No one wants to be at the bottom. Few want to stick out at the top. It's easy then for most to claim the badge of honor known as the middle class.
WITHERING MIDDLE CLASS
So what is the middle class? Well, according to a public opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, between January 15 and 19 of 2014, only 44% of Americans view themselves as middle class. Back in 2008, 53% of Americans believed they were middle class.
As I showed in PARTY OVER OOPS OUT OF TIME. YOU SHOULD HAVE PARTIED LIKE IT WAS 1999, for the American who earns the average full-time wage ($21.31 an hour in 2012), it takes longer for her or him to earn enough to buy stuff than it did in for the average full-time wage earner of 1999 ($14.65 an hour).
And while the living standard in general has improved much over the American worker of 1980 earning the average full-time wage ($6.02), the living standard for working Americans has plummeted since 1999. In short, prices of many things have risen much faster than wages — hamburger beef, chicken, eggs, oranges, heating oil.
For some items such as gasoline, a mainstay of spending for most Americans, it takes 24% more minutes for a worker today than a worker all the way back in 1980 to earn enough for one gallon of gasoline! It even takes more years to earn enough for the averaged priced house than it did for the average wage American in 1980.
Prices relative to wages have gotten so far out of hand to buy a college education that an American worker today must work 129% more hours than her 1980 counterpart for the same four-year college degree sold by a public college or university.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
Rightfully, most blame Senators and House members of the U.S. Congress as well as bankers for the decline in living standard of Americans. After all, members of Congress are the men and women who devise all the rules under which you live.
Members of Congress establish all of the regulation to stifle competition, thus protecting some who are entrenched with power.
Politicians and their Agent Smiths who inject themselves into the process cause dislocation in resources and products creation. Retrogression happens.
As I explained in IT'S ALWAYS CRONY POLITICS, CRONY GOVERNANCE AND CRONY REGULATORY CAPTURE, there is one great, infrangible law that girds under the whole of trade — the Law of Prices. There is one great axiom that goes along with the great law — the Axiom of Profit.
The Law of Prices holds the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of offers set the price. The Axiom of Profit holds the sum of sales must at least equal the cost of production otherwise the producer goes to ruin.
When politicians subvert the Law of Prices and Axiom of Profit for interested parties, politicians violate the rights inherent in each individual.
If politicians subsidize producers, politicians let inefficient producers operate, producers who would otherwise go to ruin at the prices set by winning bidders.
If politicians give cash and credit to consumers, prices get buttressed higher than otherwise would be. That either yields unearned profits for producers or pushes prices high enough for inefficient producers to break even.
Crony Politics determine whether or not unearned profits can get gained or whether a producer can stay in production, inefficiently producing what not enough winning bidders would be willing to pay to acquire absent intervention.
As I revealed in GREEDY CAPITALIST COMPLAINS ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE EXPENSE AND QUITS HIS BUSINESS, no one would work at a loss (wages - living expenses). Absent subsidies, market forces would force employers to pay more. In short, minimum wage hurts the poor and subsidizes firms who employ minimum wage workers.
As I explained in THE GREEDY ARE THE ONLY PROBLEM THE WHOLE EARTH OVER, greedy welfare takers push prices higher as they increase winning bids for products. Without greedy welfare takers, prices would plummet and even the poor could afford food, rent, clothing.
As I explained in REAPING DAY APPROACHES. THE REAPER COMES TO REAP YOU. ANOTHER TAX DAY IN AMERICA COMES, wage earners get shafted because they lack deduction on their capital. Wage earners cannot write off legitimate expenses such as food, which is energy for the mind and for the body; clothing and rent, which are shelters for the body and mind; transport, which is how wage earners bring to market (their workplaces) their wealth for sale (their work); medicine, which is how wage earners restore damaged bodies and minds; fitness, which is how wage earners educate their bodies; and skills acquisition, which is how wage earners educate their bodies and minds.
All taxpayers, who cannot shift their otherwise compulsory tax burdens upon others, subsidize the capital of incorporated firms since the rules of law let enterprise-adventurers write off capital, sometimes as direct expenses and sometimes as depreciation expenses. In short, for incorporated firms, any profits earned get earned on eventually free-to-them capital.
AND NOW, THE REAL MEANING OF MIDDLE CLASS
You need to know what is the top and the bottom so that you can know the middle.
The bottom class consists of those who earn 100% of their income from labor or who are given up to 100% of their living from welfare and who rent their living space.
The top class consists of those who earn at least 100% of their income from investments and who are free-and-clear title owners to an improved parcel, which is land with a house upon it.
The middle class then consists of those who earn at least 51% of their income from investment and who are free-and-clear title owners to an improved parcel.
Those who owe someone for a mortgage are not middle class. While they control property in a deed and thus can sell their improved parcels, they must reconcile any encumbrances first. As such, they are agents, merely for those who hold title to improved parcels.
All other ways to define middle class amount to b.s.-ing, self-deceit, or academia indoctrination lacking any basis in property and profit.
As I explained WHY IS THE ECONOMY SO HORRIBLE? BECAUSE ACADEMIA ECONOMICS IS FAKE, the entirety of trade, or commerce, or real economics ties up with two words — property and profit. Without profit from effort, anyone would lack buying power to buy anything else. Without property, no one can trade.
Any explanation of the commercial phenomena of life that fails to have at is bedrock, property and profit can only be either expression of stupidity or a lie.
Gab It
