Friday, July 26, 2013

3 Myths About the Besieged Middle Class

Remember the Middle Class Task Force? Gee, how could you have forgotten? President Obama set up this group shortly after taking office in 2009, to identify the strains weighing on mainstream Americans and come up with solutions. So far, the MCTF has issued nine reports.
The middle class is still struggling, however, which is why Obama has returned to the question of how to help them. In his recent speech in Galesburg, Ill. — billed by his advisers as the kickoff to a series of freshly recycled ideas on how to boost the economy — Obama bemoaned “the erosion of middle-class security” and said we need more jobs, more investment and more-affordable education if we want to strengthen the backbone of the U.S. economy.
Obama’s economic proposals, while unlikely to get much of a hearing in Congress, are mostly sensible ideas that economists think would, in fact, help the economy. And there’s a wealth of data showing that quality of life has been slipping for many Americans. Yet political jawboning has also created a whole mythology around the concept of the middle class and what it takes to keep this heaving creature alive. If Obama is going to instigate yet another public debate about the welfare of this population, then it’s worth rethinking what the middle class is and what will determine its future.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/3-myths-besieged-middle-class-210615280.html

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