Social Issues

America’s middle class has been destroyed.

A new study by Pew finds:

From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas.

Rakesh Kochhar, associate director of research at Pew,  told CBS News:

Economic inequality and the absolute destruction of the middle class is something that we've covered for many years (recently here), and being that central bank policies only exacerbate the issue, readers of Zero Hedge are undoubtedly well acquainted with topic. As usual, it took a while, but it does appear as though the mainstream media is finally catching up, as CBS recently published a piece on the erosion of the middle class in the United States.

Hillary Clinton's strategy to get in front of voters and answer one-on-one type questions is not working out very well.

First, Clinton couldn't explain to an unemployed West Virginian why she was promising to put a lot of coal miners out of work. Now, Hillary can't explain why Obamacare fees are higher than promised, and are set to explode even higher next year.

Authored by Nelson Lebo via The Automatic Earth blog,

“Our already horrendous suicide rate hit a new record high last year.” The news of New Zealand’s suicide rate did not surprise me when I heard it on the radio earlier this week. Anyone who pays attention to global trends could see this coming. “Psychotherapists say we need a wide-ranging review into the mental health system before there are more preventable deaths” reported Newstalk ZB.

A Supreme Court judge has ruled that a father must treat his 11-year-old daughter as a boy, at the request of the child.  The father wants his daughter to cease taking hormone blockers, but the court ruled in favour of the child and its mother, saying the father must respect the wishes of the girl in becoming a boy at such a young age.