The NY Times reports that businesses are focusing on either the affluent or lower income earners. Products and services are designed to be either good or cheap. Medium quality for medium price - what the middle class buys - is less and less in demand. This is stark evidence of the country's economic decline. It also forces the middle class to buy what it can't afford or to settle for less than it wants, quitting the middle class in either case. This news puts the lie to the cheery bromides of the politicians we've been hearing for several years. What do you think? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html?_r=0
It is worse in Europe, I hear. Middle Class seems to only represent how many months of reserve funds one has should they suddenly lose their income. It is no longer about job security, a modicum of leisure time. It is about a faster and faster treadmill/hamster wheel with the Sword of Democales reminding you, someone can do your job for less, so work harder. Whatever happened to employer loyalty to their employees? Moi FIRE BOMB A BANK FOR FREEDOM'S SAKE No
We have been told for years how the middle class is in decline. I suppose I am little surprise it took this long for business to react. LIie so many other problems neither side of politics seems able to deal with the erosion and decline.All the experts say something different and none can offer real solutions. Every proposed solution fails. Everyone then blames the other party. Not just here in the US but internationally. There is not going to a recovery any time soon only more collapse. The only question is how far things will fall, how bad will it be, and how will we eventually rebuild and start over. We would be better off with no plan for the economy just government to a minimum - - - Updated - - - SInce when was there ever supposed to be such loyalty?
Those were the days of non-transferable skills. Businesses felt they couldn't replace experienced employees, who retained the accumulated knowledge of the business. Now, things change too fast for accumulated knowledge to be worth much. Computers contain most business practices. Only a few occupations such as sales and management depend on the genius of the employee. With the emergence of high-tech industries, new generations of technology are born every few years, and new graduates can do this work better and cheaper than "old" employees of 30 or 35.
I dropped my payroll in 2008 in an adjustment to the changing business climate and set up my best thirty three men as subcontractors. In 2012, I sold the business to those men. I'm only fifty, so if the climate changes, I may start up again.
"We would be better off with no plan for the economy just government to a minimum." I expect you're right. Economic "plans" have never worked anywhere. Without such plans, businesses must adjust to market demands. It was the free market that created the middle class, something forgotten by today's government junkies. Sure, regulate to prevent gross abuses, but only businesses whose ultimate incentive is satisfying the market can build the wealth to endow a middle class. The problem is compounded by the growth of government, which removes people from productive activities and sets them to work "governing," i.e., telling other people what to do. This new Busybody class drains the economy not only by competing with businesses for labor, but by adding costs to the conduct of business. Regulatory compliance has become the tail wagging the dog. So what happened to the middle class? I suspect the answer is simpler than we might think: for a middle class to exist, the wealth to endow that class must exist; the cost of government - not only the direct cost - but the still bigger cost of regulatory compliance - has literally consumed that wealth that once flowed to the middle class. Businesses can no longer afford to be generous with employees because the government takes too much. Here's a powerful chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve showing all government employees from 1940 to the present. (Click on chart image to see it larger.) We have about 5 1/2 times the government employees now than we did in 1940, even though the US population only grew about 2 1/3 times in the same period (see http://www.livescience.com/19482-1940-census-online-2010.html).
There is what has been called "stickiness" to the top and bottom classes, meaning a lot of people stay there for their lives. It does not surprise me that companies focus on one or the other as part of their marketing strategies/business model. A lot of these companies are national companies. The existence of a "middle class" varies wildly from place to place in the US. It would be hard to have an efficient and effective national plan for national chains that focus primarily on the "middle class". To illustrate this point, just look at the 2005-2009 median income by county--there is a $90K difference between the top and the bottom, and even in Virginia which was at the top, there is an $85K difference between that county and the lowest county of the state in the chart (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...y-county-sorted-by-highest-income-table-.html)
the world is becoming a planet of two societies two cultures. One that earns all the money and one that is given a portion of what was earned by the first
If you look at all the Socialist, Marxist, Communist countries what do you see? I see a ruling class where all the wealth is concentrated and a working class that props them up. The trouble is, that by and by the masses lose interest in running on a tread mill and getting nothing in return for it except perhaps the satisfaction of knowing that all their efforts are going into helping the less industrious meet their "quotas". By and by, as more people begin to slack off, the whole thing inexorably grinds to a halt. Then nobody's happy. Fewer and fewer of the rulers get to enjoy less and less of whatever is produced. And it isn't very practical to just shoot all the forced labor, although I'm sure that our elitists are considering that as at least a partial solution. So what do you do?
Another way of looking at this data is to say that money and poverty tend to be clustered in discreet areas. That would make efficient national marketing even harder. The Times article makes the point that when businesses target small segments of the population, volatility results. Big business requires the steady predictable market that only broad definition can provide. - - - Updated - - - That's what's happening. The questions are why, and what can be done.
Your question answers itself. Junk socialism, Marxism, communism. Return to the capitalism that enriched the middle class. It's not that hard: vote for capitalists only, and demand that your party (in which you actively participate) nominate only capitalists; choose to work for (or create) productive capitalist businesses only; debate socialists whenever you get the chance, giving of your time, work, and money to defeat socialism; teach capitalism to your children and family. Above all, do not give in to the idea that the world must inevitably become socialist.
...and poor people are most everywhere and wealthier people will come to you or pay for freight charges to get exactly what they want regardless of where they live. I heard an interesting segment on NPR the other day. Amazon makes a mint off their Amazon Prime memberships. They are discussing raising the cost of that membership to even more money because they believe that by making it more expensive, the people who buy it will be more likely to use it and thereby increase Amazon's sales figures. That is somewhat counter-intuitive to what most people's instinct would be. It will be interesting to see if it works out for them.
Not really but many idiots think this. - - - Updated - - - NPR is some much pablum. Amazon is raising the price of Amazon Prime because they are getting killed by it since they are losing far more than they are making on it.
That's the idea behind membership plans. Customers want to use the plan enough to get "savings" equal or greater than the membership cost. Such plans are very common. An example - I pay AT&T about $32 a month for the right to unlimited calling anywhere in the US. No one would sign up who doesn't plan to make at least $32 of long distance calls every month. AT&T prefers the guaranteed revenue to the possibility of making more some months. Another example - I pay Walgreen's $20 a year for membership in their discount plan, which sells me prescription drugs for a small fraction of their normal cost. In exchange for offering the discounts, Walgreen's gets customers who otherwise might not shop there at all. In both cases, a company gets more business by charging more for a membership plan. - - - Updated - - - I wasn't defending the thinking, only explaining it.
Family owned companies were loyal to their employees. They kept them working throughout the Depression. They held their jobs for them during WWII, and helped them with buying homes and education after the War. All that began to change during the LBJ administration. Was it because of Nam? The Great Society Proclamation? Turning from a manufacturing country to a service society, or the raid on Social Security? Those are questions I know that I can't answer and better men than I cannot honest give us the truth.
The problem with that is that the same people who have used the false promises of Marxism are the same cabal that caused the deregulation of Wall Street which in turn allowed them to exploit the capitalist system to their own ends. It's more a matter of purging the system of crooks and confidence men than of making ivory tower arguments about economic principles. These people look for ways to exploit the capitalist system just as they managed to turn the entire Kremlin into an exchange house for organized crime.
"Crooks and confidence men" are the price we pay for our prosperity and freedom. No society can ever wholly purge itself of wrongdoing. Every society has rules, and those rules are always broken. That quest for purity is the excuse Hitler and Stalin and Mao used. I don't think we need purity. I cheerfully accept crooks, if the whole of society can be free and happy.
I guess I had the privilege working for people like that, although from the 70's on the picture changed and all employees became Social Security numbers and replaceable.
