{"id":131112,"date":"2012-06-21T10:04:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T14:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=131112"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:04:03","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:04:03","slug":"middle-class-wealth-drops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/06\/21\/middle-class-wealth-drops\/","title":{"rendered":"The Irrevocable Losses Of The Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> The Middle Class Loses a Generation\u2019s Worth of Wealth<\/a> by Theresa Riley in Bill Moyers.com.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> A new survey released Monday by the Federal Reserve shows that middle class American families lost almost 20 years of accumulated wealth from 2007 to 2010. The median American family lost 39 percent of their net worth \u2014 from $126,400 to $77,300 \u2014 putting them roughly on par with their worth in 1992. The crash of housing prices directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss. The Washington Post reported that \u201cHomeownership, once heralded as a pathway to wealth, became an albatross.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, the Federal Reserve reported that median incomes fell across almost all demographic groups during the same period. The only groups to experience a rise in income were nonworking families \u2014 namely, retirees and the very poor. Some of that growth was due to an expansion of government aid programs that were part of Obama\u2019s 2009 stimulus package. The decline in median income was most pronounced among more highly educated families and families headed by persons aged less than 55.
\nAs Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody\u2019s Analytics, told The Washington Post, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to overstate how serious the collapse in the economy was. We were in free fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fed\u2019s Survey of Consumer Finances is released every three years to provide details on the finances of American families. Although the data is over 18 months old, it provides a snapshot of the staggering impact that the housing crisis and recession had on the middle class. In this morning\u2019s Washington Post, political reporters Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write that we shouldn\u2019t \u201cunderestimate the impact that those numbers could have on the 2012 election\u2026 There is lots and lots of other evidence \u2026 that suggests that voters are going to head to their polling place this fall with a pessimistic answer to the \u2018are you better off\u2019 question.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While that remains to be seen, The Post\u2019s Jonathan Bernstein writes that the big question is who voters blame for their pessimism. He writes that the 2007-2010 statistics are a reminder that this presidential election is \u201creally a matchup between Obama and Bush\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObama\u2019s chances for reelection are going to depend heavily on whether the American people hold Obama or George W. Bush responsible for the economy. In effect, this is essentially a matchup between Obama and his predecessor in a way we haven\u2019t seen in presidential elections before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Atlantic\u2019s Michael Hirsh writes that if Obama loses in November, it will be because he alienated the middle class. He writes that \u201c[i]t\u2019s hardly fair to blame Obama for what began in 2007, but there\u2019s no reason why he shouldn\u2019t also be saddled for some of the blame in underestimating the severity of the crisis. Indeed, as economist Emmanuel Saez has written, the wealthiest one percent in the country have actually made out better, in percentage terms, during Obama\u2019s \u2018recovery\u2019 of 2009-2010 than they did from 2002 to 2007 under George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJudging from recent polls \u2014 my colleague Ron Brownstein parses one here \u2014 the perception of the president is that he\u2019s spending a lot more time coddling the very poor (the uninsured) and the very rich (Wall Street) than he is the middle class. Obama spent a huge portion of his political capital on Obamacare, and almost none on helping underwater middle-class mortgage holders. Nor did he deploy, in a big way, the enormous leverage he had over Wall Street and Main Street both to induce more lending and hiring.<\/p>\n

Hirsh writes that this \u201cfestering inequality at the heart of our economy is perhaps the main reason why Barack Obama may lose in November.\u201d He concludes that if Obama gets voted out, the middle class \u201cwill be the ones to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: The Middle Class Loses a Generation\u2019s Worth of Wealth by Theresa Riley in Bill Moyers.com. The Text: A new survey released Monday by the Federal Reserve shows that middle class American families lost almost 20 years of accumulated wealth from 2007 to 2010. The median American family lost 39 percent of their net […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Irrevocable Losses Of The Middle Class<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From 2007 to 2010, middle-class families suffered the loss of 20% of their income.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/06\/21\/middle-class-wealth-drops\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Irrevocable Losses Of The Middle Class\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From 2007 to 2010, middle-class families suffered the 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