How Middle Class Decline Helped Fuel the Rise of Donald Trump


Susanne.Posel-Headline.News.Official- donald.trump.middle.class.01_occupycorporatismSusanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Co-Founder, Legacy Bio-Naturals
December 28, 2015

The American middle class is no longer the majority in the US, according to the Pew Research Center (PRC).

Rakesh Kochhar, lead author of the PRC study commented: “The fabric of income distribution is stretching thin. There’s been a hollowing out in the middle, a bulking up on the edges. The gaps are at record highs.”

Kochar continued: “The wealth of upper-income families is now about seven times that of the middle class, compared with three times about 30 years ago.”

For those following the work of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1980s is nothing new.

The PRC study used income instead of class; finding that 120.8 million adults made up the middle-income households for 2015. For those in lower or upper income brackets, the total was 121.3 million.

In reality, when talking about the destruction of the middle class, we’re talking about 500,000 Americans that make up the difference between middle class and everyone else.

Because the division number is so small, the share of middle-class income has risen by 9%. According to the PRC, this is “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point.”

In other words, the current middle class is on an upswing with members moving up the financial chain.

PRC explained: “As the middle-income population hovers near minority status, the population of upper-income adults is growing more rapidly than the population of lower-income adults. From 1971 to 2015, the number of adults in upper-income households increased from 18.4 million to 51 million, a gain of 177 percent. During the same period, the number of adults in lower-income households increased from 33.2 million to 70.3 million, a gain of 112 percent.”

The causes for the decline of the American middle class are many:

• Decades of wage stagnation
• Decline of workers unions
• Uneducated and skilled workers
• Economic downturn
• Taxes
• Debt
• Policymaking
• Technological efficiency
• Quantitative easing

And because of the overall decline of the middle class in America, there is acceptance of radical change.

Journalist Dan Balz put it this way: “For anyone trying to understand the emergence of Donald Trump as a force in this pre-election year, the Pew Research Center this past week provided some valuable insight. There’s little doubt that what has happened to America’s middle class has helped to create the climate that has fueled Trump’s sudden rise.”





Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OccupyCorporatism/~3/aQC6JiKbTc8/

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes