"Despite Job Growth, Americans Continue to Struggle to Reach the Middle Class"

[applegrove]

Despite Job Growth, Americans Continue to Struggle to Reach the Middle Class

by Adam Hersh at American Progress

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/12/06/80627/despite-job-growth-americans-continue-to-struggle-to-reach-the-middle-class/

"SNIP......................................


Congress can start by choosing to replace the sequester’s mindless spending cuts with a growth-oriented budget that creates good jobs and investment today to create the future of broadly shared prosperity all Americans want. Without the sequester’s blind, across-the-board spending cuts and other fiscal austerity in 2013, the economy could have added more than 400,000 jobs per month, rather than the 195,000 per month actually experienced, according to estimates by economists at Deutsche Bank.

More growth-killing cuts are in store for 2014 unless Congress chooses to change course, including the scheduled expiration of emergency unemployment insurance benefits at the end of this year. New analysis from the Congressional Budget Office indicates that Congress could help add 204,000 jobs to total employment in 2014 by helping those still suffering from long-term unemployment stand back on their feet nearly six years after the start of the Great Recession.

Congress also has the choice to reward millions of hardworking people who build American prosperity but do not share commensurately in the rewards by raising the minimum wage and authorizing comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship. Both would boost wages at the lower end of the labor market as well as unemployment, all while bringing down the budget deficit.

Right now, the choice is Congress’s to make. But if it fails to put us back on the middle-out path, it will be America’s turn to choose a new Congress next November.




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[MindMover]

1. I grew up in the midwest in the 60s and 70s ...

my father worked one sales representative job and my mother did not work ... we lived in a middle class neighborhood and ate well and went on vacations every year, sometimes twice a year ... my parents flew to Europe at least once a year visiting my mothers relatives ... my family had 1-2 autos this entire time ...

I dare anyone today trying to say they are middle class to say they have done the same above or are doing the same above ....

There is no middle class left in the USA ....