Do you want to know why it seems like good jobs are very rare in the United States today? It is because good jobs are very rare in the United States today. According to a paper that was just released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all American jobs qualified as “good jobs” in 2010. Over the past several decades, there has been increasing pressure on corporations to reduce expenses and increase corporate profits. One of the biggest expenses that any corporation faces is labor. Large corporations all over the globe are in an endless race to gain a competitive advantage by pushing labor costs as low as possible. Sometimes this is done by using technology. Computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology have eliminated millions of jobs in the United States and those jobs are never coming back. Millions of other jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. In our globalized economy, American workers have been merged into one giant labor pool with everyone else. That makes it very tempting for big corporations to move jobs from areas where workers are very expensive (such as the United States) to areas of the world where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. When big corporations do this, corporate profits go up, but the number of good jobs in the United States goes down. As a result, there is increased competition for the jobs that remain in the United States and this drives down wages. Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up. So millions of American families have fallen into poverty in recent years, and millions of others have gone deep into debt in an attempt to survive. This dynamic is absolutely shredding the middle class in the United States. (Read More...)
Deep Into Debt
22 Statistics That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed
The American Dream is being systematically destroyed right in front of our eyes and most Americans don’t even realize what is happening. In the old days, if you were a hard worker and you played by the rules you could always find a good job. That good job would enable you to buy a house, buy at least one car and support a family. It would also enable you to take a couple of vacations each year and buy some nice things for your family. After working for 30 or 40 years you would look forward to a comfortable retirement. But these days fewer and fewer Americans are able to enjoy the American Dream. 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 breathtaking pace. Our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for all of us anymore, and an increasing percentage of the jobs that are being produced pay 10 dollars an hour or less. The cost of living continues to rise steadily every single year while wages do not. Close to half of all American workers are living month to month, and many American families have gone deep into debt as they struggle to pay the bills. Millions more Americans are falling into poverty each year and dependence on the government is at an all-time high. Something is fundamentally wrong with our economy. It is not working the way that it used to, and the middle class is being absolutely shredded. Most American families are finding it harder and harder to make it through each passing year, and unless a miracle happens things are going to continue to get even harder. (Read More...)