NEWS FLASH!!! Middle Class Slams Brakes on Spending

Inquiring minds are reading with despair today’s WSJ article on the middle class reducing spending more than ever seen before. What can only be described as disastrous data for the White House and Dems, the data is truly horrifying:

Middle-class Americans made their deepest spending cuts in more than two decades, slashing spending on such discretionary items as restaurant meals and alcohol during the recession.

Households in the middle fifth of the population sliced their average annual spending to $41,150 in 2009, the Labor Department said Tuesday in its annual spending breakdown. That was down 3.1% from 2007 and 3.5% from 2008, the steepest one-year drop since records began in 1984.

What made these numbers even worse (if that is even possible) is that incomes were stable and were not experiencing a decline. People have stopped spending.

From this:

Meanwhile, the poorest Americans spent more as prices for necessities like food and rental housing climbed. Spending rose 5.6% from 2007 to 2009 for the poorest fifth of consumers, the most of any other income group, despite a 5.5% drop in after-tax income to an average $9,956 a household. In some cases, elderly people and others with low incomes dipped into savings or relied on credit to get by.

We realize that actually the numbers for the middle class are even worse. Because prices are up. People are just not buying as many ‘things’ as before. The state sales-tax revenues have been showing this for quite some time.

November looks even grimmer for the Democrats than yesterday.