Joel Kotkin: Economy needs more than tech sector - middle class jobs disappear

We are entering a domain where looms a lost decade of income, growth and opportunity – and maybe it's time to address that fact.

Yes, the stock market is high, social-media types are rolling in billions, and asset inflation now extends to the residential home, the one investment where the middle and upper-middle classes can make a "killing." But, overall, everyone but the wealthy – the top 7 percent – are continuing to get pummeled, notes a recent Pew study.

Actually, it's worse than that in terms of the great progressive value, "equality." Hurt particularly has been the middle class – whatever the ethnicity – whose jobs have been decreasing most rapidly, while much of the new employment is in very low-paid work.

In reality, many of the major metro regions with the greatest degree of inequality are in deep-blue states like California, New York or, in the belly of the beast, Washington D.C.

But, outside of pontificating, neither political party is ready to address this issue.

Under an alliance of the ostensible "party of the people" and the corporate serfs of the Republican Party, Wall Street, arguably the primary felon of the Great Recession, has been protected from any serious reform.

Indeed, with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke essentially giving it free money, the financial industry gets to party on, while middle-class incomes stagnate or fall....
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Link: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tech-510810-people-jobs.html