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I think that instead of blaming anyone for most ...

Posted: Feb 8, 2015

American's becoming poorer over the past several years we should be asking "who benefits most from the gradual elimination of the middle class?"

;

Okay, you go first. - sm

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What's your answer?

That's easy. Wall Street and big corporations. - Most to gain, little to lose by

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eliminating the middle class entirely.

Really? Who's going to buy all the BS they're selling then? - It hurts the rich too

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x

You can't possibly be serious, can you? - If you are, youve been snowed.

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nm

What I'm referring to are the actual goods rich people have to sell. - DZ

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The rich don't need it, like, for instance, mortgages and the poor can't afford them. It's all those middle class that keep them rolling in the dough of all that interest.

We are being divided but not by president Obama. Those... - sm

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that have the most to gain know exactly which buttons to push to push us further and further apart. These are the real American terrorists.

We need poor ppl, more the better. 2 LONG! - IMANMT2

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This is very long. I'm sorry.

You have to have a poor class.

There are a few constants when you talk about an economy... any economy, whether it is a company, city, county, state, regional, national, world, and if we ever incorporate Mars, planetary. Economy is really just a fancy word for people. “Oh, the economy is JUST awful.” That means people are suffering, people are doing badly. The more widespread the suffering the worse the economy is doing.

* Money is finite. They usually don’t print more. There is a set amount floating around funding everybody and everything, or available to earn, steal, borrow, or be given (you can call it charity and welfare but don’t forget to include corporate welfare cause that has a real big price tag). Money is finite. There is X amount circulating. I know, repeating, but it’s worth repeating. It’s important to grasp. This concept is crucial.

* Money never goes up in smoke. Even if they are talking about an offshore savings account, losing it in the stock market, whatever. It doesn’t go up in smoke, it changes hands. Buy stock and have it devalue - they guy who sold it pocketed the money, the corporation that sold it the first time pocketed the money and kept it or handed it out. In any economy. You can use MT as an example, here, since we are all familiar with it. Some CEOs make 3 million a year, 2013, I think. I have the link somewhere. Anyway, CEO 3 million in one year (I’m pretty sure he doesn’t type) and the MTs make what, sometimes less than minimum wage and MTs have experienced pay cuts over the years while CEOs, sales, advertising, upper management have all gotten pay increases. It’s a shift. A diverting of the wealth in the corporate economy. Away from the workers? Yes

Think if of it as an equation. If the sum or answer is 7 then how you get that 7, by adding the little parts to come up with the whole, 7 is like all the $ in the economy. 3 + 4 = 7, 3.5 + 3.5 = 7, 2 + 5 = 7, 1 + 6 = 7. This is an example you can use decimals, too. 0.01 + 6.09 = 7. That’s kind of where we are at in MT, right? :D which is way sweet for the 6.09 ers.

Now the middle class, the shrinking middle class. Picture a diamond shape. Socioeconomic picture from the 70s, 80s, 90s. Poorest of the poor at the point on the bottom, richest of the rich at the point on the top. The middle class made up the middle which was the biggest part of the diamond shape. First outsourcing jobs overseas to cut costs started changing the shape, this is the middle class mostly. Lucky unskilled labor, skilled labor, and some college. This last crisis that hurt so many people really knocked a bunch out of the middle down into the poor where it’s more of a pyramid shape, now. And the money moves upwards to the top. The middle class used to catch a lot of that money and keep it. Not now. More of it moves up all the way up.

The poor spend 100% of what they earn. Nothing much stays with them. No 401K no savings no big purchases, just nominal subsistence living to get by and then it doesn’t pay all of the bills. Where does that money go? Upwards, ever upwards, up the pyramid to the top. Think Tupperware, Sarah Coventry Jewelry, Amway, May Kay Cosmetics, Celebrating Home and all the other things where you get housewives to have a party for the lady who gives the parties for the area manager who manages her for the district, regional and so on. My neighbor is always doing these It dawned on me when I did Celebrating Home with her and my daughter and I was working it to get the hostess discount and the free stuff and the half-priced stuff. I went from having a party to just a catalog party because I couldn’t get it together and had no interest just wanted the discounted stuff. I got a couple of outside orders but my daughter and I bought most of the stuff at 50% off (instead of 30%). Which the lady LOVED because she booked a different party in my time slot. She saw what my daughter and I were doing, and she was sharp, too. I had trouble keeping up with her math and I’m okay with math. She was fast. She had the stuff mailed to my daughter’s address cuz she’s in the country and it saved us on sales tax. So this lady thought I was a go-getter and could do math. And she tried to recruit me under her in her little pyramid - she thought I would want to rise and I would push her up the levels in front of me. Telling me I could earn so much $ and as a big earner I could go to Hawaii for free, etc. Sorry, I was busy as an MT and USED to make good money (I’m playing phone tag for an interview for a different job that I am going to jump on if we would just both stand still long enough to connect). So, no go but it got me to thinking. Because every layer in the pyramid gets their money from the bottom layer as it passes thru on the way up. (This is why trickle-down economics was such a joke.) That’s the layer that generates the $ and doesn’t keep it. And it all moves upwards to the top where most of it is concentrated, now. And how sweet for the top if EVERYONE would just go down and be in the bottom layer (the housewives generating the money from their friends or the little hostesses who give the parties or the very poorest of the working class working for minimum wage (or less if they can get by with it).

You have heard of the Koch brothers? Someone is always saying something about them and their Americans For Prosperity PAC. Well, our Walmart moved out past the river, out of town. To target more people. So, us townies, we don’t drive out there for a roll of toilet paper. We go to Family Dollar or Dollar General (that’s our choice because Wal-Mart years ago killed the competition in mom and pop dime stores and variety stores). I got an e-mail several years ago about the EVIL Koch brothers :). Okay. This e-mail wanted people to boycott them and not buy their products because of how they spend their money for what political gain. What I noticed was most of the stuff they sell .. they sell at Family Dollar and Dollar General. Where poor people shop. Angel Soft toilet paper... Koch brothers make and sell it. That’s poor people toilet paper. :D Brawny paper towels Scott, Georgia Pacific ... you name it. They make it and sell it. Not just hardware and farm stuff. I know something vague about them. The Kochs. They paid for lobbyists to lobby for Wal-Mart Corporation and I don’t know the details but something about the Wal-Mart workers lost at the end of that deal (and all other workers, too, since we all ride in the same boat). This helped me to understand better how the pyramid works and what the long-term goal might be.

Back to the ‘we need poor people.’ Money is finite. If we all made the same amount of money, first we’d be communists and we don’t want communism, we want capitalism. But if we all divided the wealth evenly there would be no poor. It’s when you divide it so there are people doing okay, people doing better, people doing good, people doing great, people doing outstanding, and some people making so much money you and I can’t really comprehend it. There has to be something on the other end to balance that and it is really, really poor people.

Welfare, food stamps, and other government assistance is what we came up with to help maintain that balance. It wasn’t to help poor people NOT be poor, but to make it easier for them to stay there. And the rich don’t pay the taxes that funds those programs ... the middle class and the working poor do. You need to get a breakdown on your state of what class pays the highest percent of taxes that runs your state. :D it will be single 15,000 to 20-something with the largest slice of the payment pie. With the class paying the very least the 250,000 and above group. :D Oklahoma’s was printed in the Nowata paper last week and I got a peek at it. This was based on last year’s or the year before’s revenue. So, our government does it to us, too.

Something else about poor people and the pyramid shape, they either buy from or work for (for at least minimum wage if they are lucky as we all know) the companies that the very wealthiest people (and sometimes the middle class thru pension plan investments) at the tip top either own outright or make their living by running hedge funds or investing in those companies and getting the dividends when the profits are good. That’s the bottom layer poor that I’m talking about. I really think that as much fat as they can trim off the intervening layers between the very poorest people and the very wealthiest is the end goal. And it looks like they are achieving it step by step. :) Think of the coal miners in the mountains way back when, working for the company, renting company houses, and buying their everything at the company store. They got paid but almost 100% of it found its way back to the company. And what if you could create a sub economy that would fund itself thru workers’ wages to goods and services they bought, and leave the wealth that that work generated free to go to the upper class? By selling to the workers or a different market if you could find one - say overseas. Either way would be gravy. By adding overseas it’s gravy on gravy.

You need to keep hating poor people and don’t care about them and don’t be concerned for them (I guess until you become one but then it won’t matter, it’s too late) because they do serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things. It’s balance. You can’t have classes of haves to whatever degree without having a class of have-nots. This is why they rail against raising minimum wage. They'd have to change their formula with every increase and it equates to their slice shrinking a little. They can do the math, they are hoping you cannot.

This is long and I’m so sorry. There will be some who don’t understand what I’ve said. Tried to keep it very simple and not skip any steps. Sorry it's long.

All minimum wage MTs should read this - We deserve better

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I guess we serve our purpose in the grand scheme, eh? Thank you for putting our collective consciousness into words. We all know this, but it becomes difficult to articulate with so many distractions; i.e. the war on Christmas, the racial divide, the latest media scandal, Benghazi, etc. Oh, and there is a sale at Walmart I have to get to--toilet paper is on sale.

Sorry too much to read. - sm

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I stopped reading at the 4th paragraph: "Money is finite. They usually don't print more."

What? Are you kidding? Better do some fact checking.

Other than that, I have no idea what else you wrote. It's just simply too long, as you acknowledge.

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