12 Signs You Might Not Be Middle Class

SIGNS YOU ARE NOT (OR NEVER WERE) MIDDLE CLASS

A Bear Market Economics Feature Article

A Bear Market Economics Feature Article

 

Unfortunately, fewer people now consider themselves middle class, studies show. Only 44 percent of Americans described themselves as middle class last year, down from 53 percent in 2008. And that's not because a chunk of the country is suddenly more wealthy. More people were describing themselves as lower-middle class or poor.

If most of the following signs occur for you, you are probably not middle class

1. You “Earn” Less Than $40,000 a year

Median household income was $54,510 in February, according to the latest estimates from Sentier Research. That's up from just above the $51,000 mark in 2012.

Pew Research defines a middle-class household income as two-thirds to double the national median, or between about $36,000 and $109,000 a year.

Of course, a middle-class income can vary depending on where you live. In San Jose, California, it ranges between $51,000 and $182,000 a year, according to a recent analysis by NPR. But in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the range drops to between $18,000 and $67,000 a year.

2. You Do Not Have a Secure Job or Career

Americans may be changing their views on what it means to be middle class. In 1991, some 70 percent of people said that homeownership was essential to being in the middle class, according to Pew Research. Only a third said that having a "white-collar job" was key.

Fast-forward to 2012, when nearly nine out of 10 Americans said a secure job is essential to being in the middle class. Only 45 percent said owning a home was important.

3. You Do Not Have a College Education

To be sure, many households are able to reach middle-class income levels without a college education. But generally, when Americans think of middle-class families, surveys show they think of parents who went to college and are saving for a college education for their children.

Americans used to think that a college education was more essential for the middle-class label. In 1991, nearly half of those surveyed said a college education was important to the middle class. That number dropped to 37 percent in 2012, according to Pew.

4. You Do Not Own a Home or Probably Never Will (or You Will Never Pay Off Your Mortgage)

Homeownership has long been a hallmark of the middle class. In a 2013 speech, President Obama called it "the most tangible cornerstone that lies at the heart of the American Dream, at the heart of middle-class life."

But owning a home became much harder after the financial crisis walloped the housing market. The homeownership rate fell to 64 percent in 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, down from 69 percent a decade earlier.

"Perhaps the main new reality is that homeownership isn't as easy to attain as it has been during most of the decades after World War II," trade publication Commercial Property Executive reports. "For a lot of people, the money isn't there, because the American economy simply doesn't offer as many well-paying jobs as it used to."

5. You Do Not Take Vacations

A vacation is an extra expense that many middle-earners cannot afford without sacrificing something else. A Statista survey found that this year 54% of people gave up purchasing big ticket items like TVs or electronics so they can go on a vacation. Others made sacrifices like reducing or eliminating their trips to the movies (47%), reducing or eliminating trips out to restaurants (43%), or avoiding purchasing small ticket items like new clothing (43%).

The family vacation "is a middle-class staple," writes James McWhinney at Investopedia. "Vacations demonstrate that a family has disposable income and has been successful enough to take time away from work to focus on leisure."

You'll need plenty of disposable income for some family vacations. The average American family spent nearly $4,600 on a summer vacation in 2013, according to American Express. As the economy has improved, consumers have begun planning more vacations and spending more on them as well.

6. You Do Not Own or Purchase A New Vehicle

Very few people who earn the median income can afford to buy a new car or truck. Interest.com recently analyzed the prices of new cars and trucks, as well as the median incomes across more than two dozen major cities, and found that new cars and trucks were simply not affordable to most middle-earners.

"Median-income families in only one major city [Washington DC] can afford the average price Americans are paying for new cars and trucks nowadays." As of 2013, new cars are priced at $32,086, according to the study. Mike Sante, Interest.com's managing editor reminds us, "just because you can manage the monthly payment doesn't mean you should let a $30,000 or $40,000 ride gobble up all such a huge share of your paycheck."

7. Your Debt Exceeds Your Net Worth

"More than 160 million Americans have credit cards.""The average credit card holder has at least three cards.""On average, each household with a credit card carries more than $15,000 in credit card debt."

Not only do we have large amounts of credit card debt, we also have student loans, mortgages, cars, and medical debts. Our debt is growing faster than our income, and many middle class workers have trouble staying afloat. Money-Zine evaluated debt growth and income growth over the past few decades and found that "back in 1980, the consumer credit per person was $1,540, which was 7.3% of the average household income of $21,100. In 2013, consumer debt was $9,800 per person, which was 13.4% of the average household income of $72,600. This means debt increased 70% faster than income from 1980 through 2013."

These debt statistics come from Debt.org.

8. You Have No Significant Emergency Savings

To provide ourselves with a degree of financial security, we are supposed to have emergency savings to protect ourselves in the event of job loss, illness, or some other catastrophe. Most members of the middle class don't have at least six months of emergency savings, however, and some working people have no such savings.

A Bankrate survey found that only around one out of four households have six months of emergency money saved, and many of them are in the higher income groups. Another one-fourth have no emergency savings at all, and the remaining household have a small to moderate amount of savings, but not enough to cover six months of expenses.

9. You Have No Significant Retirement Savings


Investing for the golden years is important to America's middle class, but that doesn't mean they do a very good job of it.

It has become more difficult for most Americans, including the middle class, to set enough money aside for the retirement years. Researchers with the Employee Benefit Research Institute ran some scenarios last year that looked at what would happen for Americans who spent a maximum 35 years in retirement.

Would people in the second- and third-income quartile -- the middle income quartiles -- run out of money? In the second-income quartile, 47 percent would fall short. In the third-income quartile, 28 percent would run out.

If you reach the retirement age with little or no money saved, Social Security is probably not going to be enough to cover your basic needs. Even if you want to work for your entire life, you have no way of knowing whether or not you will be physically capable of doing so.

Although having a lack of a retirement savings is a risky move, so many people bet on double zero, just hoping that things will work out in their favor. While some members of the middle class neglect this aspect of financial planning because they are procrastinating, there are also some workers who cannot afford to set this money aside. Nearly half of those who don't save for retirement say it's because they simply don't have the money.

As of late, around 20% of people near 65 have not saved anything for retirement at all, and the majority of people — 59% — worry that they don't have enough money saved for retirement, according to a Gallup Poll.

10. You Cannot Meet A Medical Emergency Requiring Out of Pocket Cost Over $400

Medical care is a basic necessity and something we'd think would be affordable for someone earning a middle income. A Forbes article published data indicating that workers in large companies — many of whom are members of the middle class — "face nearly $5,000 in premiums, co-payments, deductibles and other forms of co-insurance."

During the past few years, these costs have had a large impact on working Americans. A report by Feeding America found that a shocking 66% of households say they've had to choose between paying for food and paying for medical care — 31% say they have to make that choice each and every month.

This was another hot topic in Pew's survey of middle-class characteristics. Two-thirds of adults said health insurance was necessary to be considered middle class.

Many Americans get health insurance through their work, so it goes hand-in-hand with a secure job that comes with the middle-class lifestyle.

The Affordable Care Act is making health coverage available to more lower-income Americans who previously couldn't afford it. As health insurance becomes more pervasive, it may become less of a signifier of middle-class culture.
       

11. You Need But Cannot Afford Dental Work

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "the U.S. spends about $64 billion each year on oral health care — just 4% is paid by Government programs." About 108 million people in the U.S. have no dental coverage and even those who are covered may have trouble getting the care they need, the department reports.

Oftentimes, people will purchase medical coverage and forgo dental because it's so expensive. Plus, dental insurance may cover only 50% of the more expensive procedures, like crowns and bridges. This leaves those who have insurance with large co-payments.

In many cases, middle-earners will delay or even forego some of these procedures in efforts to save on costs. According to the CDC, nearly one in four adults between the ages of 20 and 64 have untreated dental caries (like cavities or infections).

12. You Do Not Think of Yourself as Middle Class


This may be the most important distinction of all: For many, being middle class is simply a state of mind.

It implies a commonality with the rest of the country, an implicit understanding that you're pursuing the American dream by working hard, saving money, being responsible and providing for your children.

It's also an acknowledgement that you're being rewarded for your efforts. You aren't filthy rich, but you're comfortable enough. "It's a feeling, a touchstone. It defies numbers," Xavier University political scientist Gene Beaupre told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 2013. "It's a mindset that says, 'I'm part of the working fabric of American culture.'"

84 Statistics That Prove That The Decline Of The Middle Class Is Real And That It Is Getting Worse

The Truth

Exposing The Truth One Story At A Time…

Economy 

84 Statistics That Prove That The Decline Of The Middle Class Is Real And That It Is Getting Worse

August 23, 2012 Michael Snyder Better Future, Budgets, Buy A House, Cost Of Living, Economic Problems, Government Dependence, Jobs, Problems, Raise A Family, The American Dream, The Middle Class, Wages

The middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. 

Once upon a time the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.  The rest of the globe looked at us in envy and wondered what we were doing right.  But now everything seems to be going wrong for the middle class.  Millions of our jobs have been shipped out of the country and competition for the remaining jobs is keeping wages at depressed levels.  Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up and up and middle class budgets are being stretched and strained like never before.  Millions more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty every single year, and government dependence is at an all-time high.  Finding a solution to the decline of the middle class is absolutely central to fixing the economic problems in this country.  Without a large, thriving middle class this would not be America.  The truth is that people from all over the world want to come here because they want to work hard, buy a house, raise a family and provide a better future for their children.  This has traditionally been “the land of opportunity”, but now the middle class is rapidly declining and none of our politicians seem to have any solutions.  With each passing day, the American Dream is slipping through the fingers of millions of hard working American families.  We owe it to them to get this thing fixed.

The following are 84 statistics that prove that the decline of the middle class is real and that it is getting worse….

1. According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971.  Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.
2. The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today compared with 10 years ago.
3. 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
4. The average net worth of a middle class family in America was $129,582 in 2001.  By 2010 that figure had dropped to $93,150.
5. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of all families in the United States declined “from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010“.
6. Back in 1970, middle income Americans brought home 62 percent of all income in the United States.  In 2010, middle income Americans only brought home 45 percent of all income.
7. After you adjust for inflation, median family income in the United States has fallen by about 6 percent since the year 2000.
8. Real median household income has decreased by more than 4000 dollars since Barack Obama entered the White House.
9. Amazingly, more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government.
10. In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
11. If you can believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.
12. The United States was once ranked #1 in the world in GDP per capita.  Today we have slipped to #12.
13. The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today.  Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.
14. Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less.  By 2010, that figure had risen to 32.5 percent.
15. Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
16. In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.  Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.
17. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high.  Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.
18. There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
19. The average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011, and electricity bills in the U.S. have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
20. Over the past decade, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.
21. Health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent since Barack Obama became president. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
22. Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
23. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
24. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
25. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
26. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
27. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.  Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
28. According to a report released in 2010, Americans spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries do on health care.
29. According to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now.
30. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
31. The wealthiest 20 percent of all Americans now control 84 percent of all the wealth in America.
32. Right now, over 50 percent of all stocks and bonds are owned by just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
33. Back in the 1970s, the top 1 percent of all income earners brought in about 8 percent of all income.  Today, they bring in about 21 percent of all income.
34. 40 years ago, the top 1/10,000th of all U.S. households brought in about 1 percent of all income.  Today, they bring in about 5 percent of all income.
35. Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
36. The wealthiest 400 families in the United States have about as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of all Americans do combined.
37. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
38. At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
39. The following is how income gains in the United States were distributed during 2010….
-37 percent of all income gains went to the top 0.01 percent of all income earners
-56 percent of all income gains went to the rest of the top 1 percent
-7 percent of all income gains went to the bottom 99 percent
40. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
41. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed fell by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2010.
42. Overall, the number of “new entrepreneurs and business owners” dropped by a staggering 53 percent between 1977 and 2010.
43. In 2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less than half of what it was back in the year 2000.
44. The average pay for self-employed Americans fell by $3,721 between 2006 and 2010.
45. In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people.  Only about 140 million of them are working.
46. Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
47. Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
48. Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
49. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
50. According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years.  During 2010 it got even worse.  That year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.
51. At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.
52. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.
53. If you can believe it, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
54. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
55. At this point, only 24.6 percent of all jobs in the United States are considered to be good jobs.
56. Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
57. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
58. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
59. In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty.  That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
60. It is being projected that when the final numbers come out later this year that the U.S. poverty rate will be the highest that it has been in almost 50 years.
61. It is also being projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.
62. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
63. It was recently reported that 1.5 million American families live on less than two dollars a day (before counting government benefits).
64. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
65. According to one recent poll, 18.2 percent of all Americans have not been able to buy enough food to eat at some point during this past year.
66. Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6% poverty rate.
67. In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
68. At this point, approximately 22 percent of all American children are living in poverty.
69. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
70. Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
71. Child homelessness in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 2007.
72. There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.
73. Approximately one-fourth of all American children are enrolled in the food stamp program.
74. It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.
75. Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million.
76. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
77. Federal housing assistance outlays increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
78. Approximately 50 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all right now.
79. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
80. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
81. Overall, the amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has risen by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
82. According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
83. If you can believe it, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government at this point.
84. In the United States today, 77 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
In compiling the information above, I relied heavily on research that I had previously done for The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream Blog.
So what do all of you think about the decline of the middle class?

Paul Krugman: Why Jeb-onomics Is Just Voodoo Economics All Over Again

Economy

Paul Krugman: Why Jeb-onomics Is Just Voodoo Economics All Over Again

 

Here comes some more plutocrat wishful thinking.

 

 

By Janet Allon / AlterNet

June 19, 2015

Photo Credit: Prolineserver / Wikimedia Commons

Make no mistake, Paul Krugman writes in Friday's column, no matter how much "Jeb!" tries to distance himself from his last name, what he is offering up economically speaking is the same failed conservative ideology that his own father even recognized as "voodoo economics."

In his announcement speech for the presidency this week, Bush made the absurd promise that he would double the country's economic growth to 4 percent. First off, as Krugman points out, no one knows how to do that.

I’ll get to Jeb-onomics in a minute, but first let me tell you about a dirty little secret of economics — namely, that we don’t know very much about how to raise the long-run rate of economic growth. Economists do know how to promote recovery from temporary slumps, even if politicians usually refuse to take their advice. But once the economy is near full employment, further growth depends on raising output per worker. And while there are things that might help make that happen, the truth is that nobody knows how to conjure up rapid productivity gains.

Why, then, would Mr. Bush imagine that he is privy to secrets that have evaded everyone else?

One answer, which is actually kind of funny, is that he believes that the growth in Florida’s economy during his time as governor offers a role model for the nation as a whole. Why is that funny? Because everyone except Mr. Bush knows that, during those years, Florida was booming thanks to the mother of all housing bubbles. When the bubble burst, the state plunged into a deep slump, much worse than that in the nation as a whole. Taking the boom and the slump together, Florida’s longer-term economic performance has, if anything, been slightly worse than the national average.

The key to Mr. Bush’s record of success, then, was good political timing: He managed to leave office before the unsustainable nature of the boom he now invokes became obvious.

Apart from this tiresome tendency to take credit for merely having somewhat good timing, Bush is just promising the radical plutocrat tax-cutting plan for the country that has already been demonstrated to be an utter failure in places like Kansas. And he is selling that notion by promising growth. Same old dangerous wishful thinking as always. "Way back in 1980, George H.W. Bush, running against Reagan for the presidential nomination, famously called it 'voodoo economic policy,'" Krugman points out. "And while Reaganolatry is now obligatory in the G.O.P., the truth is that he was right."

So, there was this one time when a Bush was right.

How the Shenanigans in Congress Over the TPP Trade Deal Threatens the Fundamentals of Our Democracy

Economy

How the Shenanigans in Congress Over the TPP Trade Deal Threatens the Fundamentals of Our Democracy

Progressives scored a victory but it's only round one.

By Bill Moyers, Bernard Weisberger / BillMoyers.com

June 15, 2015

WASHINGTON D.C., USA - Sep 18, 2014: United States President Barack Obama during an official meeting with the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in Washington, DC (USA)

Photo Credit: Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

Pro-democracy forces won a big victory Friday when they stalled the top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement backed by the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress.

But it’s only Round One. The unholy trio of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who has vowed to keep any of Obama’s nominees from being confirmed), Speaker of the House John Boehner (who has thwarted just about every Democratic legislative proposal of the past several years), and President Obama (a Democrat, in case you are having trouble remembering) are as one in a desperate effort to rescue their Frankenstein-like creation.

Their only hope is to bribe, browbeat, or brainwash enough House members to change their minds. It could happen. The journalist John R. MacArthur, writing late last week in the Providence Journal, tells how New York Democrat Kathleen Rice flip-flopped. Not long ago, she opposed fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership because she worried it would not “protect her district’s working families.” As well she might; this agreement is everything the giant corporations want; it decidedly wasn’t written with working people in mind.

But last week, Rep. Rice suddenly stopped worrying about those workers and went over to the other side, voting in favor of fast-tracking one of the most massive giveaways to multinational companies ever -- including corporations that have been shipping jobs overseas and pocketing their swollen off-shore profits to avoid taxes.

How in the world could Rice betray her working-class constituents, the people who trusted her to look after their interests? What changed her mind? For one thing, the president assured turncoats like Rice that he would “have their back” if he had their votes. We can’t know what that means, writes John MacArthur, “since the political deals that grease the way for unpopular legislation aren’t ordinarily announced in press releases or high-minded op-eds. The nasty facts tend to come out later, after the damage has been done.”

For now, we can only rub our eyes at the spectacle. Look at this headline in The Washington Post after Democrats defeated the Obama-McConnell-Boehner-Republican cabal on Friday: “New questions arise about House Democratic caucus’s loyalty to Obama.”

Say what? Shouldn’t that headline read: “New questions arise about president’s loyalty to House Democratic caucus?” Obama often has treated Democrats in Congress as if they’ve been quarantined for Ebola; they’re more likely to get into the White House if they dress up on Halloween as Republicans and go trick-or-treating at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But now the president demands they play on his side, with McConnell and Boehner as co-captains. The evening before the big vote he showed up at the congressional baseball game, hoping his presence would inspire some last-inning runs during Friday’s showdown. Republicans at the game reportedly cheered when the president arrived, while Democrats looked on in surprise at the unexpected appearance of their often furtive “leader.”

So now the president and his sworn enemies are allied in a bizarre mutual embrace of voodoo economics, assuring us that what’s good for multinational giants is good for struggling Americans trying to pay their bills while waiting below for the benefits of “free trade” to trickle down.

As The New York Times reported, corporate America has been nearly unanimous in its support of the trade agreement. No surprise: their lobbyists and lawyers practically wrote it. And on Friday their CEOs were loud and clear in voicing their displeasure over the impudence of the House in defying them. The National Association of Manufacturers, among others, declared that manufacturers “will not back down in this fight for expanded trade, for the future of our industry and our country.”

Ah, yes, that’s the argument: what’s good for global giants is good for workers. Yet we’re left to wonder at Rep. Rice’s motive for her turnaround when it betrays the working folk that only a bit earlier she was defending.

The promise of these trade agreements is at best an illusion, at worst, a lie – as we learned after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) more than 20 years ago.

The treaty and the devastation of jobs that followed would not have happened without House Democratic Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. For 28 years, he represented a working-class district in St. Louis. Then he flipped. He supported fast-track for NAFTA and helped clear the way for the passage of fast-track by negotiating with the first President Bush, John R. MacArthur writes, “to insert labor and environmental standards into future negotiations with Mexico and Canada.” But nothing enforceable for workers or the environment ever emerged from those negotiations. It was a hollow promise.

Gephardt wound up voting against the final treaty, but the damage was done and he left Congress to become one of the top corporate lobbyists in Washington. Among his clients has been that great friend of the working class, Goldman Sachs. How many votes cast for the trade deal last Friday came from politicians aware of the prospective job opportunities waiting on the other side of that infamous revolving door?

Or are we just getting too cynical? The issue before us is not “free trade,” which, like any policy, has its pluses and minuses. The issue is that a multilateral trade agreement should not be negotiated in secret, but in the open by our State and Commerce departments, with input from all organizations concerned, including those representing workers and environmentalists.

Then there should come a draft document for all to see, to be laid before the people’s representatives in Congress assembled. If and when a majority of them ratifies the agreement, it can go to the president for signature. This is how democracy should work.

Yet it’s the precise opposite of how this agreement has come to be. We are being asked to believe that the administration can argue with a straight face for a deal conceived in secrecy, drafted largely by corporate mercenaries, kept from public and Congressional view except with burdensome restrictions, then presented to Congress for a vote up or down, neither debate nor amendment allowed. It’s an absolute parody of the process described in the Constitution.

And where, oh where, are the “strict constructionists” on the Republican side? What happened to their proclaimed reverence for every syllable of the Constitution, their insistence that each must be interpreted precisely as understood in 1789?

Instead we are told that we must put aside principle and common sense on the pretended grounds that in the changing world of global economics, it is a necessary procedure. That’s bull — the same nonsense used to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act during the Clinton administration: the word went forth that in a modern economy, controls and regulations were obsolete remnants of a different era, standing in the way of universal prosperity.

As we learned, that fallacious and duplicitous argument led to a windfall for Wall Street bankers who subsequently had to be bailed out by taxpayers, only to survive and return to their predatory habits in this “modern economy.”

This whole affair is outrageous. After 226 years of constitutional government, is this where we’ve finally arrived?

So what can we do against so monstrous a lie? First, call this deal out for what it is — an abomination. Then let the tsunami of popular outrage roll. Tell Congress and the White House what you think. But hurry! Time’s running out, and Obama, McConnell, Boehner and the lobbyists are working overtime to get the locomotive back on the fast-track.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public television series Moyers & Company. Moyers has received 35 Emmy awards, nine Peabody Awards, the National Academy of Television’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and an honorary doctor of fine arts from the American Film Institute over his 40 years in broadcast journalism.