Nouveau Poor

According to the NYT, even as the economy shows signs of recovery millions face years of unemployment. It’s almost as if everyone has shifted down a notch on the wealth-status scale. The middle-class are now the vulnerable. The rich…well, they’re still rich.

But the poor are now struggling to survive. Social safety nets are running out, and more people are seeking out emergency benefits, food stamps and other handouts. But this is not exclusive to the poor. Middle class citizens, who had decent paying jobs and long careers ahead of them, have exhausted their savings and are living handout-to-handout.

The richest nation on earth seems to have slid down the wealth scale overnight. However, this is not a sudden phenomenon. This is the last symptom of a growing disease – the cancerous destruction of the middle class.

Millions of middle class citizens have been living paycheck to paycheck over the past 20 years. The cost of housing has risen, we have become 2-car families, we take semi-annual exotic vacations…essentially, we have found new and exciting ways to spend our money and more.

Since the 1970s we have focused on keeping up with our neighbors in an unrelenting pursuit of wealth, which in the end turned out to be a thin veneer. We appear wealthy on the outside – with big, expensive houses, luxury cars – but beneath the surface is a decrepid economy overloaded with debt.

Alas, much of this wealth doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to those who have lent us the money.

Unfortunately, empires are brought to their knees by debt. China, Japan and various others have lent us the money to buy our fancy ornaments and make golden promises of retirement and long-life. Promise upon promise = debt upon debt. But now it is clear that our wealth, and even promises of future security, was a farce.

So there goes the jobs that were created in an era of care-free spending.

Check out the New York Times article.