The Hourglass Society

The New America Foundation recently did a report called "The American Middle Class Under Stress" and it its findings, it had some stunning facts that highlight the struggles the average American are having in getting a decent-paying job and keeping up with rising cost of living, issues that 'Ants & Grasshoppers' has been addressing for quite a while...

Here are some highlights (or lowlights) of the study:

-- 8.5 million people receiving unemployment ins.; 40 million on food stamps.

-- At current pace of job creation, full employment by 2018.

-- Middle-income jobs are disappearing; share of middle-income jobs in US has fallen from 52% in 1980 to 42% in 2010.

-- Middle-income jobs have been replaced by low-income jobs, which now make up 41% of total employment.

-- 17 million Americans with college degrees doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with that degree.

-- Over the past year, nominal wages grew only 1.7% while all consumer prices, including food and energy, increased by 2.7%.

-- In 30 year period, wages and salaries have fallen from 60% of personal income in 1980 to 51% in 2010.  Government transfers  (subsidies i.e. handouts) have risen from 11.7% of personal income in 1980 to 18.4% in 2010, a post-war high.

Sherle Schwenninger, director of economic growth and American strategy programs at the New America Foundation and who did the previously mentioned report said in a recent interview, "I worry that we're becoming a barbell society - a lot of money wealth and power at the top, increasing hollowness at the center, which I think provides the stability and the heart and soul of the society... and then too many people in fear of falling down."

He's correct except for one small point-  barbells lie horizontally on its side.  A more accurate way to describe the top-to-bottom economic America is to express it as an hourglass.