Monday, December 13, 2010

Our shrinking middle class

A really good piece about the shrinking middle class in our country..........

The unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher is 5 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1990s again.

But college graduates are only 30 percent of the country. For the rest of the population, the jobs picture is grimmer. For people without a high-school degree, the unemployment rate is more than 15 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1930s again.

The unemployment rates are part of a growing divergence between the fortunes of the college educated and the rest of the country, including proverbial Middle America. In his new study, “When Marriage Disappears,” University of Virginia scholar Brad Wilcox details how the college-educated have embraced traditional mores and habits — especially the formation of stable families — while they erode among everyone else.

Our elites, broadly defined as the top third of our society, aren’t nearly as decadent as advertised. According to Wilcox’s data, the highly educated (with a college diploma or higher) are less likely to divorce, less likely to have children out of wedlock, and less likely to commit adultery than the moderately educated (high-school degree or some college) and the least-educated (no high-school diploma).


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is the new economy that people have been warned about for the last 30 years. You need an education and a stable lifestyle to thrive. For years social programs have subsidized unstable lifestyles so we have gotten more people practicing it. Unions in their quest to protect low skilled workers have done a good job of limiting people's skills growth. Minimum wage has priced those few remaining willing and able low skilled workers out of the market.

Nothing is different, except that this rotten economy has exposed an existing weakness in the national labor pool: an entire sector that cannot survive on the wages they are worth. Unlike the past, this time the jobs that are gone, are gone for good. Wherever possible, jobs are being outsourced. Manufacturing, Gone. Call centers. Gone. Only the low skilled jobs that have to be done here will be done here. Buyer flippers, grocery baggers, walmart greeters, etc. These are not essential jobs though.

Liberals had the chance to make a difference. They could have taught Johnny how to do math and read in public schools. But instead the number one thing was to teach him how to be a permanent victim of the system and to vote for democrats.

I'm a college grad with a technical skill. I have no problem finding work. I'm conservative. So let me be step out of character for a second and be the stereotypical selfish cold hearted republican that the left want us to be....In the interest of only looking for policies that benefit me at the expense of the little guy, let me implore liberals everywhere to keep doing what you are doing. Keep subsidizing the poor lyfestyle lchoices and sociology-economic behaviors that keep unemployment high for the low skilled people. And keep up the policy of allowing millions of cheap, undocumented unskilled workers flood across the borders. These policies ensure that there will be a glut of people here that will clean bathrooms for peanuts and flip burgers for scraps. Yes that means many low skilled unemployed, but that's the burden I'm willing to bear to keep my big mac under $2.00.

Now sarcasm is back off. We don't want that for America. If conservatives wanted to keep the little guy down, we wouldn't put up a fight. We see that the little guy is already down, and to keep doing what we are doing. But instead we want the little guy to participate in the same prosperity that we have. But it will involve giving up the hope that a government is going to lead you to that prosperity.