Comentario de Socialismo o
Barbarie: Este texto cae en la frecuente (y nada
inocente) confusión de referirse a la clase obrera y
trabajadora como “clase media”. Sin embargo, teniendo en
cuenta eso, es muy útil para medir el colapso social y del
nivel de vida sufrido por las masas estadounidenses. Este
proceso no comenzó con la actual crisis: viene de lejos.
Pero ahora crece a saltos.
The 22
statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow
of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically
wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting
richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate.
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 blinding pace. So why are we
witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and
"free trade" that our politicians and business
leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some
rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't
tell us that the "global economy" would mean that
middle class American workers would eventually have to
directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of
the world where there is no minimum wage and very few
regulations. The big global corporations have greatly
benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the
last several decades, but middle class American workers have
increasingly found things to be very tough. The reality is
that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how
hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete
with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days
at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world.
After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to
pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do
the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth
and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and
the big global corporations are making massive amounts of
money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being
systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are
slowly being merged into the new "global" labor
pool.
What do most
Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their
labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are
absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But
today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than
ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers
are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing
more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that
makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the
United States.
So corporations
are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed.
Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing
so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
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 6
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 following
are 22 statistics that prove that the rich are getting much
richer and the poor are getting much poorer in America....
#1) According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of
Americans "always or usually" live paycheck
to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43
percent in 2007.
#2) The number
of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose
by about 15% between 2000
and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were
earning less than $10 per hour.
#3) According
to Harvard Magazine, 66% of the
income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of
all Americans.
#4) According
to that same poll, 36 percent of Americans say that they
don't contribute anything to retirement
savings.
#5) A
staggering 43
percent of Americans have less than
$10,000 saved up for retirement.
#6) According
to one new survey, 24% of American workers say that
they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
#7) Over 1.4
million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009,
which represented a
32 percent increase over 2008.
#8) Only
the top 5 percent of U.S.
households have earned enough additional income to match the
rise in housing costs since 1975.
#9) 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.
#10) 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.
#11) One
study found that as
of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held
about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
#12) The bottom
40 percent of income earners in the United States now
collectively own
less than 1 percent of the nation’s
wealth.
#13) Average
Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were
up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
#14) In the
United States, the average federal worker now
earns about twice as much as the average
worker in the private sector.
#15) An
analysis of income tax data by the Congressional Budget
Office found that the top 1% of U.S. households own nearly
twice as much of America's
corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
#16) In America
today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to
a record 35.2 weeks.
#17) More
than 40% of Americans
who actually are employed are now working in
service jobs, which are often very low paying.
#18) For 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.
#19) 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.
#20) Despite
the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the
United States rose
a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million
in 2009.
#21) According
to one new study, approximately 21 percent of all children
in the United States are
living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
#22) According to Professor Emmanuel Saez of the
University of California at Berkeley, the gap between what
the top 10 percent of Americans earn per year and what the
rest of us earn has been widening sharply for the last 30
years. His measurements show that the top 10% percent of
Americans now take in approximately 50% of the income.