This marks the highest rate for long-term unemployment levels since World War II. “ A Year or More: The High Cost of Long-Term Unemployment” reports that no fewer than 44 percent of unemployed Americans met or exceeded the standard measure of long-term unemployment (six months or more) in March 2010. This and other statistics revealing the increasingly dismal employment opportunities facing millions of Americans are provided context in another study released this month by the Pew Economic Policy Group. The Pew survey found that 85 percent of Americans reported difficulty finding jobs in their communities. Twenty-five percent of workers say they expect to be forced to take a pay cut this year, while 24 percent expect to be laid off. Large numbers of workers polled in the study say they have little confidence in job security and prospects for the future, with almost half (49 percent) saying it is “very or somewhat likely” they will suffer “job-related financial stress” in the next year. However, the percentage of those facing difficulties paying rent has increased dramatically for both groups since 2009. A similar gap can be found in the category of rents and mortgages, with 37 percent of those making $30,000 or less reporting difficulty making rent or mortgage payments, compared to 11 percent of those making $75,000 or more. Some 44 percent of those making $30,000 per year or less report difficulty obtaining medical care, compared to 11 percent of those making $75,000 per year or more. More Americans faced problems with collections and credit agencies (21 percent), or had mortgages, loans or credit card applications denied (19 percent).Īs could be expected, the poorest Americans are suffering the most. Increasing numbers of people are reporting difficulty receiving or affording medical care (26 percent) or paying their rent or mortgage payments (24 percent). The poll saw an aggravation of conditions in every area of economic life studied the year before. Fifty-four percent report someone in their home has been without a job and looking for work in the past year, up from 39 percent in 2009.
No fewer than 70 percent of the respondents report having suffered job-related and financial problems in the past year, an increase from 59 percent the year before. Released in March, before the passage of the Obama administration’s health care legislation, a survey entitled “ Health Care Reform-Can’t Live With It, or Without It” indicates that 92 percent of Americans give the national economy a negative rating.
#Peasants for plutocracy series
It is happening as almost every individual and family in this nation can testify from personal experience - but what are we going to do about it?Ĭollapse of the Standard of Living in the USA | Hiram Lee/GlobalResearch.ca A series of recent studies conducted by the Pew Research Center shed new light on the scope of the economic crisis in the US and the level of hostility the majority of the American population holds for the US government. Right now we witnessing the bedrock of modern America, the middle class, being reduced to peasants for the empowerment of a very small elite, the plutocracy. And, we need to do what is necessary, including amending the Constitution, to ban corporate and special interest money from election campaigns and from lobbying the government at all levels.
#Peasants for plutocracy free
We need to bust-up the mega-transnational corporations and promote real competition and free enterprise we need a new emphasis on local and community economies economic decentralization is the goal. We need an economic and political 'velvet' revolution in this country. It is, of course, the corporate elite who have slowly but surely been supplanting our representative democracy - especially since the reign of Reagan. Second is a picture of who is benefiting from the destruction of traditional working America. It reminds us to restate our point that even if unemployment begins to go down, the new jobs will undoubtedly pay less with few benefits than than those they are replacing. Two articles here that nicely show exactly what is going on under the plutocratic central government in the United States of America.įirst is a portrait of what is actually happening to what was formerly the 'middle class' in this country.