Stong Middle Class Economic Pessimism

There’s a strong pessimism in the Middle Class right now and the suspicion there won’t be a “middle class” much longer.

I have to admit, my perspective on the issue is slanted… I hear from lots of unemployed people and see folks who used to make $14.49 at an air conditioner factory plus benefits start working at a local business for $7 and no benefits. That’s quite a change, especially if your obligations expanded to or beyond your previous lifestyle.

Yesterday I was talking with a man I consider business wise… not a millionaire, not a genius or anything but financially comfortable and someone you’d say had “no worries”. He tells me he spending money he’d hoped to retire with helping keep his kids’ families afloat.

I remember one time being asked to help select some youth for a scholarship at a county high school. I’d been working with “at risk” youth who were dropping out of school, in trouble with the law, etc.

I was suprised to see all these “straight A” normal kids. I told this to a banker who said he’d started out in the “deliquent loan” department. They represented (then) under 3% of their portfolio but he got the impression “everybody was a deadbeat” because that’s all he dealt with all day.

So what we deal with daily seems to be “real” - and is to some extent - but it may not be the “whole picture”.

Whatever the whole picture is, entrepreneurship must be part of the solution, and that’s why I keep writing this blog.

What prompted this post was another blog talking about how taking steps towards national (U.S.) energy independence would offset some of the erosion of the middle class. Here’s the link to it, though I don’t agree with some of it.

It’s obvious the middle class is sweating drops of blood in many sectors and there’s a groundswell of concern. Neither the left with their “just raise the minimum wage” mantra nor the right with their “free trade at any cost” slogans that just seems to contiue the erosion of the middle class addresses this concern. Call it the blind leading the desperate.