More Warnings About The Two Tier Economy

In today's Los Angeles Times (5/27/11) there is a piece by Ron Brownstein (one of the level headed writers) entitled, "White, working class and alienated". I would reproduce it here but I can't find it. As you may know, the Los Angeles Times has serious, serious financial problems. So here are the highlights.

"...the average high-school educated, middle-aged man earns about 10% less than his counterpart did in 1980...."

And.......

"That huge bloc of Americans increasingly feels itself left behind---and lacks faith that either government or business cares much about its plight. Under these pressures, noncollege whites are now experiencing rates of out-of-wedlock birth and single parenthood approaching the levels that triggered worries about the black family a generation ago. Alarm bells should be ringing now about the social and economic trends in the battered white working class and the cry of distress rising from this latest survey."

Inside of the two tier economy (the incredibly rich and all of the rest of us), we are creating two additional classes, e.g., the middle class that Washington keeps blathering on about, and a lower, basically white, not well educated class that is never mentioned by any one in Washington.

If you want to see these people from the inside, you can't do better than Deer Hunting With Jesus. Just be warned it is repetitive.

To understand just about how important this problem is, understand that it includes 48% of all adult males. That represents about 75 million Americans.

Read that again. 75,000,000 Americans think that their future is only going to get worse and that nobody gives a damn. And they are about right!

The fundamental problem is that the labor intensive jobs they used to have are gone, long gone, to places where labor costs less. You can argue all you want about the morality of that fact, but the truth is that things you buy cost less because those jobs are gone.

O.K., so what do we do? The answer truly is simple. Re-training for jobs that do exist. Community Colleges are the perfect vehicle for that re-training. In The Great Recession Conspiracy we provide examples of such programs at work, successfully.

Did you know that a skilled wind turbine maintenance person can earn over $100,000 a year? That should cheer up any out of work white male with only a high school education.

So we have this huge, corrosive problem with a sure fire solution and what does the President do about it? That is right, NOTHING.

I am beginning to think Mitt is right. The President has no idea how this county really works.