The Jobs "Report" And The Drowning Middle Class

There's been a lot of talk of fake jobs reports going around lately. Before that, the hot topic was the struggling (as always) American middle class. See a pattern?

There is plenty of blame to go around.

One one side, many of the jobs that have "come back" after the great recession are lower paying. There is a wider gap between "professionals" (with higher education requirements) and service workers in terms of pay.

In either case, most professionals are saddled with enormous student loan debt for degrees REQUIRED to get an entry level position and service workers, although without needing to take out debt, face lower wages. There are few good "middle class" jobs that don't require college.

In this case, the blame falls on government and politicians - defunding state education and promoting borrowing for college let universities raise prices as much as they wanted. Labor unions are great for workers (fighting for benefits, higher wages, more rights) and are almost extinct. Healthcare costs are sky high and the only solution we can come up with is to keep throwing money at it.

But alas, it was We The People who voted these people into office, who supported their plans. It is also us who decided we needed houses twice as big as our grandparents, need a new car every 3 years (with an 80 month loan) instead of 6 or 7, need a TV in every room with cable and the fastest internet on the newest smartphone, and believe that our lives are what we make them - until we don't like what's been made.

There isn't one solution to these problems. But I think a great place to start is to stop trying so damn hard to "do well" - aka better than everyone else - and try to do good - where we all end up doing better. Accept responsibility for where we are, do our own fucking research, and turn to somewhere other than, I dunno, Facebook to get our news and information?

If the Middle Class truly is drowning, then at the moment we're in a panic and wasting our energy. To survive, we simply need to stop, take a breath, and think about where we are.