The Vanishing Middle Class

I was a child of the nineteen fifties. Families that went off to war were regrouping. Those that stayed behind to produce the materiel that was needed to wage war were adjusting to a peace time society. The people that went to work in factories right out of high school were talking about college for their offspring. Hope was springing eternal.

With all of the GIs coming back home it was a consumer economy. People didn't want to live in walk up flats any more. They wanted to be homeowners. And they deserved to be. They paid their dues. Starter homes shot up everywhere. They were generally little five room ranches or four room capes. They were small but affordable and sold like penny candy. Owners were no longer subject to the whims of a landlord. They were HOMEOWNERS.

Each and every one of these houses needed a stove, a refrigerator, washer dryer, furniture. The economy boomed. Those old pre-war cars needed to be replaced. The new cars were big and comfortable. They were painted in bright two-toned colors. Life was good. Business boomed. Anyone who wanted work got a job. Jobs started paying better. All of a sudden we had a middle class.

Most of the work was still in factories because we had to make all the things that were being sold. "Made in America" was a guarantee that you were buying a quality product. Salaries went up. The best and the brightest got promoted. And their kids did go off to college. They became teachers and engineers and doctors. And we, as a country, stopped encouraging manufacturing. We could do the brainwork and pass off the dirty parts of the job to others.

That worked for a while. After all you can make more money with your brain than your hands. Maybe! But we had a real middle class. You could tell because most people took their showers before work rather than after. That went well for over three decades. Then we had the dot com bubble and the housing bubble twice. Now we're being set up for the Bernanke bubble.

Much of that middle class money evaporated. Many of those really great jobs disappeared. While taxpayers suffered, banks and unions were bailed out. Net worth went down. Prices went up. Fuel alone doubled. Unemployment went up to the point where people were falling off the back end of the unemployment numbers because they were no longer counted. Salaries dropped by over ten percent.

With the increase in the cost of health care and a continuous surge in government regulations, is it possible for a strong middle class to survive? Not without the recognition, by government, that the ship is sailing down a whirlpool. We have a President that cares only for his own agenda. Either he does not recognize the harm he is doing or he doesn't care.
I don't know which but I don't care. But I know it must stop or we will be generations in recovery.