In the political world there are two major standpoints, either right or left. Either side has its own views about everything from job creation to how rich or poor Americans are at the current time. The right tends to argue that the American people are gaining momentum when it comes to climbing the rungs of the ladder to more wealth while the left sees the opposite view and the American people are slipping further down hill becoming poorer and poorer. Two men from opposite sides of the isle stand off in this critical debate, whether or not the middle class is disappearing or on the rise. Steven Pearlstein is a conservative business columnist for the Washington Post. Jared Berstein writes from The American Prospective and leans more …show more content…
Finally, Pearlstein uses a lot of numbers from Rose, but the way he explains how the Great American Jobs Machine is actually producing a lot of well paying jobs is significant (Pearlstein, 2007). Breaking it up into three groups and then showing that the less skilled jobs are actually on the decline was brilliant on his part because people do focus on job creation. Those are some of the strong argument Steven Pearlstein makes. However, while Pearlstein’s argument had its strong points it also had quite a few weak points. For instance, as was stated above he discusses how the typical American family’s income is actually $63,000 and not $44,500 by getting rid of everything below 29 and above 59, but he does not state what to do with the rest of the people he just excluded (Pearlstein, 2007). Are those individuals now non-traditional American families? Is there an entirely new category of people left out of the prime age for workers? He does not touch on that at all. Another point Pearlstein brings up is that the liberal’s tout a story that middle class families can no longer maintain their standard of living and have to send moms out into the workforce to make money instead of raising their children (Pearlstein, 2007). He never fully develops this point because he goes on to show information from married couples. He does not show how middle class families are not having to put mom out in the workforce. It is a
During the past couple of decades, the decline in the middle class has been associated to the political agenda of the Republican Party. By ending governmental subsidies and other programs created to build the middle class, has ultimately ceased the growth. However, realizing the importance of the middle class to our fragile economic platform, the Democratic and Independent political parties are desperately trying to create and revamp the middle class
In other words, America has a widening gap between its wealthy and poor. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, there is a problem emerging: the disappearance of the middle class. Low-wage workers continue to fall behind those who make higher wages, and this only widens the gap between the two. There has been an economic boom in the United States, which has made the country more prosperous than it has ever been. That prosperity does not reach all people; it seems to only favor the rich. Rising economic segregation has taken away many opportunities for the poor to rise in America today. The poor may find that the economic boom has increased their income; however, as their income increase so does the prices they must for their living expenses (Dreier, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom 19).
The media especially enjoys reducing the severity of the class disparity by pushing the idea that the majority falls within the middle class. Not only does entertainment follow a typical middle-class protagonists format but the news also allots middle class politics the most screen time. However, the middle class is actually shrinking indefinitely but this rising development continues to be ignored.
In Edward McClelland’s essay “RIP, the Middle Class: 1946-2013,” McClelland discusses to his audience that the middle class is slowly vanishing and soon enough we will only be left with the rich and the poor. Throughout the essay, McClelland uses various examples to demonstrate how the middle class will no longer exist. McClelland talks about how education is vital for pursuing a job at a reasonable pay that a person can live off of. Before, people were able to leave high school and go straight into a job with a pay that could support them. Nowadays, the same jobs that were supporting people before require a lot more education and still aren’t giving enough money that will allow them to live comfortably. Even though there are still jobs people can thrive at that will make more money without a serious education , the middle class is struggling to make it economically, because it is harder to find a job without education and financially it’s harder to make ends meet.
The article I found describes the issue that the middle class in America is no longer the world’s richest, and compares this issue with other advanced countries. It states that in recent years, middle class families in America were receiving meager raised income than counterparts were around the world, and most of American families were receiving unequally income. Those income data were analyzed by LIS, a group that maintains the Luxembourg Income Study Databases, and by The Upshot, a New York Times website covering policy and politics, and also reviewed by outside-academic economists. The United States used to be a leader of after-tax middle-class income country among all the developed states, but now the other countries,
In the reading of Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up, it is very true about the findings about the middle class. Honestly, 35,000 to 100,000 in today’s money are a huge gap differences. This is where now they started calling some individuals upper middle class. The article also, does a great job talking about Social Security. When was brings in Social Security, can a individual who was making 700 every week at Shoprite (which is middle class), at age 64, then retire a 66, and collect Social Security, and only get a paycheck for 600 every week, did they just get moved to lower class? In the reading The Shrinking American Middle Class says age is a big factor, as well as race, family status, and education.
Bonvillian’s primary argument is that Donald Trump’s strongest supporter demographic leans toward white, male, poor and lack of college education. These are the types of people that in the past would get a job in manufacturing straight out of high school that provided a living wage to support a family on. Today; however, with our globalized market and liberal trade policies, those manufacturing jobs are in very short supply. This is the foundation of Bonvillan’s secondary argument. Americans for many years now bought into the belief
In the Middle Class it states, “54 million Americans households earning roughly between $20,000 and $40,000 for a family of four” (Colombo, Cullen, and Lisa 352). This signifies how there are more people in the poor working class rather than the middle class. The importance of this is how there are more, poor working
In Robert Reich documentary “Inequality for All” he makes a compelling discussion about the serious crises that the United States faces due the widening economic gap. He looks to raise awareness of the U.S. economic gap between the rich and poor. According to Reich the widening divide in America is real and growing. Income levels at the middle and labor class is stagnant and are at it’s lowest levels compared to upper class incomes since the beginning of WWII and is growing wider each year. Reich suggests that the economy runs more smoothly when the middle class has jobs with fair wages, when unions are strong, and when middle class workers have some extra money to spend if possible when the government uses the tax policy properly and when it raises the minimum wage regularly to control the income gap between labor and management. In other words Reich argues that economically healthy middle and labor class equality is the foundation of a thriving economy and is necessary to maintaining a sound national infrastructure and educational system within
Debt in America now has grown to be at the highest it has been compared to the decades before. People now spend tremendous about of money now then they have many years prior. Many people today have borrowed money that they can not seem to pay back, which debt begins to accumulate and may cause distress in many lives. Basically now there is no one preserving their own money, they’re are just spending their hard earned money. Elizabeth Warren, formerly a U.S. senator and also a teacher, addresses the middle class in her essay called “the vanishing middle class”. There are abundant of good ideas that she states in her essay. Elizabeth Warren is very effective in her argument because of three concepts that stand out the most were having high incomes but at a price, savings and debt, how different we use our money now compared with how we have in the past.
This “middle-class nation” is struggling to support all those who live in its borders and the misconceptions about wealth are vastly overrated. Furthermore, the idea of wealth and stability is incorrect, and there is a very sharp contrast between the rich and poor in the country. As the richest twenty percent of American hold ninety percent of the total household of the total household wealth in the country, those at the bottom have managed very poorly and suffer to get through the days.
According to McClelland the middle class is starting to look like a “fluke” while the upper class keeps advancing, economically, and he supports his argument by starting off his article with a personal anecdote which coincides with the statistics he has provided showing the change since those times.
The middle class is currently under attack due to changes in the sheer size of the middle class and number of manufacturing costs the middle class is shrinking. According to (Marvin 4) in the last two decades the amount of service jobs was around 18-20 million during the same 20 year period it went from 74 to 114 million people in service jobs. This is due to three things according to (Marvin 4) “ (1) Stagnating or declining real wages; (2) disproportionate growth in low-wage jobs; and (3) a decline in jobs that pay middle-class wages.” This amount of people going from high paying jobs to these low-income service jobs is clearly an issue. With so many companies sending the manufacturing overseas this is creating a lower demand for manufacturing jobs in the United States. The middle class is being flushed out sticky
Over the past few decades, the “American Dream” vision has been quickly vanishing as a result of the increasing troubles and weakening of the middle class. It has lost the view of being the most successful and wealthy middle class in the world, while the middle classes in other countries are excelling in earning higher middle and lower class incomes. The issue of the declining wealth of the middle class explains a huge problem in the United States’ future prosperity and well being for the citizens and the country. There are many issues that affect the success of the middle and lower classes, such as structural differences in the economy, culture, and government. The gap between the middle and high classes is increasing specifically. The United States has the image of giving people life and prosperity, but inequality is increasing significantly due to issues in education, decrease in taxation among the upper class, and decrease of middle class power in the democracy, while other ideas and mechanisms can be take from other nations.
Leonhardt, in his article generally talks about how the rich get richer either by not paying as high of taxes or finding loopholes. Along with the gap between rich and poor people is getting wider as well as the rich are owning more and more resources in our current economy. McClelland’s article talks about the factors that contributed to the contraction of the middle class in the U.S. The 70s saw the rapid increase of the country's middle class (specifically the blue collar middle class), with plenty of jobs and economic setting that creates employment possibilities. It is disputed that the decrease or diminish of the middle class produced the collapsing of the government system of