One of my friends text messaged me this morning "Lowry is good today." Indeed, today Rick Lowry's column is all about the decline of marriage in the US middle class. It makes for an interesting read, but reminds me of a piece I wrote a few months ago:
A Google search of the phrase “American middle class” brings you to a .gov website about the “Middle Class Task Force” that displays a quote from Vice President Joe Biden, director of the initiative. This is perhaps the most blatant sign that the U.S. middle class is doomed.
Confidence in Joe Biden aside, there was a recent article in Business Insider that gave me twenty-two more reasons to grow nervous for the comfort of my fellow Americans. After all, the middle class in any country is at the forefront of consumption and leads business trends.
The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
21 percent of all children in the US are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income. This is a nice contrast to the forty-seven percent of this country that does not even qualify to pay a federal income tax.
Dan Mitchell of CATO believes that things will only get worse for the middle class. “[Politicians] that want to tax the middle class hope to soften opposition among ordinary people by first punishing society’s most productive people. We already know that tax rates on the so-called rich will jump next January thanks to higher income tax rates, higher capital gains tax rates, more double taxation of dividends, and higher death taxes. Now the politicians are preparing to drop the other shoe.” Particularly since there are not enough rich people to finance big government.
one question; how many of those kids that live below the poverty line are doing so as a result of divorce?
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