{"id":13033,"date":"2015-10-05T06:44:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T11:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13033"},"modified":"2015-10-05T06:44:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T11:44:37","slug":"welcome-to-the-future-downward-mobility-and-social-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13033","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Future: Downward Mobility and Social Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Future: Downward Mobility and Social Depression<\/a><\/h3>\n

If you don’t think these definitions apply, please check back in a year.<\/i><\/p>\n

The mainstream is finally waking up to the future of the American Dream: downward mobility for all but the top 10% of households.<\/b>\u00a0A recent\u00a0Atlantic<\/i>article fleshed out the zeitgeist with survey data that suggests the Great Middle Class\/Nouveau Proletariat<\/i>\u00a0is also waking up to a future of downward mobility:\u00a0The Downsizing of the American Dream<\/a>:\u00a0People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they\u2019re more concerned with just holding on to what they have.<\/i><\/p>\n

I dug into the financial and social realities of what it takes to be middle class in today’s economy:\u00a0Are You Really Middle Class?<\/a><\/p>\n

The reality is that the\u00a0middle class<\/i>\u00a0has been reduced to the sliver just below the top 5%–if we use the standards of the prosperous 1960s as baseline.<\/p>\n

The downward mobility isn’t just financial–it’s a decline in political power, control of one’s work and income-producing assets.<\/b>\u00a0This article reminds us of what the middle class once represented:\u00a0What Middle Class? How bourgeois America is getting recast as a proletariat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The costs of trying to maintain a toehold in the upper-middle class are illuminated in these recent articles on health and healthcare<\/b>–both part of the downward mobility:<\/p>\n

Health Care Slavery and Overwork<\/a><\/p>\n

How a toxic workplace could, literally, destroy your health<\/a><\/p>\n

We’re afraid our work is killing us, and we are right<\/a><\/p>\n

This reappraisal of the American Dream is also triggering a reappraisal of the middle class in the decades of widespread prosperity:\u00a0The Myth of the Middle Class: Have Most Americans Always Been Poor?<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s the financial reality for the bottom 90%: declining real income:<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Future: Downward Mobility and Social Depression If you don’t think these definitions apply, please check back in a year. The mainstream is finally waking up to the future of the American Dream: downward mobility for all but the top 10% of households.\u00a0A recent\u00a0Atlanticarticle fleshed out the zeitgeist with survey data that suggests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2822,127,9610,9609,2137,4924,5544],"class_list":["post-13033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-american-dream","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-declining-income","tag-downward-mobility","tag-middle-class","tag-oftwominds","tag-social-depression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13034,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033\/revisions\/13034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}