How are you enjoying the New Normal? 

While the rich have gotten richer from State bailouts and subsidies the 99% rest of the country have slid into wage slavery. A slavery predicated on workers taking on suffocating debt just to be educated. Education in most countries is partially or fully paid for by the government as it is seen as an investment in the future. But America is a little different. As Chairman Greenspan liked to point out heavily indebted workers don’t strike or make demands and the powers that be would rather destroy the middle class than dare have to pay out higher wages.

But there was always some vain hope and constantly repeated mantra from parents and the media that taking out epic amounts of debt to go to college was always worth it – not so much:

Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they’re overqualified…

Earnings in 2011 averaged $59,415 for people with any earnings ages 25 and older whose highest degree was a bachelor’s degree, and $32,493 for people with a high school diploma but no college, the Census data show.

Vedder, whose study is based on 2010 Labor Department data, says the problem is the stock of college graduates in the workforce (41.7 million) in 2010 was larger than the number of jobs requiring a college degree (28.6 million).

That, he says, helps explain why 15% of taxi drivers in 2010 had bachelor’s degrees vs. 1% in 1970. Among retail sales clerks, 25% had a bachelor’s degree in 2010. Less than 5% did in 1970.

“There are going to be an awful lot of disappointed people because a lot of them are going to end up as janitors,” Vedder says. In 2010, 5% of janitors, 115,520 workers, had bachelor’s degrees, his data show.

Literally consigned to the dustbin of American society.

To recap America’s current economic system. Those at the top are generally incompetent yet receive bailouts, guarantees, and in many cases outright welfare from the State. The working (formerly middle) class is educated but poor, indebted, and increasingly underemployed. While the poor are left to rot but are occasionally provided with some assistance so they do not starve or riot.

How much longer can this system go on? How much longer should this system go on?

Photo by JSquish, under Creative Commons license