Ronald Reagan, the Great Eliminator (of the middle class)

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.

Billionaires say the darndest things

Good lord, the billionaires are at it again. Don’t these people have handlers? Every time one of them opens his mouth, the hubris, chutzpah and utter cluelessness assaults our senses like a barrel of rotten fish. Multi-zillionaire Tom Perkins, the man who equates critics of the wealthy with Nazis, also believes you shouldn’t be able to vote unless you pay taxes, and the more money you make the more votes you should get. He seems to have temporarily forgotten that he and his billionaire buddies already own congress and the executive branch. Why would they need more votes?

Then there’s billionaire Bud Konheim, the co-founder and CEO of the luxury clothing company Nicole Miller, who said this week that the 99 percent should shut their pie holes because if they lived in China they’d be rich. He thinks we’re a nation of whiners.

The arrogance on display here is monumental. Not satisfied to be among the richest, most powerful people on the planet, they have the gall to lecture the rest of us as if we are petulant children disrespecting their betters. They’ve convinced themselves that they truly deserve to have more money in the bank than some small countries, and that if you’re not as rich as them, there’s something wrong with you. They live on a rich man’s fantasy island, encircled by a tall fence that keeps reality at bay. 

I might suggest they take some time to brush up on their history. They might learn from the Czar’s of Russia and eighteenth century French royalty that no fence lasts forever.

The American economy: It’s worse than you imagined

Writer Michael Snyder has an eye-opening article posted on the Zero Hedge site titled, Which America do you live in? — 21 hard to believefacts about ‘wealthy America’ and ‘poor America.’ It’s basically a compendium of economic data reflecting the colossal and continuously expanding inequality between rich and poor in this country. It’s sobering stuff, because those of us lucky enough to have decent jobs can too easily barricade ourselves from the reality of poverty and inequality that exists all around us.

I have actually lived in both worlds. During the financial tsunami of 2008 I was laid off and it took me over two years to find another job. Never having the luxury of being able to save money, I lost my condo and went through bankruptcy during that period, and if it were not for my girlfriend, I could have easily found myself living on the streets. It was a bleak period of bouts with depression and anger and self-esteem issues, and it is the curse that more and more Americans are experiencing in their lives. It is not, as conservatives would have you believe, only a problem for the laziest among us.

The cars in the parking lot where I work are almost all newer model, mid-priced vehicles. There are a few BMWs, one or two Mercedes, and a clunker or two, but the lot generally reflects a group of mostly white men and women with college degrees making a reasonable income. I would guess that many of them are two-earner families with homes they are paying for. They, we, are isolated in a way, living on a shrinking island of middle-class comfort. If nothing is done to address our broken economy, if we don’t demand that something be done, the island will eventually be swallowed up by the sea and we will join the millions of other Americans treading water merely to stay alive.