The Inevitable Shrinking Middle Class

There was a nice article in today's L.A. Times entitled That Raise Might Take 4 Years to Earn as Well. Now, not only are blue-collar workers facing wage stagnation, but so is the "middle class." Of course, stagnation is an improper term, since things are getting worse, not staying the same. I put "middle class" in quotes because this is a manipulative term used in the U.S. press and by economists to avoid a real definition of class.

The guy getting spotlighted says it well, "Nothing else was going down except wages." Our economic boom is rumbling over not just the people at the bottom, but even those in the middle. This just seems like common sense, since you can only depress wages against the workers as the bottom for so long before they spread to other sectors of the population. Anyone at all familiar with Marxism is also aware of the shrinking middle class as a feature of capitalism.

Another gem is from a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, "The administration is saying the only reason people are not sharing in the recovery is they don't have the right skills." People on the ground know this is a lie, but it is nice to see the statistics bear it out.

Of course, the article then blames outsourcing overseas. These are great emotional statements that work to stir people up against the wrong problem (most analysis of this issue are anecdotal and miss many aspects of the problem). The article does hint at part of the real problem, that corporations work to push more and more work on people and more of it down onto lower wage and skill categories. This is precisely one reason why a shrinking middle class is inevitable under this economic system.

The other issue they touch on is the notion of an "over-educated" population. This is such a wonderful condemnation of our society ... the notion that we might be over-educated. Our society is so bankrupt that it cannot use people's intellectual capacity, and in fact sees it as a burden. We have the greatest productive capacity in history and face innumerable problems that might be solved if people actually had the time and resources to work on them, yet "we" are over-educated. It certainly gives some additional insight into our deteriorating school system.