The Vanishing American Middle Class

It's no secret that the Occupy movement was largely spawned by the left. Hence, it was viewed with disdain by most Republicans who perceived the Occupy activists as socialists clamoring for more socialism but that's only part of the story. The American middle class is indeed nosediving toward permanent extinction and any society that consists of the ruling rich and the eternally poor is doomed. But heck, it's America where we obsess over chicken sandwiches and pay scant attention to what is really happening in America.

The left isn't always wrong and in fact it gets a lot of things right. Actually, the left is quite good a diagnosing a problem but where it falls way short is in their proposed solutions to a problem which invariably calls for more government intervention and control.

Forgetting for the moment that liberals have radically different solutions than conservatives when it comes to solving big problems, we need to focus on a stone cold reality.  Contained in the jargon of the 99% vs. the 1%, there is ample documented evidence that the middle class is rapidly losing ground.

Real Wages Much Lower Than They Were Four Decades Ago

These charts do not paint a pretty picture. In fact they disclose that male wages are declining while the purchasing power of the dollar is simultaneously decreasing. That translates into direct hit on the middle class.

While the gap between the rich and the poor in America has been widening for decades, CEO compensation also continues to soar.

Average CEO Pay 2011 Nearly $10 Million At Public Companies: AP Study

The issue isn't so much about how much CEO's earn but what they earn in relation to worker wages.  The disparity between CEO compensation and worker compensation is incredibly wide and growing.

In 1982, the ratio of CEO pay to the wages of an average worker stood at 42 to 1. Today, it is beyond 300 to 1. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would be $15.71 an hour today, here.

So when the left talks about economic injustice, it's not as if they don't make a very valid point.  So long as America continues to be a society where the rich get richer, the banksters get bailouts and the poor and middle class get poorer, that's a recipe for disaster and an eventual Marxist revolution.

Thus far, neither the Republicans or Democrats are motivated to confront America's dire economic situation.  Instead, they think the solution to everything is to just put everybody on welfare.

Over 100 Million Now Receiving Federal Welfare

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011 and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) from 17 million to 45 million in 2011," says the Senate Budget Committee. "Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach $800 billion over the next decade."

To further complicate matters, it's recently been reported that long term immigrants  in America are heavily entitlement dependent.

Slow path to progress for U.S. immigrants - 43% on welfare after 20 years

The study, based on 2010 and 2011 census data, found that 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the U.S. at least 20 years were using welfare benefits, a rate that is nearly twice as high as native-born Americans and nearly 50 percent higher than recent immigrants.

America is deliberately and massively importing entitlement dependent 3rd world labor and we've been doing it for a very long time.  Meanwhile, jobless and entitlement dependent Americans are stuck in an untenable economic situation from which there is no escape and no hope for the future..

For a nation that once proudly exhibited the strongest and most prosperous middle class in all of human history, it's clearly evident that political and policy decisions have been made at the legislative, fiscal, monetary and economic level that combined into a middle class conflagration.

While Americans are definitely not happy with Obama and the Democrats, they are even less trustful of the war obsessed Republicans who can't seem to campaign on anything except spending trillions more the murderous wars and foreign follies.