The decline of the Middle Class

America’ Middle Class has traditionally been composed of higher paying manufacturing (blue Collar) workers, white collar (service) workers, and professionals. Manufacturing is rapidly exiting the Country and as the article so explicitly describes, so are service jobs and eventually many professional jobs as well. Those who have lost their jobs are finding their future downwardly mobile as they find positions paying half or less their previous employment; record bankruptcies and foreclosures tell their story of survival on a day-to-day basis. Those who still have their jobs find unrelenting downward pressures on both wages and benefits. The net result in the not-so-distant future is the disappearance of the American Middle Class. The extinction of this class that has been the glue of the American social fabric for over two centuries does not bode well for this country. The effect of globalization and multinationals with no country loyalty (IBM can no longer be considered an American firm but a global one who seeks global advantages no matter what cost to any nation state) is the lowering of global wages to the least common denominator (As India will soon learn to its amazement when ‘higher-paying’ Indian jobs start moving to Filipinos and Indonesians who will work for half to third). As for globalization, beware of what you asked for, you just might get it, and we did!