AMERICAN SHOPPERS

(Letter to Consumer Reports, 10/14/14:)

Your November article about the recovery of American shopping seems to focus on the presumed fellows of your magazine workers, most of whom are probably college-educated, white-collar, (sub-)urban, and not retail-employed.  So, I would hazard the guess that most of your focus is on a group well above the current median gross household income of slightly over $50,000 a year.

In the world near me, most folks are blue-collar, poorly employed or unemployed, high-school or trade-school-educated at most, and most have worked for small local businesses that used to employ most of Americans and who have been kicked in the teeth during the past 7 years or so.  Most households around here are near or well under that current median.

Why don't you write about the REAL American consumers whom I see all around me who have no spare change to spend, who have had to surrender their homes and have moved in with relatives or into rentals, who must choose between buying food or paying rents or UNINSURED medical bills?  You interviewed singles or mostly homes with two incomes, one of which is around $150K, and they are worried about curtailing their spending habits or where to go on vacation?  Give me a break!  I know maybe two people with household incomes over $100K!  The rest are well under $75K, like about 64% of ALL AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS!  And, that's gross income, not taxable income.

The real "middle class" in this country is a lot worse off than you and Barack Obama and the rest of your effete white-collar brethren in the eastern Urban Corridor think!  I believe that unless and until there is a permanent abandonment of the pathetic fraud of "supply-side" and acceptance that ALL markets are demand-driven, then it will be Business As Usual with more stupid tax cuts for the well-to-do "middle class" and a royal screwing instead for the working classes, with higher payroll taxes on GROSS wage incomes, fewer income-tax deductions and tighter benefits in the name of "austerity"!

Sheesh!