I’m not an economist, I don’t play one on TV and numbers
scare me, but I think everyone should have a basic understanding of why we find
ourselves with such gaping income inequality in America today and an economy
that is stuck in neutral. There’s a very accessible article in Truthout that explains in language I can
grasp how having a middle class in a capitalist society is a conscious choice
and not something that naturally flows from a free market economy.
Our economic troubles really began when Ronald Reagan took
office in 1980 and started drastically cutting taxes on the wealthiest
Americans. Since then, the very wealthy have continued to accumulate money,
their income has grown dramatically, while those once considered middle class
realized stagnant or negative income growth, eventually plummeting to near
poverty levels.
The article points out that the great economic growth and
expansion of the middle class we experienced in the 1950s and 1960s was
directly related to high taxes on the very rich, a tightly regulated economy
and strong labor laws. That’s all gone by the wayside in the last 33 years, and
the current Grand Canyon of income inequality is the result.
One point made in the article that I found very interesting
was the idea that when you have a middle class, a large group of Americans who
were relatively comfortable financially, people are able to focus their energy
and attention on broader social issues (civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the
environment) rather than the day-to-day struggle for survival. This, of course,
scared the shit out of the conservative establishment, and their champion,
Ronald Reagan, finally put a stop to all of that as president. Today, a large
swath of America is right where conservatives want us to be, scraping to get by
and beholden to our employers for letting us keep our jobs.
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