Political Forums - You Call This A Middle Class?

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You Call This A Middle Class?

A pretty good article on how the middle class is being eroded away.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/you-...age=1#bookmark

Quote:

Welcome to the new America where good people with honest jobs are losing money each month — and scrambling to live.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted a study of workers who were laid off during the Great Recession and found a new job. More than half are earning less money. During the recession, wage growth dropped from 3.5 percent a year to 1.5 percent, and has been stuck there ever since. The economic upheaval that began in 2007 was not a recession. It was a reordering. Employers used the downturn as an opportunity to ratchet down wages, which are likely to remain at their current levels.

Any reordering of society must be accompanied by a justification for the new arrangement. Conservatives loathe the term “economic justice,” because they see it as an indictment of the marketplace, which they consider a perfect mechanism for ensuring every worker gets what he or she deserves. If you earn $7.25 an hour, that must be all you’re worth. (Actually, the free market absolutists at the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute believe minimum-wage workers are not even worth that much, but benefit from a government-imposed mechanism that inflates their paychecks.)

In order for this free market version of economic justice to make sense, wages can’t be low because the economy is not producing enough good jobs; they have to be low because employees lack the training and/or the work ethic to command more money.

“Income is a direct result of the effort put towards earning the income,” Ron Anari, a senior vice president of ICAP Plc, a broker of U.S. government debt, wrote in response to a Bloomberg Global Poll on inequality. “Our greatest shortcoming is not the income inequality of the top 2% from the bottom 2% but the systematic destruction of the middle class through handouts creating the entitled and complacent class.”

It’s Social Calvinism, a worldview that does not just see money as a reward for virtuous behavior, but as evidence of virtue itself. The 1 percent consider themselves an Economic Elect, whose wealth is a byproduct of self-discipline, intelligence, thriftiness and tolerance for risk. As inequality increases, so does the winners’ conviction that they are more equal than everyone else.

continued

What was that line 'All pigs are equal, some are just more equal than others" forgive me George Orwell if I did not get that quite right.

When I first heard that one, I thought of equal as implying average, and thought it meant that some animals were more average, that is, less than exceptional, than others.

Had it backwards of Orwell's point, in other words.... Had to get older before I got it. People make the mistake of thinking Animal Farm is a kid's book because it has talking animals in it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by donquixote99 (Post 198017)

DQ being lousy at sports reading was what saved my sanity and my parents let me read whatever was in the family library. They took the view that if the book was too mature I would get bored and put it back.;)

The middle class has been slowly eroding since Reagan gave the tax breaks to the rich then realized he had to make up the loss of revenue by taxing the middle class. Now we have an upper low class that will soon be gone as well......

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rex E. (Post 198106)

Concur in every respect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rex E. (Post 198106)

You mean it was better under Jimmy Carter?

Besides being a nice guy what was so great about Reagan?
In retrospect Carter may have not have started this hatred of the government that Reagan sort of legitimized. If the tax rates on the very top had been kept higher we would not have the economic inequality today. I guess Bush II is to blame for that as well.

I wish I could take that vote back in 1980...should not have voted for a movie star that looked liked the Marlboro Man

Quote:

Originally Posted by hillbilly (Post 198154)

You mean it was better under Jimmy Carter?

Sure was.

Carter won the first round ok, but at the end of his first term he had become not so popular.

"Reagan won the election, carrying 44 states with 489 electoral votes to 49 electoral votes for Carter.''

Didn't Reagan make it a second term after that? Why didn't Carter?