How Obama and Biden Buried the Middle Class

Ed Morrissey in The Fiscal Times refers to Joe Biden's accidental revelation that the Democrats are busy "burying" the middle class.

The middle class isn't buries nearly as badly as the "lower class" who have been shoved off the ladder of success.  The entry level manual workers who can't get a job because local stores and restaurants are closing.  The recent graduate from either high school or college who can't find work and are moving back in with their parents when they ought to be on their own beginning families.  

Of course the middle aged, middle class worker who's getting a layoff notice because their company is "downsizing" is going to have a bad time finding a job even if they are willing to take a pay cut.  Hiring middle aged, middle class people with families is an expensive proposition for a company when not just salary but benefits are taken into account.  And if the laid-off worker is typical  he will have little in the way of a financial cushion to fall back on.    In his case, if he finds another job retirement may become impossible so working till age takes its toll may be his fate.  It's why you find ever more "mature" workers at Wal-Mart and   Lowe's.  They work part-time to supplement their social security not becaue they want to but because they have to.

Morrissey: 

Has the middle class been “buried” the last four years?  By any measure, the middle class has certainly lost ground. Median household income has declined 

That is one reason why the Census Bureau reported three weeks ago that the middle class had declined to“an all-time low” in 2011, as the Washington Post headlined their article on the subject. By the third year of Barack Obama’s presidency, poverty had leveled off at a near all-time high as well, while the middle class continued to lose ground on income.  But that wasn’t the only measure on which the middle class found itself moving backward; their average work hours also declined, as did the average pay rate, while home values continued to decline. The percentage of Americans with jobs fell to a 31-year low in August at 63.5 percent, another symptom of a decline in the middle class.