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US Economic Schism Growing
There is a fast widening split in the US economically, it's in the middle of what is loosely termed "middle class" and obviously the split and hurt is being felt more at the low end. Recent minor minimum wage hikes aren't even close to addressing real world price hikes for most everything, and the situation is getting dire for a lot of people as they are forced to not choose between necessities and luxuries, but just between necessities. According to the article, a lot of those folks at that end still have hope for the future, but that is easy enough to see how that is possible, hope by itself costs $0 and still won't pay bill one.
For many low-wage workers, financial struggles persist and anxiety is high even when the economy is humming. Most of them occupy an uneasy and often overlooked place on the nation's economic spectrum, hovering above poverty but still grasping for the relative comfort of the middle class. ed.z.: you can throw all the numbers in terms of dollars at any situation you want, but bottom line is, at minimum rage levels and a little above, the subject of the above article, you are trading hours of labor for other goods and services. And I contend, when you look at it that way, that globalization for a lot of people in the US has been an outright disaster. I've mused on this before and offer a general perspective from back when we didn't have near as much fast globalization and the US was still a manufacturing -wealth production- powerhouse for all goods, not just a few goods. We still produced wealth then in the real sense, we weren't "in debt", we had general savings, etc, totally different now. The US made everything, from sneakers to moon rockets, televisions to every piece of furniture and appliance in the house, almost all the clothes people wore, made here, and so on. all of the above.
Then and now. Minimum wage=one hour labor for this example. Then- 4-5 gallons gasoline per hour worked, now 1.5 gallons. Bread on sale, 5 loaves for one hour, now 2 loaves. Hamburger or chopped meat 5 lbs per hour worked, now 2.5 lbs. A brand new normal non exotic car was around 1500-1800 hours labor, now 2500-2800. And similar for all other ancillary costs, heating, your electric bill, medical insurance (that is way high now, absolutely no comparison, it used to be more or less ridiculous cheap for coverage, very few jobs didn't have at least a medical plan with them, even part time jobs had it at subsidy). I am just not seeing the advantages at all. I worked at minimum rage back then and could afford an apartment that was decent, a good enough used car, all the good food I could eat plus a few restaurant meals a week, entertainment, mild travel and vacation, some savings, and so on, on a *minimum wage* pay scale. Anything above that, say an entry level union manufacturing job or construction job, that was plenty of cash. No want for anything. No worries.
I can technically understand the *theory* of globalization, that is easy enough, but am not seeing the actual "in practice" advantages from a US low end perspective (which is how I relate to this article). I can get lead based toys and dogfood at walmart cheaper? Oh goody... now, to be fair, a few things are definitely cheaper no matter what, computers at the top of the list, they didn't even exist for joe sixpack back then, and the breakup of ma bell giving us at least some reasonable affordable time to talk to friends and relatives long distance. But that had nothing to do with globalization either, just they wanted to stave off outright revolt over it once it became apparent that tech advances had made their pricing models and monopoly status completely unacceptable. The TV show Laugh In probably had as much to do with that as anything, just shamed them so much and it was so obvious and all.
Most everything else though...not seeing any advantage, just pseudo wealth numbers they trot out on cue based on illusionary credit IOUs for the future generations to deal with, they go way out of their way to equate credit with produced wealth and call that a good economy. Well, no, it isn't. It is a slick way to separate wealth from huge numbers of people and get it into the hands of a smaller number of people, but just creating a thousand new forms of IOUs is not wealth production. And according to that article and a slew of others, a LOT of people are sliding downhill into that economic range and fast, and once below that point it is one paycheck from poverty out on the street. I don't know what is going to give first, but something is.