The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

[Danbones]

Back in the Seventies, the so called "Futurists" went on and on about the wonderful leisure society that automation would bring. We'd hardly have to work, at all! What Alvin Tofler, et. al. failed to pick up on is that no one is going to pay you to be leisurely. Now, lage numbers are being forced into permanent leisure and scrape and scrounge is all that is left to them. They are rapidly becoming a majority. You can blame offshore cheap labour on some of it but even that dries up, eventually. Remember when Japan was the cheap labour bad guy? Well, Japanese labour is now more expensive than ours. Blaming foreigners for unemployment misses a bigger picture of the transition that our species is going through, right now.

Anyway, you can pigeonhole the idea with an old fashioned term like "Commie" or "Socialist" or some other Calvinist infraction but I put it to you that a generous, universal minimum wage is the pragmatic course for Capitalism to follow. In just a small handful of decades, the vast majority of us will be disenfranchised, outsider paupers. They will eventually pull your edifice down because, frankly, they will have no choice but to kill off the rich and redistribute their assets. They will have to do it to survive.

The money for a universal income will come from where again?

Toflers big schtick at the time was that the key to the future was:
"knowledge about how to use knowledge"...and we don't have the moral, educational, or political will to master that first Knowledge other then to have the corporations take over and run the place as fascists (they own the patents etc).

Look up "democide", that's the universal thing we will be getting instead of Pay.

 

[tay]

There's a big push on for automated trucks in the Port........


"Truck Drivers who can't make a living aren't working hard enough"

Samuel Talavera Jr. did everything his bosses asked.

Most days, the trucker would drive more than 16 hours straight hauling LG dishwashers and Kumho tires to warehouses around Los Angeles, on their way to retail stores nationwide.

He rarely went home to his family. At night, he crawled into the back of his cab and slept in the company parking lot.

For all of that, he took home as little as 67 cents a week.

Then, in October 2013, the truck he leased from his employer, QTS, broke down.

When Talavera could not afford repairs, the company fired him and seized the truck -- along with $78,000 he had paid towards owning it.

Talavera was a modern-day indentured servant. And there are hundreds, likely thousands more, still on the road, hauling containers for trucking companies that move goods for America’s most beloved retailers, from Costco to Target to Home Depot.

These port truckers -- many of them poor immigrants who speak little English -- are responsible for moving almost half of the nation’s container imports out of Los Angeles’ ports. They don't deliver goods to stores. Instead they drive them short distances to warehouses and rail yards, one small step on their journey to a store near you.

A yearlong investigation by the USA TODAY Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute.

If a driver quit, the company seized his truck and kept everything he had paid towards owning it.

If drivers missed payments, or if they got sick or became too exhausted to go on, their companies fired them and kept everything. Then they turned around and leased the trucks to someone else.

Drivers who manage to hang on to their jobs sometimes end up owing money to their employers – essentially working for free. Reporters identified seven different companies that have told their employees they owe money at week’s end.

The USA TODAY Network pieced together accounts from more than 300 drivers, listened to hundreds of hours of sworn labor dispute testimony and reviewed contracts that have never been seen by the public.

Using the contracts, submitted as evidence in labor complaints, and shipping manifests, reporters matched the trucking companies with the most labor violations to dozens of retail brands, including Target, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Hasbro, J.Crew, UPS, Goodyear, Costco, Ralph Lauren and more.

Among the findings:

Employers charge not just for truck leases but for a host of other expenses, including hundreds of dollars a month for insurance and diesel fuel. Some charge truckers a parking fee to use the company lot. One company, Fargo Trucking, charged $2 per week for the office toilet paper and other supplies.

more

https://www.usatoday.com/pages/inter...-with-nothing/

 

[Danbones]

A Critical Change
For decades, short-haul truckers at the nation’s ports relied on cheap clunkers to move goods to nearby warehouses and rail yards.

With little up-front investment, drivers – most of them independent contractors who owned their own trucks – could make a decent living squeezing the last miles from dilapidated big rigs that weren’t suited for the open road.

In October 2008, that changed dramatically in southern California, home of the nation’s busiest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach. State officials, fed up with deadly diesel fumes from 16,000 outdated trucks, ordered the entire fleet replaced with new, cleaner rigs.

Suddenly, this obscure but critical collection of trucking companies faced a $2.5 billion crossroads unlike anything experienced at other U.S. ports.

(from the OP)

Ah, there is the REAL problem:
Cash for Clunkers without the cash...
Also, I wonder who is building and selling all of those new trucks?

 

[captain morgan]

The American Dream is just a dream for more and more Michigan residents


The American Dream Is Fading Everywhere, But Almost Nowhere Faster Than Michigan | Alternet

I'm not surprised at the findings in this article.... Too bad that the author didn't have the nuts to explore the causes of this trend as opposed to blaming discrepancies in earning power.

Fact is; socialism is dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator and those that actually create the jobs and wealth are being pressured to move to jurisdictions that do not maintain the practice of increasing taxes as the knee jerk response at every turn

 

[Bar Sinister]

Fact is; socialism is dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator and those that actually create the jobs and wealth are being pressured to move to jurisdictions that do not maintain the practice of increasing taxes as the knee jerk response at every turn

Strange, that isn't happening in socialistic Germany. Or any other social-democracy I can think of.

 

[Danbones]

And yes, privately owned property (even on companies or means of production) in Germany is allowed so we are technically certainly a "capitalist country". Rest is interpretation.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Germany-a-socialist-or-capitalist-country

My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

The identification of Nazi Germany as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of Ludwig von Mises.
https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-socialism-totalitarian

Why are countries like Denmark or Germany sometimes referred to as socialist countries for their social benefits policies?

Because the person saying so is totally mis-informed.

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the airport is privately owned, the bus system is privately owned, and until recently, the garbage was picked up by a private nonprofit.

I used to live in New York City, where the airports are owned by the government (Port Authority NY/NJ), the bus system was publicly owned and operated (MTA), and the garbage is picked up by municipal employees (the New York City Sanitation Department)


Denmark may look 'socialist' because the USA has a calcified and behind-the-times set of government services. Denmark is much better in turning tax funds into services people can see and use, while the USA wastes its cash on administration, outsize pensions for retired government workers, and various political/ethnic schemes designed to help elected officials hold on to their jobs.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-count...-countries-for-their-social-benefits-policies

damn straight

Really, you call that thinking?
Hitlary the murderess would be proud! Fluoride works!
lol you lefties

The Five Most Capitalist Countries in The World
1. Germany
http://blog.peerform.com/the-five-most-capitalistic-countries-in-the-world/

List of socialist states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states
NOPE!!! No germany here!...
( well, east germany was on the list, but they are gone now..happily too, I might add.)

 

[Bar Sinister]

And yes, privately owned property (even on companies or means of production) in Germany is allowed so we are technically certainly a "capitalist country". Rest is interpretation.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Germany-a-socialist-or-capitalist-country

Why are countries like Denmark or Germany sometimes referred to as socialist countries for their social benefits policies?

Because the person saying so is totally mis-informed.

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the airport is privately owned, the bus system is privately owned, and until recently, the garbage was picked up by a private nonprofit.

I used to live in New York City, where the airports are owned by the government (Port Authority NY/NJ), the bus system was publicly owned and operated (MTA), and the garbage is picked up by municipal employees (the New York City Sanitation Department)


Denmark may look 'socialist' because the USA has a calcified and behind-the-times set of government services. Denmark is much better in turning tax funds into services people can see and use, while the USA wastes its cash on administration, outsize pensions for retired government workers, and various political/ethnic schemes designed to help elected officials hold on to their jobs.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-count...-countries-for-their-social-benefits-policies

damn straight

Really, you call that thinking?

The Five Most Capitalist Countries in The World
1. Germany
The Five Most Capitalist Countries in the World - Who Are They?Peerform | Peer to Peer Lending Blog

Actually, given the number of social benefits in Denmark compared to the US, Denmark certainly is socialist at least by world standards. It certainly has a lot more in the way of social programs than Canada.
United States vs. Denmark, in 17 Charts

United States vs. Denmark, in 17 Charts | Demos

What can the U.S. learn from Denmark?

What can the U.S. learn from Denmark? | PBS NewsHour

Also I wonder what the difference is between socialism and a social welfare country as stated in one of your articles. "...although it can be fairly called a social welfare country, due to its extensive services for children, the elderly and the poor."

So far as I can determine there is no difference, especially given the 57% tax rate.


As for Germany, doesn't your source indicate that there is a high level of socialism in Germany?

 

[Danbones]

I posted the list of socialist countries and germany is not on it

Nazi Germany was...but they are gone now, although those unelected old nazis now run the EU, and it looks like their nazi pal Soros, and his friends are funding the left to bump off Trump, and then take over the US in an armed rebellion.
( if you can believe the people in the know like Gingrich)

Similar to what that bunch did to JFK when they committed that coup.
Only worse.

 

[Cliffy]

 

[Bar Sinister]

...those unelected old nazis now run the EU

That is impressive. Apparently being a Nazi greatly extends your lifespan.

I posted the list of socialist countries and germany is not on it

Nazi Germany was...but they are gone now, although those unelected old nazis now run the EU, and it looks like their nazi pal Soros, and his friends are funding the left to bump off Trump, and then take over the US in an armed rebellion.
( if you can believe the people in the know like Gingrich)

Similar to what that bunch did to JFK when they committed that coup.
Only worse.

Welfare in Germany


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_in_Germany