by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
If we keep going down this path, soon we won’t have much of a “middle class” at all. When I first started writing about the economy many years ago, I often wrote about the tens of millions of “working poor” Americans that were enduring so many hardships. But at this point most of the nation now falls into the “working poor” category. That isn’t because wages haven’t been going up. Little by little, wages have been incrementally rising year after year, but meanwhile the cost of living has been absolutely soaring. Paychecks have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and this has been eviscerating the middle class. Today, the majority of the country is in constant “survival mode” financially, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.
When I was growing up, retailers that catered to the middle class did exceptionally well. My mother was constantly taking me and my siblings to JCPenney and Sears, and it seemed like that was where virtually everyone shopped.