“The rising asymmetry of rewards within our economy has many drivers.
If you read the dozens of articles on the decline of the middle class in the mainstream (corporate) media, you soon discover there’s a short list of the usual suspects:
1. Globalization / outsourcing
2. Technological changes / automation
3. “Winner take all” asymmetry in rewards for specialized skills
Clearly, each of these has squeezed the incomes of all those between the jobless poor and the wealthy reaping the lion’s share of the rewards from globalization and technological change.
All these factors are consequential, but they conveniently leave out the politically explosive dynamics that are enriching the political and financial elites (the few) at the expense of the middle class (the many).”
Charles Hugh Smith
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay17/killing-middle-class5-17.html
“I hope you won’t be too shocked that the core dynamic driving middle class decline is the way we create and distribute money, i.e. central-planning by central banks.
The federal government (the state) now funds and enforces rentier-cartels that have pushed the cost of healthcare and education through the roof.
The financial sector has financialized the core services that enabled a middle class: housing, higher education and healthcare.
The globalized state-cartel system optimizes corporations over small business and social / local enterprises.”
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay17/killing-m-classtwo5-17.html
These are the systemic forces that the central banks are pulling out all the stops to protect and extend for as long as possible.