MOSCOW, April 23 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova – The decline of America’s middle class is part of the deep economic logic of the global era that started in the 1980s, Saskia Sassen, a sociology professor at Columbia University, told RIA Novosti.
“I think this is part of the deep economic logic of the global era that started in the 1980s,” said Sassen, an author of several books on issues of globalization and sociology.
In the US, the middle class is weakening, with after-tax income falling behind the middle class in other countries of the world, according to a study published Tuesday conducted by the New York Times and the LIS cross-national data center.
“After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada – substantially behind in 2000 – now appear to be higher than in the United States.”
“The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans,” the report says. “A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true.”
“In fact, in my early book ‘The Global City,’ I have a whole chapter where I describe trends that at that time were telling me that this was beginning to happen and it would only get worse,” Sassen told RIA Novosti.
“I got criticized for being absolutely wrong ... but I was right,” she added.
At the same time, affluent Americans are multiplying their wealth much faster than the rich in other countries. “Top executives make substantially more money in the United States than in other wealthy countries,” the reports said, adding that minimum wages in the US are correspondingly lower and labor unions weaker.
“And because the total bounty produced by the American economy has not been growing substantially faster here in recent decades than in Canada or Western Europe, most American workers are left receiving meager raises,” the report concluded.
“In fact it is a deep trend, and it is happening though less dramatically even in countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, etc.,” Sassen said.
“I would guess it is also happening in Russia,” Sassen believes. “A very rich new middle class, richer than they ever thought they would be, not the super-rich, but a very rich middle class, and an impoverishment of the older traditional middle class professions – professors, nurses, etc.,” she added.
In Russia however, the government is seeking to narrow the income gap and the wages of professors, nurses, doctors and teachers have been steadily increasing over the past decade.
“I’d like to say that in 2013, in all regions, we managed to increase wages of medical personnel,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday. “The wages of school teachers were increased in all regions except three,” he added and vowed to continue increasing wages of budgetary workers in accordance with a government roadmap.
