The Business Insider released data showing how the middle class is gradually disappearing in America.
Why is this happening? According to The Business Insider it is due to globalism, and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects.
What is globalism? Globalism can have at least two different and opposing meanings. One meaning is the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations. Another is viewing the entire world as a proper sphere for one nation to project political influence. In this case, basically the U.S. imposes their political beliefs & business interest around the world for individual interest without any barriers interfering. Globalism seeks to undermine the economic and political prosperity of developing nations by making them dependent on First World corporations for profit and stability. Sounds familiar? Some people view it as a modern form of colonization.
It turns out that eventually in a "global economy" middle class American workers would compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage. As a lot of you might already know, many global corporations make billions of dollars by exploiting third world labor workers, while middle class American workers struggle to survive & make a decent living in a shifting economy.
Below see some shocking statistics provided by The Business Reader which proves this phenomenon :
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Check out these sites to finf more info about globalism and groups that oppose it
http://www.theglobalist.com/about/index.shtml
http://www.globalization101.org/
http://id-id.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228195114
http://www.zazzle.com/globalization+bags
