Middle class is being replaced by the "Government Class".

Government employment = higher pay, better benefits, better retirement, greater job security, less job pressure, little chance of the boss shutting down the business.
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That which is passed off as "free" trade is tariffless trade at best. We get hosed by the manner in which our trading partners manipulate value added tax to perform the identical function. Then there´s the practice of requiring domestic business to follow costly rules and regulations but it´s ok to purchace from Whocaresistan.

All of 0bama´s policies, taxes, and regulations are killing the middle class. The banks get free money; they pay no interest to savers. 0bama is printing 83 Billion Dollars each month out of the air, and every one who has saved is watching his dollars being reduced in value each month. There are no jobs being created, and 0bama has taxed the middle class into oblivion. 0bama is killing the middle class and rewarding his union buddies, and Facebook who made over a billion dollars last year and is 0bama´s friend, will pay no taxes on the billion dollars, but Facebook will get back millions from the taxpayers. How is that fair, and 0bama says he wants everyone to pay their fair share. I do not get it, I guess.

Not even going to read it. The American middle class will soon be gone, and it was inevitable because it was based on low skilled manufaturing jobs, not trades or professions.

Cheap, low skill manfacturing jobs left America for the third world where they are cheaper. Those jobs were little more than "train-a-monkey" jobs anyway, so why pay some guy in Michigan to do it for $20/hour plus benefits plus pension, when a Chinese coolie or an Indian untouchable will sit barefoot on a dirt floor and do it for 10 cents a day? Who in the world do people think makes those cheap $10 sneakers at Walmart? Some blue collar guy in Ohio with a three bedroom house, two cars, a bass boat and a hefty 401K? Seriously?

Manufacturing jobs will never return to America. Some manufacturing itself will, but it will all be done by robots, not people.

We are entering the period of post industrial America, and there is no model for how to manage it successfully. There are only failure examples, such as England. Both capitalism and socialism will perish as economic models, since they are both models for managing the manufacturing economies which are obsoleting at a breathtaking rate. But there are some ideas that may prove useful, and which may have been a century before their time. Read Chesterton.

The entire concept of global competitive advantage is lost on Obama because of his determination to knock the US down a few notches in global importance. The highest tax burdens, the greatest regulatory burdens and the most redistribution of resources are his goal.

ØbaMugabe killed us.

The many jobs in nonunion (foreign-owned) auto plants and their suppliers - strewn now throughout the Southeast pay what we would consider ´middle-class wages´. According to Simplyhired, these wages average around 50K a year. Given the local COL - this is middle class.

Barak Hussein Obama, mmm mmm mmm.

What middle class ?

If I had a dollar for everytime Zippy said "Middle class" I might be wealthy.

Free trade with Europe?

This is the most ludicrous statement from the obama regime to date, or the most heinous plot to increase tax harvesting to date. You can guess what I will bet it is. The European union was started with one (only one) goal, Chareles DeGaul publicly stated it, often...it was to prevent American products from competing with European products. Whatever the European union has mutated into since, they have remained faithful to their original goal. The Europeans will not eliminate their 20% value added tax. That is a given. If obama wants a free trade agreement with Europe he will have to "normalize" the the national sales tax with Europe, right from the start, just to get the negotiations started. That means you will pay an extra 20% for everything, not just European products, everything. 20% of the GDP...you do the math. Once washington dc gets a 20% value added tax...who cares if a European trade agreement holds together...politicians just stuck 20% of America´s GDP in their back pocket. I´m not even going to mention the import duties that Europe charges to import American products into Europe that will add 300% to the cost of American made products, or dock side bureaucratic inspections that force non-European products to sit out in the open until they rot or rust.

Ludicrous.

The useless scums who´d been persecuting the Bourgeois for almost 200 years because the middle-class had made something of themselves and they didn´t, of course.