FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘education’ Category

What we have here is clearly a lack of understanding.  You see, the Constitution LIMITS the powers of government, it doesn’t expand them.  For some odd reason, Congress seems to believe the latter.  It’s time to remind them that the full extent of their powers are contained in a document that doesn’t even fill 35 three-inch by 6-inch pages.

We know our Congressfolk use The Constitution for toilet paper these days.  From Obamacare to the Department of Education kicking down doors on “no-knock” warrants to TSA rapescans and other forms of sexual molestation, The Constitution, Declaration and of course The Bill of Rights have been so widely disregarded as to become somewhat of a bad joke.

It’s time, coming into silly season, to put a stop to this.

Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, this is a movement you should be able to get behind.  The message is simple:  Send your Critters A Constitution.

First, order them.  I recommend http://www.nccs.net, although you can also obtain nicely printed pocket-sized copies from The Heritage Foundation and other places.  They’re cheap; 100 of them are just $30, or 10 for $7.50, or one for free – just send a SASE to them.

Second, go to http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov and get the correct mailing addresses for your Representative and Senators.  Address up some envelopes.

Enclose a letter with it.  Feel free to steal the text of what’s below, modified to suit.

The Honorable <First, Last>
xxxx {Name} {House|Senate} Office Building
Washington DC  {Zip}

Dear {Mr.|Ms.} <Last>;

Please find enclosed a copy of the Declaration of Independence, The United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

When you assumed your office in Washington DC, you took an oath to uphold and defend The Constitution of the United States as black letter law against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  These are not “living” documents, subject to alteration at whim, theories or ideas.  They are, indeed, black-letter law and backed by the two seminal works in guidance on their interpretation found in The Federalist and The Anti-Federalist, much as the intent of legislation is backed by the record of debate in Congress, subject to alteration only through the amendment processes provided within.

Sadly, many Americans, myself included, are of the opinion that our alleged representatives in Washington, along with other elected and appointed officials, have forgotten their oath.  This letter is intended to remind you of the terms of the oath you swore and provide a handy pocket reference should you have questions as to your duties in this regard.

Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent or otherwise is immaterial. Nor does it matter whether you consider your political philosophy Conservative, Liberal, Progressive or even Socialist.  You were elected to your office to represent your Constituents within the boundaries of the oath you swore, and that oath committed you to a duty to uphold and defend The Constitution, irrespective of your personal or political beliefs and ideals.

I, and others also sending copies of these documents, believe that a reminder of your oath and duty in this regard is in order at this time.  Please accept this gift, and be advised that I, along with others, are paying close attention to both your words and deeds, and we will not return you to your elected office in the upcoming election cycle if you are unable or unwilling to take your oath seriously, irrespective of your party affiliation or excuse for not having done so.

Thank you for your time in reviewing the documents that underlie the foundation of our nation, and may they guide you appropriately in your legislative activity.

Sincerely;

Stephanie Jasky

Time your sending of these Constitutions and their respective letters to arrive on June 22nd for maximum impact, as that’s the day I and others, including the fine folks at the Market-Ticker, have chosen.

Let’s pepper Washington with the very documents that they damn well ought to be paying attention to each and every day, testing their intentions and legislation against the foundational law against which all such activity must pass.

You can join in our discussions on the Forum here, here and here, if you’d like to coordinate efforts.  We also have a number of Constitutions to give away.  Our Forum does require registration to post.

The Great Recession is revealing some fundamental challenges in our economy.  One of those challenges revolves around the exceedingly expensive college degree and its ability to translate into employment.  As a percent many more American’s have a bachelor’s degree today than say in 1992 yet unemployment for college educated Americans is at modern record highs.  Another profound challenge facing American families is retirement savings (or lack thereof which is more likely the case).  Retirement is largely becoming a luxury that only a handful of families can count on.  As we look back at the last decade not all global stock markets were created equal and this is evident when we compare the US stock market to those abroad.  Finally we will examine what areas are seeing major price increases all the while overall inflation appears to be muted to average Americans.

College educated rise but less employment

Source:  BLS

In 1992 27 percent of those employed and 25 years of age or older had a bachelor’s degree or higher.  Today that figure is up to 36 percent.  However back in 1992 during another recessionary time those with bachelor’s degrees or higher had an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent while today it is up inching closer to 5.5 percent.

“In other words as a nation our employed workforce is more educated but it is also having a harder time gaining or maintaining employment.  At the same time college costs have far outpaced the overall inflation rate.”

This may seem counterintuitive because in terms of career aspiration a college degree is less likely today to secure you a job compared to 1992 but it is much more expensive in real terms.  So what are you really paying for?  Of course college is not merely a means to a job but a place where students develop into well rounded citizens.  Yet many for-profit institutions sell themselves as job factories and are all the willing to take federal financial aid without any statistics to back up their career placement rates.

What has occurred is a bubble in higher education.  Obviously becoming an educated citizen is important.  However we are facing a stratified market.  You have private institutions charging $50,000 a year or more catering to many of the financially well off in the country.  This group continues to get a solid education.  Next you have a public education system with very good schools but competition for admission is getting exponentially harder and students are dealing with bigger classes and more expensive tuition.  Finally you have the for-profit sector that merely operates to generate revenues by sucking in federal financial aid and not being accountable to their students and many operating only one step above diploma mills.

Retirement accounts largely a concern for top households

A BLS report done a few years ago showed that the median amount in retirement accounts for Americans was $2,000.  This makes sense given that half of Americans make $25,000 a year or less.  Many are looking at Social Security as their retirement account.  If you look at where the money is aggregated you will start to realize that retirement accounts are largely becoming a luxury for a small fragment of American society:

Keep in mind that only 15 percent of US households make more than $100,000 or more a year.  However 64 percent of all retirement assets are in the hands of the top 15 percent.  The median household income in the US is $50,000.  So we can even average out this amount here:

$1.04 trillion / 55 million US households =     $18,909

Now this may seem higher than the BLS figures but keep in mind this is because of the $20,000 to $49,999 cohort that holds the bulk of this amount.  In reality 1 out of 3 Americans have zero in savings.  Even here the data is skewed.  But think about the $18,909.  How long would that last you in retirement?  Say you draw down $1,000 per month and you are out of money within 18 months.

For many saving for retirement has become a harder and more trying exercise.  If we look at the domestic stock market we can see why.

Global stock market growth

Even after the amazing 90 percent stock market recovery from the 2009 lows the S&P 500 is still off by 11 percent from where it was in January of 2000.  In other words someone investing in boring and plain bank CDs actually performed better than the overall stock market for the decade.  The Wall Street mystique has been lost on many.  60 Minutes featured a story of a famed gambler that made millions betting on sports yet was taken for a ride with Wall Street.  In his own words, he did not trust Wall Street.  This coming from a professional gambler and hustler.  Wall Street has largely become one giant casino.

What is fascinating is markets that have benefitted from outsourcing such as India and China have boomed exponentially.  In exchange for cheap goods many Americans are now struggling to keep a hold on to what they once thought of as the middle class.  Why would a global multinational corporation want to pay someone in the US $10 an hour when they can pay someone overseas $10 per day for the same work?  That is the profound question many now have to wrestle with and no politician is willing to tackle.

Inflation is where?

The BLS CPI has shown virtually no movement over the last few years.  Much of this is due to the bursting of the housing market.  The BLS heavily weights housing as it should.  Most Americans spend the most on their housing costs each month.  Yet the housing crash has hidden some major inflation in certain items.  For example, oil is back up and you need only look at gas prices.  For those who shop the cost of food items has gone up last year.  Yet retailers have gotten creative with packaging so prices stay the same yet the amount you are receiving has gone down.

Take a look at the price of coffee, wheat, soybeans, orange juice, and other items over the last year.  The S&P 500 went up by 13.6 percent but this pales in comparison to other sectors.

What can we conclude from the above?  It is safe to say that there is a bubble in higher education.  The costs are outstripping the benefits in many cases depending on what schools you go to.  This is similar to the housing bubble.  Some homes should have never tripled in value yet many homes are nice and built with quality in good areas.  Others are not but when banks get involved you are likely to find speculation and gambling inflating costs.  Students need to be extremely careful in choosing their institution and not falling into too much debt.  Another conclusion you can draw is that the housing bust has hidden the inflation of many daily items.  The CPI is muted because of the implosion of the housing market and this covers up rising costs in other sectors.  For example college tuition, healthcare, gas, and food have all gone up significantly over the decade yet this hardly shows up while wages have gone stagnant or declined.  Ultimately American families have to be cognizant of these changes since they will impact their daily lives.

My Budget360

President Obama Asked To Fund Wiis For Schools

Posted by Karl Denninger

What does it mean to be Middle Class in 2010? – No College Degree, Massive Amounts of Debt, One Health Crisis from Bankruptcy, and Beholden to the Banking Elite.

Posted by mybudget360

Being middle class today does not carry the financial security that it once carried in the 1950s and 1960s.  Interestingly enough, many Americans at that time did not own stocks yet somehow they managed well because they had access to affordable housing without toxic mortgages and many had the ability to work with one company and have some kind of security from their company.  It was a mutual relationship as even Henry Ford shook the auto manufacturing world by upping wages for his workers.  Yet today, we are being fed distorted information from Wall Street that we need to have this system where workers are disposable entities only to increase the profits of the corporate class.  If people are hurting so much why are we paying billions in bonuses to a small group of people that really haven’t helped the country?  In fact, many of these are directly responsible for our current economic problems.  At the root, this has been the cancer that has eaten away at what it means to be middle class.  Social government welfare for Wall Street and Darwinian capitalism for the rest of us.

The middle class has it extremely tough today not because of random events but purposeful and directed robbery from Wall Street.  This was a methodical and planned dismantling of the system.  First, let us walk through some details of the middle class to create a profile:

Source:  Census

The most common household formation in the U.S. is a married couple.  Certainly this has changed over time but this is the most common arrangement in the U.S.  But this has also led to the two-income trap that we have heard about so often:

Even though nominal wages are much higher today, inflation has eroded the buying power of Americans so much that even two incomes today cannot compete with one income forty years ago.  After all, if you could buy a car with $200 then $1,000 would seem like a lot.  But what is a $50,000 household income when home prices cost $250,000?  This is really the essence of what has broken the middle class apart.  Prices rose to astronomical levels because Wall Street created speculative casino products and injected the virus into the system.  The middle class today is fearful of even having enough to retire.  But beyond even retiring, many people have very little saved:

Now Wall Street would lead you to believe that people should just pucker up and save more.  Bailouts are only for Wall Street folks yet average Americans need to resurrect the ghost of Horatio Alger and pull themselves up from their bootstraps or hope that a rich uncle leaves them a nice inheritance package.  Yet what they forget is that we have a large part of our population that don’t even qualify as middle class:

38,000,000 Americans are receiving some form of food assistance.  These people are living day to day so saving isn’t even in their equation.  They are just trying to get by.  These are the folks waiting at midnight at Wal-Mart waiting for their debit cards to reload just so they can buy food for their family.  Do you think they are interested in investing in the next hot stock?  Even as hard as it is to be middle class, poverty has been amplified in this recession:

10% of all U.S. families are in poverty.  Yet the rate is a bit higher if we actually go by food stamp data.  The average household size is 2.61 in the U.S. so many families are struggling with children as the above data reflects.  Yet you would expect the middle class to have a better chance at going forward but more and more middle class families are entering what is now being called the working poor.

Wall Street and the banking system is at the core of this mess.  They didn’t create poverty but they have amplified it by setting up a system that has now pushed millions of Americans into foreclosure.  Why all of a sudden did Americans start gambling with their homes only when Wall Street got involved?  They have created a new financial fiefdom where they can siphon off resources from the productive sector of the economy all from the comforts of their NY,NY offices.  Even the idea that all Americans own stocks is not exactly accurate:

The top 1 percent control 42 percent of all financial wealth in this country.  And wealth is the key here.  So what if you have a $500,000 home if you have a $600,000 mortgage.  You are not wealthy.  So what if you have a leased BMW but have $30,000 in credit card debt.  You are not wealthy.  This is what Wall Street sold to America in the disguise of wealth.  And people bought it up at the expense of the prudent.  But that veil is now gone.  And who has the wealth?  This is what happens when you make a pact with the financial devil.

We must educate ourselves in order to have any fighting chance to have a solid middle class:

The sad fact above is these stats come at a time when public education is falling by the wayside.  We’ve had some of the cheapest and best public universities the world has seen.  That era is coming to an end as banks run the student loan market and for profit education is charging ridiculous amounts of tuition that are crushing the middle class.  As of 2008 only 27 percent of Americans have a four year degree or higher.  Now how will this number increase in a time when educational costs are going up and wages are stagnant?  As long as you have a population that is unaware of what Wall Street is doing, they can keep doing their robbery in the open.

We also have an aging population:

That 65 and over category is going to explode in the next decade as baby boomers enter retirement.  Many were betting on housing appreciation and unrealistic stock market returns for a long and prosperous retirement.  Instead, Wall Street has taken the money and many will have to work well into their retirement years.  One illness can wreck their entire financial nest egg (if they have one).  The notion that middle class meant a secure retirement is now gone.  And with health care costs rising more and more money will go to this category.  Education and health care are cornerstones of what we consider middle class living and this sector is enormous in terms of employment:

21% work in education services, and health care and social assistance.  This number is likely to increase given demographic trends.  Yet who are we really serving if students go into $40,000, $60,000, and even $100,000 in debt for degrees that don’t provide them adequate training to survive in a corporatist economy?  The banks don’t mind because they can saddle a young person with a stream of income for multiple years and have the government pay the bill.  How about we take banks out of the equation and require people to pay a sizeable portion of their education?  Ironically, this would lower costs.  It doesn’t have to all be upfront but allowing the current system to go on is criminal.  If you want proof look at the housing market.  Now that people have to document some income housing prices have collapsed.  The for profit schools only require 10% of funds to come from the students and then the government matches 90%.  In reality, these schools take that 10% on a credit card so this is really a zero down education.

The story of Wall Street is the story of putting Americans into debt.  If you really want to know where the middle class went you can look at the absurd amounts of debt.  And this idea that everyone is rich is pure propaganda:

Only 34% of U.S. households make more than $65,000 per year.  And that number is now much lower since this is based on 2008 data.  When we look at luxury auto sales they do not reflect the actual wealth in our country.  Much of it is pure debt financing.  All hat and no cattle as they say in Texas.

And we can see inflation eating away at purchasing power:

Just look at 1950.  The median household income could purchase the median home with twice their annual income.  In 2006 it required 4 times that income.  Even in 1980, the median household income could buy 3 cars with that salary.  Today, it is more like two.  And this is even more distorted because we have more two income households.

So the middle class is really facing a struggle in 2010.  But this just didn’t happen.  This was a forty year systematic robbery of the compact Americans had with government and the business community.  Where we go from here really depends on how much people value the middle class and coalesce to bring Wall Street in check.  So far things aren’t looking good.

Our Educational System’s Primary Failure

Posted by Karl Denninger

No, it’s not that they don’t teach history – even though the rendition of “history” given in government (and private) schools is questionable at best (how many, for example are taught the underlying truths of Thanksgiving, and how all the colonists almost died under a nearly-pure socialist structure?)

No, it’s not that many of our schools start kindergarten with an exercise in socialism, even though they do – by asking the parents to buy all manner of supplies which are then, either in whole or part, aggregated – that is, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – in the first hour of class.  Isn’t that sweet – straight out of Karl Marx’s mouth to your five-year old’s ears.

It’s not even that these same government schools in many cases will hand out “awards” at the end of the year, or the end of a student’s time there, in which literally everyone is considered “outstanding”, destroying the value of the word – and the motivation to excel.  After all, not everyone can be “outstanding”, right?  If everyone is, then nobody is – whatever that level of performance is, it’s “normal”.

No, it is that we fail mathematically.

To succeed a young person needs to be able to do three things – read, write, and understand mathematics.  The fourth ingredient is that the innate desire to learn must not be destroyed in their first few years of school.

All children start life wanting to learn.  Ever watch a baby?  It’s a curious being, is it not?  It reaches, it fondles, it touches, it experiments.  We put plastic caps in our electrical outlets because one of the experiments a significant number of babies and toddlers will perform is inserting a kitchen fork into said outlet, with bad results.

So how do we go from that to a surly vegetative kid at the age of 9, 10 or 12?

We do it by failing in the essential purpose of education – giving our children the foundational understanding they need, and then getting the hell out of their way!

We want to mold educational experience.  To teach “as we want them to learn”, instead of “as they wish to synthesize.”

We’re fools.  You, I, our school systems.  All of us.

But in the midst of our mind-numbing and creativity-destroying “education system” we do something worse – we ignore, for the most part, the single most-important concept that our children must learn in order to be citizens.

I speak of the function shown in this graph:

This is our friend the lowly (and so-often forgotten) exponent.

It is not that we do not teach our children about this basic function of mathematics – we do.  Ask your kid in sixth or seventh grade if he or she understands exponents, square’s, etc – they do.

No, it is that we fail to teach the fact that any time two or more exponents are in play, one of them always “runs away” from the other.

Always.

We fail to teach the fundamental truth that you can never let this happen.

Anywhere.

Because if you do, it is simply a matter of time before wherever you let that happen with comes to ruin.

And yet these functions are literally everywhere.  Think about it.

They govern population growth.

They govern energy consumption.

They govern monetary growth and inflation.

They govern economic growth.

They govern growth in the production of food.

They govern growth in housing.

They govern growth in earnings by corporations.

Literally everything around us in our daily lives has a compound function associated with it.

Everything.

And yet wherever two or more inter-related compound functions are in play, if one of them has a larger exponent than the other, it is inevitable that they will “run away” from one another and lead to a ruinous crash of some sort, whether it be by overpopulation, by inability to produce that which is necessary to sustain the other, or in the form of an economic depression.

In each and every case where this interrelationship exists if you allow this situation to develop you create a circumstance where something dies – either economically or literally.

We can argue over when such a calamity will occur, but not if it will, because under the laws of mathematics, IT MUST.

We do not teach our children this.  We do not drill this as the essence of what they must understand.  We do not make clear that the above must never be allowed to occur and continue, and that in each and every case where it is detected, it must be stopped immediately.

Jimmy Carter lost his job because he went on national television and spoke the truth above.  That red line represents a 7% compound growth rate.  It was what he was speaking of in his famous address in which he said that if we continue to grow our energy consumption by 7% annually in ten years we will consume more than has been consumed in the entire history of the United States.

“The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.” - President Carter

He was right, by the way.

The American People fired him for uttering a fundamental mathematical truth.

Our school boards, administrators and teachers, including math teachers, willingly and knowingly put together school budgets, including salaries, that have “percentage growth rates” in them.  Those salary growth rates exceed both GDP growth and the growth of incomes in their district.

They willingly and knowingly pass and support the above double-exponent graph – a graph that they know (at least the math teachers do) will lead to ruin.

They do it anyway.

These same people do not teach our children that such a pattern in the growth of government, in the growth of money, in the growth of energy consumption, in the growth of population – all will eventually lead to the same ruin and for the same reason.

Why do they fail in this regard?

I’ll tell you why.

Because if they didn’t our teens – our high school graduates – might literally be rioting in the streets, burning those school board offices and government buildings to the ground.

They might do so because our young people would have the tools to recognize that these very same teachers, administrators and government officials have intentionally and with full knowledge of the consequences destroyed their futures.

That it is mathematically impossible for them to receive Social Security and Medicare as promised.

That Medicare Part “D” was passed by their parents and grandparents howling even though it would inevitably lead to the destruction of The Federal Budget and their future.

That “health insurance” premiums growing at 10% or more annually while economic output grows at 4% will inevitably collapse the economy, and that providing “free all you can eat” care to both illegal alien invaders and senior citizens (including those retired teachers) is mathematically impossible over the long run.

That it is mathematically impossible for us to continue to grow energy consumption at 3, 4, 5, 7% annually while we grow production at effective zero due to refusing to build nuclear plants and exploiting the energy resources we have in this nation.  Indeed, our schools teach that growth in the production of energy is evil.

That it is mathematically impossible to grow earnings, production or both at 4, 5, 6, 7, 10% annually while the population consuming your output grows 1%, and thus the stock markets must eventually crash to bring earnings and production into accord with population.  We simply argue over when that will occur, not if.

That it is mathematically impossible to grow credit – that is, debt – at 8% annually (and we have on average since the 1950s) while GDP grows at 5% annually and population at 1%.  Pursuing such a policy, which our leaders have and our educators espouse as “healthy” and “their goal”, inevitably leads to either a massive debt-default episode (e.g. a deflationary depression ala the 1930s) or collapse of the currency.   Not coincidentally, that’s close to the above graph – and is why our “economic problems” are not over.

That it is impossible to grow population forever at any compound rate since the rock we live on is fixed in size and resources.  Since one must inevitably have more people to consume more “stuff” (e.g. GDP) over a sufficiently long period of time all compound growth fantasies have a “use by” date at which they must end. Again, we argue only when, not if.

Our youth would recognize that none of what has happened – our energy dependence, our abuse of the land by “big farming”, the abusive and outrageous conduct of Wall Street, the bogus and fraudulent promises made, and ridiculous growth in spending beyond our means by our Local, State and Federal Governments – is an accident.

Rather, all of it has been by design and intent and the consequences of that design and intent will fall on THEM.

They would be pissed that “we the people” – their parents, their teachers, their school administrators, their governments from the city council on up to Congress and The President - have intentionally and willfully screwed the world in which they must live for their own puerile fantasies, and that they have done so with both knowledge and malice aforethought as to what the inevitable consequences would be – consequences those very same youth will have to pay.

They would raise hell, and in doing so would be both justified and appropriate in their actions.

But for our youth to do so, they’d have to understand how the power function – the lowly exponent – rules almost literally everything in their daily life, in the life of this rock we call “Earth” and in their future, both economic and otherwise.

To prevent that from happening so we can loot the future of our children and grandchildren, we intentionally refuse to teach them these fundamental mathematical relationships and in fact gloss over and obfuscate any such discussion, debate, or path toward understanding how this basic concept intertwines with and in fact controls virtually everything in our – and their – daily lives.

Indeed, it is obvious on its face that so-called “education” is not the goal of our government schools – or the private educators either – at all.

Those who claim that “private education is better” need to think long and hard about this.  Parochial and other private school environments – how many taught this fundamental truth?  The school I attended – a high-brow college-prep private academy (at the time) – didn’t.  A local religiously-oriented (and well-respected) private Christian school does not – I know this for a fact, as I know several students both past and present who attend there.  Our local government school system does not.

Let’s cut the crap America.

The above is the central understanding that every citizen must have in order for any society to have a chance at stable, long-term prosperity rather than a bogus and fraudulent existence predicated on one bubble after another, intentionally blown for the purpose of stepping on the people’s necks through the stripping of their prosperity in all of its forms.

Wake up while there is still coffee to smell.

Game Over for the American Middle Class – Inflation Adjusted Wages up 20 Percent in Last 20 Years While Housing Costs are up 56 Percent and Healthcare Costs are up 155 Percent.

Posted by mybudget360

The struggle for average Americans to keep up is largely becoming an act of will power and force in this current grand recession.  Now you wouldn’t think that there is a definite war raging against the middle class if you simply follow the mainstream media but the facts speak to a more distilled and corporatized method of debt slavery.  Americans are working more hours trying to stay in the same place that they believe would keep them on pace to having the American Dream.  And this dream is merely the ability to afford a home, provide your children with a good education (public or private), and save enough to have a retirement that doesn’t require you to eat cat food after a lifetime of working.  That is at the root of what most average Americans would want after a full working career.

But we are at an inflexion point and the middle class is largely being squeezed out.  A recent study from the Commerce Department shed some light on an issue that we already know.  Over the past 20 years the middle class has been falling behind:

Everything is relative in this world.  Incomes have gone up during this time but the cost of housing, healthcare, and access to education have outpaced income gains in some cases by four to one.  Money is only worth what you can buy with it.  The grand housing bubble of this decade lured many into buying homes that they simply could not afford.  Banks and Wall Street were more than willing to provide access to this dream since they knew if all bets crashed, and they did, that they would call on their connected politicians to bail them out and send the bill to taxpayers for their adventures in finance.  Take a look at the chart above closely.  Housing price changes have wiped out any gains in income.  The relative amount of income needed to buy a home has put many two income households on the brink of bankruptcy.  And the 4 million foreclosure filings in 2009 alone tell us that many Americans are unable to hold onto one cornerstone of the American Dream.

The middle class is absolutely vital to having a sustainable and flourishing economy.  The massive debt machine coming from the big banks has created a new form of debt servitude.  Some would argue that this is a personal responsibility issue and I will be the first to agree with that.  People should live within their means.  But think of the FICO score that has become like a permanent financial report card.  Some employers actually screen for credit scores before hiring applicants.  Want to rent a home because you don’t want to over extend and buy a home?  You better hope that FICO is up to par.  And many insurance companies base their analysis on this score.  So even if you never had a credit card or any debt, you would be in a bad spot because so many people rely on this number.  This is only one example of how people are actually forced to use debt simply to pursue the avenues of the middle class.

In fact, we have many more people simply trying to stay afloat let alone pursuing the middle class ideal.  Over 37 million Americans are now part of the food stamp program, not only is this the highest number ever but also the highest percentage of Americans ever to be on food assistance:

I sometimes read gut wrenching stories from the Great Depression where people would wash and reuse paper towels or have soup for weeks on end just to keep their families fed.  37 million Americans would be one step away from that existence if it weren’t for some basic safety nets.  It is troubling to say the least that this patch is what is keeping this great recession from being a profound depression.  Yet I think the 27 million underemployed Americans are already in that state of mind.  The idea of a middle class life is slowly drifting away as each and every day we realize that our nation is becoming more of a corporatacracy.

The housing nightmare really played on both ends of this middle class dream.  Banks were more than willing to lend trillions of dollars to people that really could not afford the homes they were buying.  This created the biggest housing bubble the world has ever witnessed and the bursting ramifications are being felt throughout the economy.  Yet if you look at the equation, who is really being punished?  Average Americans are being punished as they have their homes foreclosed on.  Yet banks who are in the supposed position of financial experts, have not only garnered trillions in bailouts but are now back to their speculative ways.  This is disturbing because it is highlighting a marked shift and a near game over for the middle class.

Think of the rise of our economy in the 1940s and 1950s.  Many returning GIs had access to affordable education through new programs and grants.  It is the least you can offer to someone defending this country.  Next, it was possible to support a family with one income because we had a strong and sustainable manufacturing base.  Now, we have families with two incomes in the service sector trying to piece things together.  Throw in a child, and that second income evaporates through childcare costs and educational fees.  In other words, just because people have more income their buying power has collapsed.

And this fact is revealed in the data that two-income households are more of an economic necessity:

So of married couples with two children 76 percent have two earners.  The average American is simply working to stay on track or face being thrown off the treadmill.  Jobs are so important to keeping a solid middle class.  This should be obvious but current policy being driven by the corporatacracy is simply focusing on keeping prices inflated for the big ticket items (i.e., housing and healthcare).  At this point in the game, housing values have gone up to points that are clearly unsupportable:

This being the biggest budget item for most households, you would assume that lower prices would be welcomed from the government seeing that many Americans are underemployed and those with jobs have seen stagnant wages.

The middle class dream is at risk.  This is a question of what we want out of our country.  Are we simply obsessed on keeping home values inflated so banking giants could keep gaming accounting rules and claim billion dollar profits?  If we want to prosper in the next decade, there will need to be a radical change to preserve what once was envied by the world.  Otherwise, you can expect banks and their political allies to keep selling away the middle class of America.  On the path we are traveling on the middle class is largely at risk for a big game over in the next decade.