A Shrinking Middle Class?

Sicko libtards are gleefully clicking their heels over data showing America’s middle class may be shrinking

Reality Zone (not a libtard) is the rare liberal blog that has some rationality to it some of the time. He featured an article from lefty website Business Insider that seeks to prove that the middle class is being wiped out of existence.

It is lefty skewed, and there are a few statistical tricks in there, but its factual foundation is fairly sound. Typical of the genre, it offers no solutions, other than to punish businesses for moving overseas.

It is also rife with trite talking points...

"The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job."

Since Jefferson's passing, when has this ever not been true?

China can't keep  its workers down forever
The article asks how we can compete with low wage countries. Well, we do! US Manufacturing has grown for the 13th straight month.  Daniel Ikeson at CATO has the details.  We have better infrastructure and more educated workers. As these third-world labor pools become more educated and developed, their labor costs go up, and their competitive advantage, like ours, must come from efficiency.

Another thought occurred to me as I was scrolling through the slide show. These Americans who have saved nothing and live paycheck to paycheck, etc... are the same ones who have been on an unprecedented 30 year spending binge, gorging themselves on big cars, bigger houses, XBoxes, you name it. These are people who use a credit card to pay for a vacation instead of saving up for it.

It also strikes me that Keynesian liberals think the solution is for us to spend more, when that is what got us here in the first place, on a personal and a government level.

They also schizophrenically lament the fact that home prices are too high while simultaneously funding programs that keep the bubble inflated. Keeping homeowners from going underwater and making housing more affordable are mutually exclusive goals, proving again that government has no business manipulating markets.

Once home prices find their bottom, more people will be able to afford them, inventory will go down, and prices will rise. All without the nanny state cajoling it along.

Do you want a jobs program, or do you want a jobs economy?

As for the middle class, we need jobs, and only a booming economy can provide that. Here’s a quick story about Milton Friedman’s visit to an Asian country's job site where they were building a canal:

He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: "You don't understand. This is a jobs program." To which Milton replied: "Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels." (Moore - WSJ)