Why Cut Off the Hand That Feeds You?

I have a question that I am simply throwing out into the ethos, basically because I don’t have any friends who are economists and capable of answering it.

Over the past 30 years, economic policy in this country has served to decimate the middle class. Trickle down economics, free trade, tax cuts for the wealthy, Wall Street shenanigans, allowing jobs to be sent overseas, etc., all have served to financially cripple that once large swath of people in the middle income range.

Say I own a company that manufactures appliances or automobiles or homes. My question is this: Why would I support economic policies that financially weaken the large group of people who I depend on to buy my products? As more and more people are forced downward on the economic scale and into low paying service jobs or unemployment, there are going to be fewer and fewer people able to buy my cars or homes or dishwashers. Destroying the middle class seems like economic suicide to me, yet the elite in this country, many of whom run Fortune 500 companies, continue to contribute to candidates who support these poisonous policies.

I’m left scratching my head.