The United States of America – Where Class Mobility Goes to Die

“The United States of America was built on one main principle: one's inherited socioeconomic status is nothing more than a circumstance of the past that is to be rectified by their true destiny. The U.S. used this simple ideology to propel itself as one of the five great power nations of the world socially, economically and politically. This principle attracted countless immigrants who fled their countries of origin to escape a predestined fate…

“Centuries of strategic American propaganda have done an inconceivably good job at luring immigrants with the promise of a lucrative life built upon the foundations of hope and opportunity. I posit that it's becoming increasingly difficult for the vast majority to achieve Thomas Jefferson's American dream, underpinned by a person's right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.” 

 Solo Ceesay, Entrepreneur, May 2, 2023

Is there something wrong with a country where 1% of the population owns more wealth than the entire bottom 60% of the country, where rich is migrating into the world of individual trillionaires, where the United States has 813 of the world’s 2,781 billionaires (according to the March 2024 Forbes) and Donald Trump doesn’t even make the Forbes richest 400 Americans list? Where we are the only developed nation without universal healthcare, where homelessness is becoming a “good weather state” American pastime and where most Americans who did not buy a home years before will never own their own home?

As education was once the great key to upward mobility, too many of our public primary and secondary schools are focused on “anti-woke” priorities without much in the way of hiring and retaining good teachers, as the value of a college degree continues to fall, all we seem to have done is to triple college and trade school tuition (above the rate of inflation), saddling the rising generations with massive long-term debt. Oh, and killing the American dream – dead, dead, dead – relegating upward mobility to our history books, depriving most Americans of hope, but ladling them with oceans of fear and uncertainty. In case you wondered why conspiracy theories with false promises and politicians finding innocents to blame have replaced reality… look at reality!

What really annoys so many Americans is Biden’s citing of those macro-success statistics is that such numbers may impact asset values and globalized performance but have little or nothing to do with their daily lives. Example: If I have nine people earning $40,000 a year and one earning $1 million/year, their average earnings are $136,000/year. Yeah, high earners skew the average. But so many government statistics are based on such averaging – even Gross Domestic Product – that success may be the perception, but misery the reality. Unemployment numbers are particularly susceptible. For example, working does not mean you are making a reasonable wage or salary. Or you might be staring AI-downsizing that is inevitable. Underemployment is a huge issue. Are we becoming a nation of baristas with advanced degrees?

One of the big indicators of pain is what might be called a “white collar recession.” Writing for the April 30’s Business Insider, Aki Ito observes: “The economy is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. Wages are growing faster than inflation. By all the standard measures, the job market is doing just fine. So why am I hearing such a different story from people on the ground?

“The dissonance finally started to make sense to me when Vanguard, the investment-management company, released its latest report on hiring. By looking at the enrollment and contribution rates of its 401(k) retirement plans, Vanguard is able to calculate a national hiring rate broken down by income level. And what the numbers show is a two-tier job market — one divided between a blue-collar boom and a white-collar recession.

“Among Vanguard's lowest earners — those who make less than $55,000 — the hiring rate has held up well. At 1.5%, it's still above pre-pandemic levels. But among those who make more than $96,000? It's pretty depressing. Hiring has slowed to a dismal 0.5%, less than half the peak it reached in mid-2022. Excluding the dip in the early months of the pandemic, that's the worst it's been since 2014. If you make a six-figure salary, it really is a bad time to be looking for a job.

“The question here is why. Why are companies hiring so few white-collar workers right now? Several possible explanations come to mind. It might be that fewer people in corporate jobs are quitting right now, which would mean companies have fewer openings they need to fill. It might be that the industries that are struggling the most — tech and finance — are the ones that employ a lot of high-earning professionals. Or it might be that CEOs are making good on their threats to cut back on what they see as corporate bloat — what Mark Zuckerberg has called ‘managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.’..

“Vanguard's data show that things are tough for professionals who are looking for a job. But there aren't that many people who actually need a new job right now: The unemployment rate for people with a college degree is 2.1%, and the national layoff rate is below what it was pre-pandemic. When the vast majority of professionals already have a job — and are able to keep their jobs — maybe it's OK that companies aren't hiring… But that argument doesn't take into account one important factor: What if the job you have is one you hate? I have several friends who are unhappy in their current jobs, but they can't quit because no one is hiring.”

We’ve relied on the economic growth of the past, borrowed to sustain our “standard of living,” either under-taxed or did not tax wealth at all (only revenue and income) and have generally failed to invest in our own future in value creating sectors. “Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, our nation's leaders dreamt of making America the ruler of all on the back of a stupidly simple yet compelling ideology – the American Dream. America vowed to be the land of opportunity where any individual could become whatever they aspired to be. No matter what. Social and vocational mobility pushed America to new heights — but most importantly — it set the stage for what would become decades of parabolic growth and the birth of the highly lucrative, meaningful entertainment, financial, and sports industries.

“Fast forward a bit further, and to your surprise, you might mistake yourself for having gone into the past. In today's post-American Dream world, many people operate within class constraints, similar to the 19th century. The realities that plague us today are inescapable: they're embedded into poor monetary policy, a growing disdain from other world powers and the remnants of capitalism.

“Our parabolic growth has not only paused, but it feels as though we have turned the clock back a few years. All that's different is that we have things like the iPhone and Uber Eats. With the last few years of inflation, these luxuries have become readily accessible, while the cost of necessities like bills and rent have put the nation in a chokehold.” Solo Ceesay, writing for the June 24th Entrepreneur.

While Biden lives in macro-success land, Trump has seized on what Ito calls

“‘vibecession’: the weird state of feeling like we're in a recession even though all the standard metrics show we're not.” But Trump’s mega-cut in the corporate tax rate, his posture on deporting immigrants, his denigration of educated professionals and his efforts toward elevating religiosity into everything from medicine to education have slammed the door on the very working-class constituents he promises to bring back to a “great” era. If Trump is elected, the one sure thing his constituents can expect: a vastly worse economic picture which Trump will blame on others.

I’m Peter Dekom, and having a future means living in the real world, making those who have benefited the most pay their fair share of taxes and investing hard dollars in our future vs just borrowing to stay afloat.