CW 621 FBF - Ending Middle Class Poverty & A Review of ‘War on the Middle Class’ by Lou Dobbs with J

Jason Hartman discusses the destruction of America’s great middle class and how to avoid it. Let’s not let the USA become a banana republic. Jason recommends the book War on the Middle Class by Lou Dobbs and his interviews with Rich Dad author Garrett Sutton and Jim Rogers and then he talks about and article received from Chris McLaughlin: Middle class down this decade.

The first decade of the 21st century will go down in the history books as a step back for the American middle class. Last week, the government made gloomy headlines when it released the latest census report showing the poverty rate rose to a 17-year high. A whopping 46.2 million people (or 15.1% of the US population) live in poverty and 49.9 million live without health insurance. But the data also gave the first glimpse of what happened to middle-class incomes in the first decade of the millennium. While the earnings of middle-income Americans have barely budged since the mid 1970s, the new data showed that from 2000 to 2010, they actually regressed. For American households in the middle of the pay scale, income fell to $49,445 last year, when adjusted for inflation, a level not seen since 1996. And over the 10-year period, their income is down 7%.

Unlike the richest Americans, middle class families have most of their wealth tied up in the equity of their homes, which took a beating in the recession. And high unemployment has left many people with little or no other income at all. At the same time that Americans had less cash to spend, they were also being hit with rising prices for some crucial items. Even accounting for inflation, it still costs more to buy a home, fill your gas tank, go to the doctor and put food on the table than it did only 10 years ago. And not only is it more expensive to live a middle-class life, it costs more to get there too. The price of a college education — still considered the ticket to higher
wages and a better lifestyle — has surged over the last d