{"id":137816,"date":"2014-08-20T21:09:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T21:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137816"},"modified":"2014-08-20T21:09:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T21:09:27","slug":"30-stats-show-anyone-believe-middle-class-destroyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/money\/30-stats-show-anyone-believe-middle-class-destroyed\/","title":{"rendered":"30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Snyder\u00a0<\/em>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace. Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.<\/p>\n

But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate. Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working\u00a0has gone way down<\/a>, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously. \u00a0Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline\u00a0for five years in a row<\/a>, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high. Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs. We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing. The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?<\/p>\n

And in this economy, you don’t even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class. Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly.\u00a0\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0calls this “the no-raises recovery”…<\/p>\n

Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.<\/p>\n

Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are so many families out there that are struggling right now. So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don’t even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions. Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class. And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed\u00a0during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years<\/a>. Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.<\/p>\n

The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed…<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong>\u00a0In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall. But now the average household in the top 5 percent has\u00a024 times as much wealth<\/a>\u00a0as the average household overall.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong>\u00a0According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth\u00a036 percent less<\/a>\u00a0than it was worth a decade ago.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong>\u00a0One out of every seven Americans<\/a>\u00a0rely on food banks at this point.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong>\u00a0One out of every four military families<\/a>\u00a0needs help putting enough food on the table.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong>\u00a079 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the people that use food banks purchase “inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families”.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong>\u00a0One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong>\u00a0Only\u00a048 percent<\/a>\u00a0of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong>\u00a0The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families. For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high\u00a0of $3.884 a pound<\/a>.<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong>\u00a0According to one recent study,\u00a040 percent<\/a>\u00a0of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.<\/p>\n

10.<\/strong>\u00a0The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level\u00a0since 1995<\/a>.<\/p>\n

11.<\/strong>\u00a0The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at\u00a0an all-time low<\/a>.<\/p>\n

12.<\/strong>\u00a0According to one recent survey,\u00a052 percent<\/a>\u00a0of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.<\/p>\n

13.<\/strong>\u00a0The average age of vehicles on America\u2019s roads has hit an all-time high of\u00a011.4 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

14.<\/strong>\u00a0Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made\u00a0to someone with subprime credit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

15.<\/strong>\u00a0Amazingly,\u00a0one out of every six men<\/a>\u00a0in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.<\/p>\n

16.<\/strong>\u00a0One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have \u201ccompletely given up<\/a>\u201d looking for a job.<\/p>\n

17.<\/strong>\u00a036 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.<\/p>\n

18.<\/strong>\u00a0According to one survey,\u00a076 percent<\/a>\u00a0of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.<\/p>\n

19.<\/strong>\u00a0More than half of all working Americans\u00a0make less than $30,000 a year<\/a>\u00a0in wages.<\/p>\n

20.<\/strong>\u00a0Only four<\/a>\u00a0of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor\u2019s degree or better.<\/p>\n

21.<\/strong> In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled\u00a0by a temp agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

22.<\/strong>\u00a0Due to a lack of decent jobs,\u00a0half of all college graduates<\/a>\u00a0are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.<\/p>\n

23.<\/strong>\u00a0Median household income in the United States is\u00a0about 7 percent lower<\/a>\u00a0than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.<\/p>\n

24.<\/strong>\u00a0Approximately\u00a0one out of every four<\/a>\u00a0part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

25.<\/strong>\u00a0It is hard to believe, but\u00a0more than one out of every five children<\/a>\u00a0in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.<\/p>\n

26.<\/strong>\u00a0According to one study, there are\u00a049 million Americans<\/a>\u00a0that are dealing with food insecurity.<\/p>\n

27.<\/strong>\u00a0Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps\u00a0actually exceeds<\/a>\u00a0the number of women that have jobs.<\/p>\n

28.<\/strong>\u00a0If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn\u2019t have\u00a0more than a million public school children<\/a>\u00a0that are homeless.<\/p>\n

29.<\/strong>\u00a0If you can believe it, Americans received\u00a0more than 2 trillion dollars<\/a>\u00a0in benefits from the federal government last year alone.<\/p>\n

30.<\/strong>\u00a0In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now\u00a0in just 19th place<\/a>\u00a0in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Snyder\u00a0 RINF Alternative News The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1216,"featured_media":137817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,52],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-money"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}