America's False-Front, Movie-Set Economy

America’s economy resembles the propped-up false fronts of an old Western movie set; it seems unlikely to support a middle class anymore. The existential issue is simple, though insufficiently discussed: technology, demographics, and government policy are collaborating to impose economic decline. The evaporating middle class is taking the erstwhile American worker and his employer with it as it fades. Folk whose worry ends with the deficits hollowing out Social Security and health care are worried about poor passenger service in a falling airplane. First, consider the U.S. workforce. Contrary to some folk, the government isn’t going to support everybody; the government has only the money it takes from citizens. Unemployed and minimum-wage Americans offer little to take, and the Labor Force Participation Rate is declining. Those growing numbers of non-working people have to be housed, fed, and watered by those still working. Government SNAP (food stamps), disability, and/or other benefits are presently paid to 49% of Americans. That is a wobbly crutch resting upon deficits from a government burdened with debt. Most of the money is taken from workers whose incomes have just halted a six-year decline. Our grandparents spoke of “trying to get blood from a turnip.”