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40 Years of Right-Wing Politics Results in No Middle Class
Wed, 2009-12-02 23:43
#1
40 Years of Right-Wing Politics Results in No Middle Class
Wed, 2009-12-02 23:45
#2
welder
That was the plan The Friedmanites wanted implemented.
Neo-Liberal economics at its finest...
The Keynsian Golden Age is over,and I'm afraid,ain't coming back....
Wed, 2009-12-02 23:46
#3
America Without a Middle Class
Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?
Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcyevery month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions andsavings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.
Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.
The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.
But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance.
To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce. But higher housing and medical costs combined with new expenses for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:09
#4
This is the kind of society our right-wing governments have been creating for us. The only way this is ever going to change is for us to have a workers' revolution, and put people in government that represent the working people, not the rich and powerful, because they are just getting richer and more powerful, and the rest of us are getting poorer and poorer.
It's all about economics baby. And don't let anyone tell you different. It always has been, and it always will be. And climate change is all 'bout economics too, and that is why the whole thing is a farce. As if the rich and powerful are going to give up being rich and powerful. That's just a sick joke.
The Economic Reality That No One Wants to Talk About
But here's the real worry. The basic assumption that jobs will eventually return when the economy recovers is probably wrong. Some jobs will come back, of course. But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that's been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated.
Under the pressure of this awful recession, many companies have found ways to cut their payrolls for good. They've discovered that new software and computer technologies have made workers in Asia and Latin America just about as productive as Americans, and that the Internet allows far more work to be efficiently outsourced abroad.
This means many Americans won't be rehired unless they're willing to settle for much lower wages and benefits. Today's official unemployment numbers hide the extent to which Americans are already on this path. Among those with jobs, a large and growing number have had to accept lower pay as a condition for keeping them. Or they've lost higher-paying jobs and are now in a new ones that pays less.
Yet reducing unemployment by cutting wages merely exchanges one problem for another. We'll get jobs back but have more people working for pay they consider inadequate, more working families at or near poverty, and widening inequality. The nation will also have a harder time restarting the economy because so many more Americans lack the money they need to buy all the goods and services the economy can produce.
So let's be clear: The goal isn't just more jobs. It's more jobs with good wages. Which means the fix isn't just temporary measures to accelerate a jobs recovery, but permanent new investments in the productivity of Americans.
What sort of investments? Big ones that span many years: early childhood education for every young child, excellent K-12, fully-funded public higher education, more generous aid for kids from middle-class and poor families to attend college, good health care, more basic R&D that's done here in the U.S., better and more efficient public transit like light rail, a power grid that's up to the task, and so on.
Without these sorts of productivity-enhancing investments, a steadily increasing number of Americans will be priced out of competition in world economy. More and more Americans will face a Hobson's choice of no job or a job with lousy wages. It's already happening.
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:17
#5
An' our stooges thought it a good idea to hitch our economic wagon to this?
American Michael Hudson said the same people who were there in Bush I and Clinton's administrations had a free hand in Russia in the 1990's. Hudson says most of the same people are there in Obama's admin and will do to America what they helped do to Russia with creating vast inequalities and pauperizing a nation. Their crosshair's are focused on Americans this time.
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:19
#6
Now all we need is the basic means for maintaining a sustainable, carbon-free economy, complete with repositories for our savings that won't shrink or disappear, a political economy measured by equality and social justice. And, of course, an end to the rule of self-interest.
But where, in history, do we find a justification, some precedent, for the continued existence of a class that refused to look down the pike at what was coming at them? Or was it science that let us down? Wishful thinking?
Yep, it's all been quite predictable since the early 70s and the rise of the Chicago School really, eh, welder?
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:25
#7
welder
Now all we need is the basic means for maintaining a sustainable, carbon-free economy, complete with repositories for our savings that won't shrink or disappear, a political economy measured by equality and social justice. And, of course, an end to the rule of self-interest.
But where, in history, do we find a justification, some precedent, for the continued existence of a class that refused to look down the pike at what was coming at them? Or was it science that let us down? Wishful thinking?
Yep, it's all been quite predictable since the early 70s and the rise of the Chicago School really, eh, welder?
Not bad for a blue collar dumb ass,huh?
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:29
#8
Can't imagine how anyone in their right mind could see climate change as a con.
Added ...can't see where anyone who reads can self-describe in that fashion. Degrees don't necessarily mean a damn thing.
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:36
#9
welder
My climate change comment was directed at the original poster...
My self description was an attempt at self deprication.I do read...Sprint Car&Midget magazine,Sports Illustrated,Baseball Weekly,Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich,Shelby Foote etc.,U.S. Civil War periodicals(North and South magazine)...
I'm like the $#!+house poet...I'm the one you never saw comin'!
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:37
#10
welder
I agree on some sort of workers revolt...The question is how?
Let's take the US,for example.Less than 10% of the workforce is organized.Of that,at least half are public sector unions.
If one looks at the continental US,RTW/Open Shop policies are on the books in most of the libertarian Western states and the hardline conservative Southeast.Corporate groups like the NAM promote RTW as an issue pf personal freedom and rank and file conservative citizens buy into that message.They look at the labour movement as a socialist plot to control their lives and an impediment to the cutthroat free market capitalism that those types look at as a billboard signifying freedom.
It's very hard,if not impossible,to fight that level of brainwashing.
I won't repeat what I said on the Labour board,but international unions have got to go global.They have to take the fight to the global crypto-fascists in the very places where the globalists arte undercutting the West.It will take several generations,and alot of blood will be spilled,but it's the only way to fight things on their level.
Side issue...Interesting you think the Climate Change Cabal is a con.I believe it is another way the global elite plays both sides of the political spectrum in a confiscatory fashion to drive wealth out of the middle class...You'll notice I've ruffled a few feathers on the Rogue Science thread...
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:46
#11
Friedman, Keynes and neo-liberal philosophy out of Civil War periodicals? Okay. I'm gonna sleep on that (just noticed the damn clock .
G'nite.
Thu, 2009-12-03 00:59
#12
welder
Well...There's some other stuff too....
Thu, 2009-12-03 01:01
#13
Thu, 2009-12-03 01:08
#14
welder
Would you like to discuss the 5 Sola's as it relates to Lutheranism and Calvinism and The Reformation?
Thu, 2009-12-03 10:37
#15
remind
Can't imagine how anyone in their right mind could see climate change as a con.
there are cons going on within the framework, understanding that is not denying man made climate change
Degrees don't necessarily mean a damn thing.
Agreed....especially those derived from writing down exactly what the Prof/Instructor wanted
Thu, 2009-12-03 12:59
#16
welder
I forgot..I also read JUGGZ magazine...But only for the articles....
Thu, 2009-12-03 14:03
#17
They have articles?
Thu, 2009-12-03 14:45
#18
welder
You have'nt seen them??
Dude,you are missin' out!!!
That's what I call erudite,hard hitting journalism!!!
Thu, 2009-12-03 15:01
#19
Was just blinded by the awesome colour graphic of their journalistic pictorials
Thu, 2009-12-03 15:03
#20
welder
Well....A picture says a thousand words,does'nt it?
Thu, 2009-12-03 20:15
#21
Degrees don't necessarily mean a damn thing.Agreed....especially those derived from writing down exactly what the Prof/Instructor wanted
It's a rare student who can earn a degree with only one instructor.
My self description was an attempt at self deprication.I do read...Sprint Car&Midget magazine,Sports Illustrated,Baseball Weekly,Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich,Shelby Foote etc.,U.S. Civil War periodicals(North and South magazine)...
Oh yeah? I read Camus, Gogol and Dostoevsky while working underground (although I read Notes From Underground, E.M Forster and Kafka during lunch breaks at a construction site) in a mine. I've even made money by fusing bits of metal together using lots of heat and electricity. Anyway, glad to have you aboard, welder.
Fri, 2009-12-04 11:40
#22
One downsmanship at its best. :D
Fri, 2009-12-04 23:01
#23
Sorry, I don't follow you. How is reading while at work a form of debasement, or do you merely find the idea of literate working-class people amusing?
Sat, 2009-12-05 07:34
#24
It was a poor attempt at humour Al (down in the mine, rather than upmanship?...god it suffers even more in explanation) . Sorry, I won't attempt it again. I also come from working class beginnings, and read widely before returning to school as a "retread" among the young. Sorry if I come on as someone "down on" the self-made. Don't know how to get around that .It is not my intent. Quite the contrary.
As remind quoted me - and which you repeated - "degrees don't necessarily mean a damn thing."
As long as we don't use it as in:
"Not bad for a blue collar dumb ass,huh?"
Sat, 2009-12-05 08:37
#25
welder
Degrees don't necessarily mean a damn thing.Agreed....especially those derived from writing down exactly what the Prof/Instructor wanted
It's a rare student who can earn a degree with only one instructor.
My self description was an attempt at self deprication.I do read...Sprint Car&Midget magazine,Sports Illustrated,Baseball Weekly,Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich,Shelby Foote etc.,U.S. Civil War periodicals(North and South magazine)...
Oh yeah? I read Camus, Gogol and Dostoevsky while working underground (although I read Notes From Underground, E.M Forster and Kafka during lunch breaks at a construction site) in a mine. I've even made money by fusing bits of metal together using lots of heat and electricity. Anyway, glad to have you aboard, welder.
Really???
You should lighten up a little...I usually do this when I get to work...
1.Head for the lunchroom
2.Find latest Toronto Sun
3.Glance at editorial page and laugh histerically
4.Turn to back page and find Sunshine girl
5.Drool at boobies
Sat, 2009-12-05 09:37
#26
Yer a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.
Sat, 2009-12-05 11:08
#27
Really???
You should lighten up a little...I usually do this when I get to work...
A scoop-tram operator on my crew was a big influence on me and got me interested in exploring various writers, and not being shy about reading around my colleagues. Without this guy I probably never would have read Kerouac, Céline or Dostoevsky, at work or anywhere else.
Anyway, he told me he was at a miner one day, reading some heavy tome while waiting to push the muck up to the face once the machine backed out of its pass, when the mine captain walked past him, noticed he was reading, and asked,"What'ya have there, a f**k book?"
Sorry if I come on as someone "down on" the self-made. Don't know how to get around that .It is not my intent. Quite the contrary.
Thanks for the explanation, although we could start a thread or seventeen about the concept of being "self-made."
Sat, 2009-12-05 16:02
#28
Thanks for not insisting on it. Hate self analysis.