Over the past four years the American middle class has suffered an unprecedented decline. At this writing the labor for participation rate is the lowest since 1981 and for men it is the lowest since that statistic has been gathered. Household income has plummeted by 7.3% equating to over $4,000 per family. The number of persons on food stamps has nearly doubled in a mere four years. The unemployment rate continues to decline only by statistical legerdemain and reducing the number of people actively looking for work by demoralizing them.
Instead of taking firm action to preserve the middle class, the Obama regime has engaged in a full frontal assault on the middle class in order to reduce it to a state of government dependency.
Our home loans are no longer held by local banks, they are secured by the United States government. Superficially private sector jobs in industry sectors chosen to be winners by government bureaucrats only exist because of extravagant government subsidies… and some of those jobs being created in foreign countries. The agricultural sector is being wildly distorted in the service of ethanol production. Students are being inveigled into taking out loans to acquire an education that is either irrelevant or superfluous in the modern world (really, a master’s degree in jazz flute? What did you think was going to happen?)
As we’ve chronicled over the past month, the economic strategy pursued by the Obama regime is nothing more that cargo cult economics (here | here | here | here). Simply put, the regime has attempted to bolster the middle class using exactly the same method that Neolithic South Pacific islanders have used to continue receiving food and supplies from the United States. Instead of building a bamboo C-47 they are creating the trappings of a middle class society, e.g. a college education, a job, etc., without strengthening the underlying economy which supports it.
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