lot more concerned with own self than with changing the direction of your country.
Actually, I'm acknowledging something different altogether. I'm acknowledging the fact that between the 47% of US tax filers that don't actually pay income tax, the 12% of Americans now dependent on gov't for food stamps, the 10% of Americans that are now dependent on gov't for perpetually extended unemployment benefits, the 16% of Americans who are directly or indirectly dependent on gov't spending for their paychecks, and the 1% of uber-rich Americans who are taking advantage of gov't sanctioned tax preferred investments and/or profiting from gov't subsidized industries, that it's now a practical impossibility for an electoral majority to be assembled that advocates reduced gov't spending / reduced taxes. And that's without including private sector union members who are likely to support continued gov't spending / protectionist policies to support their very own industries.
I acknowledge and applaud your sentiments about 'changing your country'. But in a real world situation, it's too little too late. Yes changes will probably be unavoidable in the longer term as economic realities force reductions in gov't spending, but in the meantime the US middle class is likely to take a massive 'beating'. You'll have to forgive me for now volunteering to be 'beaten on'.
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^ "...not volunteering..."
I find so many people who are dependent on our government funds because they are "disabled." That's a pretty liberal interpretation of 'disabled' in my humble opinion.
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I ask them if they cannot do anything to earn money or they don't know anything they can do to earn a living? Mostly they answer they can't do what they used to. Hell, neither can I, and I'm not disabled!!