THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MIDDLE CLASS IN AMERICA; IT’S THE WORKING POOR
As first world countries have allowed greedy capitalists dictate where labor is bought and sold, we are now in a civilization where outside of the extremely wealthy class, we have turned the middle class into literally the working poor. For over fifteen years I have watched American industrial innovation being replaced by re-engineering. Re-engineering doesn’t help create building a better mouse trap that would increase sales for a company and thus profits and from there to create more opportunity. Re-engineering is about reducing costs to extract more profits. The biggest cost for most manufacturing companies outside sometimes of raw materials, is labor. As economists and their ilk now claim we live in a global community, these greedy narcissists at the top actually do believe if a Chinaman is happy with $0.50/hour then an American should feel exactly the same. If he doesn’t, then lump it. It is a case of allowing the market to find its own levels and so American manufacturing embarked on the route of exporting labor.
What made America the greatest nation on earth was most Americans post World War Two were able to live the “American Dream” Up until the middle eighties prosperity was part and parcel of the lives of all middle Americans. Every working American shared in the wealth that was created by making real things. Houses over the last sixty years were built with at least two car garages, because most families were two car families! We just didn’t have one television set, we ended having one in the kitchen as well as every bedroom! For nearly forty years American companies grew organically making better and better products that helped them to become more and more profitable. Middle class Americans shared in the growing wealth, by receiving great healthcare and pension plans and higher wages in keeping with their employers increased profitability.
Twenty-five years ago thanks to President Reagan’s promotion that life should be about less government and less taxes, we created a dominating class representing the selfish and greedy. In 1970 the average Fortune 500 Company CEO earned twenty-five times the average worker’s wage. Today the ratio is nearly 450 times! In 2009 the average worker (one of the lucky ones yet to be laid off) is earning less than he did twenty years ago and is struggling to maintain payments on his house and car while the bastards at the top flit from mansion to mansion in the corporate jet, and like John McCain married (second time around) to a wealthy woman, probably can’t even remember how many family homes they and his missus owned!
One of the saddest things for me is to see the destruction of the middle class and in its place find an underclass, the working poor! Being the socialist I am, once this recession is over, I want to see some re-distribution of wealth. No-one should be earning money they couldn’t spend in 200 lifetimes while so many of their felloe citizens are having sand thrown in their faces by these heartless monsters who have grown rich by literally riding on the backs of the former middle class.
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