OK. Let's put the party politics aside for a second here and just talk about the middle class under Obama. What have we seen? I can tell you that MANY of my friends are contractors. Many used to be employed with big firms. Most are contractors now because they got laid off in the past few years and have come back to some of the same firms as contractors. Their former employers laid them off, because they don't want to pay the increased healthcare costs and SS and Medicare taxes, but they are fine picking them back up as contractors. The kicker for my contractor friends is that the pay isn't bad, but their health care costs have skyrocketed. So holistically, they have taken a step backwards in pay. In most cases, they are paying double under Obamacare, for worse insurance coverage than they had when they are employed. I'm trying to help, by hiring some of these folks back on my team, but there's only so much one person can do. All of these folks are solidly upper middle class, I'd say, with families, kids in school or college, and a heap of weekly bills to pay. Most don't have much savings in the bank nor investments in stocks and most have mortgages to pay.
So who has paid the price from Obama's policies? Well, the middle class has seen their incomes stagnate over the last 6 years of Obama's Presidency, continuing a trend that's been going on for a long while. However, due to Obama's Fed, under Bernanke and now Yellen, the value of a dollar has decline, with the cost of living increasing over the last 6 years, also continuing a trend that's been going on a long while. In addition, with increased taxes on Obamacare, as well as AMT creeping into the middle class, they have also seen their take home pay go down as a result. All of this adds up to a massive middle class squeeze.
Well then, who has benefitted most from Obama's policies? The poor most definitely. They get Obama phones, 5 years of unemployment, food stamps, and a whole host of welfare. The rich most definitely. I'm in the 1% and have most of my wealth in stocks, real estate, and other investments. The last 5 years has been beautifully bountiful to 1%. Our portfolios have expanded nicely with all this Quantitative Easing. Low rates have been nice too, where the 1% has snapped up nice real estate properties at low prices from their cronies, the Big Banks, for renting out at high rents to all those middle class people who lost their homes in 2008-9. I saw that happen in a home right across the street from me. Our upper middle class friends lost their home, a company came in 3 years later and bought it for half the price, and now rents it to a nice family for a healthy rent.
All of this makes me sick and feeling guilty. I'm doing fine, but I see the misery all around me and I know and see and feel viscerally what these Obama and Fed policies are doing. They are enriching the rich and giving welfare to the poor, and DESTROYING the middle class. It's a barbell society and it is terrible for this country over the long run.
Printing money is not a solution. There are only so many times you can slice the pie, before the slivers are too small to mean anything. Endless zero percent interest rates to the big banks only enriches the big banks. It doesn't help anyone over the long run. Giveaways to people who aren't working doesn't help the guy who's working 3 jobs to make ends meet. This Obamacare has some great elements to it like no denials for pre-existing conditions and no health care maximums, etc, but it has bludgeoned the middle class. Obama's economic policies are not based on building a society of people who want to be self reliant and work hard. It is based on a misguided concept that we need a nanny state and none of us should worry if we don't have a job, because the government will take care of us.
It's time for all of us to recognize that our government needs to live within it's means and that we can't be the world's police and the world's piggy bank. We've lost our way, our morals, and we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater when we embrace socialism and kick capitalism to the curb. |
