Middling America

Just when I was beginning to feel slightly better about the economy - probably because I had been avoiding reading anything about it, my attention was caught by a post on Yahoo News, concerning the vanishing Middle Class. And now I am depressed again.

The picture painted is bleak, but the main piece of ill news was this little factoid: "... the bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth."

Now, if there's one thing we don't imagine when we think of America and the 'American Dream', it's a country where so much is owned by so few, and the 'have-nots' make up perhaps the majority of the population.

The article places much of the blame on globalism, and I can see the point. How CAN someone living in America compete with someone living in, say, India, who is willing to do the same work for several times less? The only advantage a local worker would have seems to be proximity. If your job can be done remotely, you are basically screwed.

The article also blames excessive government regulation, making it more likely for businesses to go outside the US, which I can also see, even if the logic is murkier.

But I think the article missed an important point, once which I believe to be the main reason the middle class has begun to disappear: the wonderful buying engine that was the American Middle Class Consumer is no longer viewed as indispensable to the world economy. Now there's the emerging Chinese middle class to take up our slack, and then some.

Who needs an increasingly poorer bunch of Americans to buy your goods, when there are perhaps ten times as many increasingly richer Chinese to do the same? As businesses world-wide focus more on this emerging Asian consumer engine, they care less and less about what becomes of us.

Still, we aren't down and out just yet. There is still a lot of potential buying power in what's left of the Middle Class, and, if we can only get the credit markets lending again, the working poor can once again buy like they are Middle Class.

In the meantime, there are a couple of things I think might help slow the decline:

We can all try to make conscious decisions to buy products and services from companies that employ workers living in America, and who are being paid reasonable American wages. This may be hard to discern, but if you can, do it.

Also, buy local whenever possible. The more local the company, the more likely the money you spend gets recycled right back into your local economy, which helps you and your neighbors have a better quality of life. So at least you'll think you are Middle Class.

There are probably many other ways to help, but I am not savvy enough to know them. I am happiest when I don't think too much about the economy, which is either a survival strategy or a sure-fire way to be doomed to that poor 50%.