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The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power

George Friedman

Founder, Stratfor

Dec 31, 2013 | 10:01 GMT

The decline of the American middle class

October 1950: American steelworker Charlie Grapentine drives his Dodge car to work. He earns 320 dollars per month for a 40 hour week at the United States Steel Corporation works in Youngstown, Ohio. His salary supports his wife Josephine and their two children Charles and Nancy.

(Doreen Spooner/Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Editor's Note

The following Geopolitical Weekly originally ran in January 2013.

The United States faces a potentially significant but longer-term geopolitical problem deriving from economic trends. The threat to the United States is the persistent decline in the middle class' standard of living, a problem that is reshaping the social order that has been in place since World War II and that, if it continues, poses a threat to American power....

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